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+Project Gutenberg's Present Irish Questions, by William O'Connor Morris
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
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+
+Title: Present Irish Questions
+
+Author: William O'Connor Morris
+
+Release Date: October 26, 2011 [EBook #37853]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS ***
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+Present Irish Questions
+
+
+
+
+Publisher's Announcement
+
+_By the Same Author_
+
+    The Campaign of 1815: Ligny, Quatre Bras, Waterloo.
+
+    Demy 8vo, cloth, with Maps, 12_s._ 6_d._ net.
+
+M. Houssaye, in a letter to the author, says, "J'ai lu avec beaucoup de
+plaisir votre livre sur La Campagna de 1815. C'est un excellent résumé,
+copieux et critique, tres judicieux, tres précis, et tres clair."
+
+Captain Mahan, in a letter to the author, says, "Your narrative is very
+clear, and to me quite convincing."
+
+_The Times_: "We can recommend this book as a painstaking and instructive
+survey of the campaign."
+
+_The Spectator_: "Provides what has long been wanted--a study of the
+campaign by one well qualified to sift evidence dispassionately."
+
+_Pall Mail Gazette_: "Will fill a high place in the all too scanty library
+of British Military literature."
+
+  LONDON: GRANT RICHARDS
+  9 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, W.C.
+
+
+
+
+  Present Irish Questions
+
+
+  BY WILLIAM O'CONNOR MORRIS
+
+  COUNTY COURT JUDGE AND CHAIRMAN OF
+  QUARTER SESSIONS OF ROSCOMMON AND
+  SLIGO, AND SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF
+  ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD
+
+
+  [Greek: Nosei de moi propas stolos, oud' eni
+  phrontidos egchos hô tis alexetai.]--SOPHOCLES.
+
+  'Blessed is the Amending Hand.'--_Old Proverb._
+
+
+  London
+  Grant Richards
+  New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
+  1901
+
+
+
+
+  I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
+  A TRIBUTE OF ADMIRATION AND ESTEEM
+  TO THE MARQUIS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA, K.P.
+  THE MOST DISTINGUISHED IRISHMAN OF HIS TIME
+
+
+  LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
+  STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
+
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+
+I have written much on Ireland from early youth, especially in the
+_Edinburgh Review_ and the _Times_; and two works of mine, 'Ireland,
+1494-1868' published in 'The Cambridge Historical Series,' and 'Ireland,
+1798-1898,' have been received with more than ordinary favour. I have
+ventured to think that the opinions of a veteran inquirer into Irish
+affairs, with respect to 'Present Irish Questions' just now of much
+importance, and certain to be ere long fully discussed in Parliament and
+elsewhere, may be of some use to a younger generation, that will have to
+examine and must be affected by them. I am not unaware of the cynical
+remarks of Swift on the disregard shown to authors who may be said to have
+had their day; and I do not pretend that, in the instance of myself, 'old
+experience' has given something of a 'prophetic strain' to what is
+contained in this volume. But I can say, with truth, that few living men
+have had such opportunities as have fallen to my lot, during a long series
+of years, to understand Ireland in its different parts, and the feelings
+and sentiments of the Irish community; to form sound and moderate views on
+the many and perplexing phenomena called 'Irish Questions;' to deal
+reasonably with Irish political and social problems, free from the
+influences of party prejudice and passion; in short, to do my subject
+complete and impartial justice. How the accidents and associations of a
+life already protracted beyond the ordinary span, have, as I hope, given
+me these qualifications, I have explained at some length in my 'Ireland,
+1798-1898;' I shall not repeat what I have already written. But Ireland
+has constantly been uppermost in my thoughts; and as regards the
+conclusions I have come to in these pages, I may say, with the Roman
+historian, 'hæc senectuti seposui.'
+
+The examination of 'Present Irish Questions,' in this work, shows the
+views I entertain with regard to the actual condition of Ireland in its
+various aspects, and to her probable future destinies. These views may be
+censured as too gloomy, and even paradoxical; but Ireland remains, as she
+was when Macaulay wrote of her, 'A member indeed of the Empire, but a
+withered and distorted member;' the revolution which has passed, nay, is
+still passing, over her, has destroyed a great deal that ought to have
+been preserved, and has put little that is solid and stable in its place;
+there is much that is threatening and even dangerous in her political and
+social order, and in the sentiments of the mass of her community. In the
+case of Ireland, indeed, as in that of any other people, I have faith in
+the effect of salutary legislation on wise and just principles, and of
+consistent good government steadily carried out, of both of which there
+has been but too little evidence, during the last twenty years, in Irish
+affairs; above all, my trust is large in the healing influences of Time.
+But I have not forgotten that the vision of 'Pacata Hibernia,' which
+flitted even before the majestic understanding of Bacon, three centuries
+ago, has not been realised; the thoughtless optimism, which, during the
+last two generations, has represented Ireland to be in a state of
+continual 'progress,' nay, as 'contented and happy,' whenever she has not
+been convulsed by disorder and trouble, or racked by poverty and distress,
+has been completely falsified; and with nations, as with individuals, the
+profound remark of Butler is true; a life of repentance often fails to
+redeem the errors of the past. I proceed to indicate some at least of the
+authorities which relate to the different parts of my subject. The
+material condition of Ireland of late years may, perhaps, be best
+ascertained by studying, over some length of time, the large body of
+statistics compiled by the Government, and contained in that valuable
+publication, 'Thom's Directory,' and by a perusal of the Irish debates in
+Hansard. Reference, too, should be made to the important papers of Mr.
+Childers, of Lord Farrer, and of Mr. Sexton in the Report of the Childers
+Commission, and especially to the evidence of Sir Robert Giffen, and even
+of Sir Edward Hamilton, in the Blue Books appended to that inquiry.
+'England's Wealth, Ireland's Poverty,' by Thomas Lough, M.P., though a
+one-sided book, also deserves attention; and useful information may be
+obtained from 'The Five Years in Ireland, 1895-1900,' of Mr. Michael J. F.
+McCarthy, too much a eulogy, however, of things as they are, and marked by
+a spirit of aversion to, and distrust of, the Irish priesthood, which are
+a characteristic of a small section of the Irish Catholics.
+
+The sources of our knowledge respecting the moral, social, and political
+state of Ireland are numerous and ample; I shall confine myself, as much
+as I can, to those which relate to what may be called her recent
+revolutionary period, though Irish history in the past, even in the
+distant past, is anything but an 'old almanack.' This mass of evidence
+faithfully represents the disturbances and the troubles that have
+prevailed in Ireland, with intervals of time between, during the last
+twenty years and upwards, and the fierce animosities and conflicts which
+have been the consequence. Here a reader should again consult Hansard,
+notably the debates on Ireland, during the agitated period from 1880 to
+1889; of course he should only study the great speeches. The publications
+on this subject are very many, and some of real importance; as regards
+the policy and conduct of the Land, and even of the National Leagues, and
+the frightful outbreak of disorder and crime which was the result, nothing
+is equal in value to the Report of the Judges of the 'Special Commission,'
+and to the immense body of evidence brought before them; 'The Verdict,' by
+Professor Dicey, sums up well the conclusions at which they arrived. The
+utterances of the so-called Irish 'Nationalist' Press, throughout these
+years, fully verify the facts disclosed in the Report, and its findings;
+they have, indeed, been continued in a less ferocious and violent, but in
+a significant, strain ever since; a collection of them will be found in
+the volumes published by the Irish Unionist Alliance. On this subject, and
+also on the state of opinion existing among a large majority, probably, of
+the Irish people, see 'The Continuity of the Irish Revolutionary
+Movement,' by Professor Brougham Leech; 'The Truth about the Land League,'
+by Mr. Arnold Foster, M.P.; 'Parnellism and Crime,' republished from the
+_Times_; 'Incipient Irish Revolution,' anonymous but able; some valuable
+articles on Ireland by the late Lord Grey that appeared in the _Nineteenth
+Century_; 'Disturbed Ireland,' by Mr. T. W. Russell, M.P.; 'The Plan of
+Campaign Illustrated;' and 'About Ireland,' by Mrs. E. Lynn Lynton. The
+recent revolutionary and agrarian movements in Ireland have not found many
+to vindicate them, or even fully to explain their causes; but reference
+may be made to 'The Parnell Movement,' by T. P. O'Connor, M.P.; to the
+'New Ireland' of Mr. A. M. Sullivan; to Mr. Barry O'Brien's 'Irish Wrongs
+and English Remedies;' and to a series of articles called 'Ungrateful
+Ireland,' in the _Nineteenth Century_, from the pen of Sir G. Duffy. A
+host of papers in quarterly, monthly, and other reviews and magazines on
+the political and social condition of Ireland of late years has, also,
+been published from time to time. Attempts have been made, quite recently,
+to show that the troubles of Ireland have become things of the past, and
+that she is a prosperous and happy land; but though real improvement has
+certainly taken place, these are mere repetitions of the optimistic
+fancies that have so often proved delusions.
+
+The great question of Home Rule, 'present' if for a time postponed, was
+first put forward formally by the late Isaac Butt. His 'Irish Federalism'
+is a thoughtful and able treatise that ought to be studied. The speeches
+in Parliament, from 1874 to 1885, on this subject, collected in Hansard,
+deserve attention; notably the violent attacks on this policy made during
+many years by Mr. Gladstone. Hansard, too, should be perused, after that
+statesman became a convert to Home Rule, for the speeches on both sides,
+on the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893; some are of marked power and
+insight, though few rise to the heights of great constitutional
+principles. Mr. Gladstone's defence of his sudden change of front will be
+found in his 'History of an Idea,' a tract published soon after his defeat
+at the polls in 1886; he has endeavoured to vindicate his later Irish
+policy, in many pamphlets and speeches, in volumes collected by himself.
+For a masterly examination of his public conduct on matters relating to
+Ireland, and in some other passages in his career, I would especially
+direct the reader to the 'Memoirs of the late Lord Selborne,' part ii.
+vol. ii. pp. 339-360; Mr. Lecky's brilliant sketch in his 'Democracy and
+Liberty,' Cabinet Edition, Introduction, pp. 19-56, is a composition of
+rare excellence. Nothing is to be compared to Professor Dicey's 'England's
+Case against Home Rule,' and his 'Leap in the Dark,' for a thorough
+investigation, from the Unionist point of view, of the natural and the
+probable consequences of the Gladstonian Irish policy, and for an analysis
+of the two Home Rule Bills; few political works have attracted equal
+attention. There have also been many publications, on the side of the
+Union, of more or less merit; see 'Home Rule,' reprinted from the _Times_,
+containing several very able letters and papers; 'The Truth about Home
+Rule;' 'A Sketch of Unionist Policy;' and a number of articles in the
+_Edinburgh_ and the _Quarterly Review_, and in other reviews and
+magazines. The publications which advocate Home Rule have not been
+numerous; a reader may consult the 'Hand Book of Home Rule,' edited by Mr.
+Bryce, M.P.; 'Irish Members and English Gaolers,' and 'Combination and
+Coercion,' by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre; and some contributions to a few reviews
+and other serials.
+
+The 'Present Question' of the Irish land, and of Irish landed relations,
+goes back to even remote antiquity, and is connected with the whole course
+of Irish history. The characteristics and peculiarities of tribal land
+tenure in Ireland, before the Anglo-Norman Conquest, have been admirably
+explained in Sir Henry Maine's 'Early History of Institutions,' a very
+valuable work. I may refer to an article on this book, from my pen, in the
+_Edinburgh Review_ of July, 1875. See, also, the 'Senchus Mor,' and the
+'Book of Aicile,' fragments of the Brehon Laws, well annotated by the late
+Professor Richey. The state of the Irish land, from the Anglo-Norman
+Conquest to the beginning of the Tudor period, has been fully illustrated
+in the 'Statute of Kilkenny,' edited by James Hardiman, whose learned
+commentary is useful and important; in the 'Discovery' of Sir John Davies;
+in Spenser's 'View of the State of Ireland;' in the 'O'Conors of
+Connaught,' by the O'Conor Don; in Hallam's 'Constitutional History,' vol.
+iii. chapter on Ireland; and in Professor Richey's 'Lectures.' I have
+glanced at the state of Irish land tenure during the tribal and the feudal
+ages, in the introductory chapters to my 'Ireland, 1494-1868,' in the
+'Cambridge Historical Series.' The most complete account, perhaps, of the
+confiscations of the Irish land, from the reign of Henry VIII. to that of
+Charles I., will be found in the 'Carew Papers,' edited by J. S. Brewer
+and William Bullen; valuable information abounds in the 'State Papers
+relating to the reign of Henry VIII.,' edited by Hans Claude Hamilton; in
+'The Life of Sir John Perrott and his Letters;' in the 'Earls of Kildare,'
+edited by the Marquis of Kildare; in the 'State Papers,' edited by
+Hamilton, _ante_, 'relating to the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and
+Elizabeth;' in the 'Annals of the Four Masters;' and see Davies and
+Spenser, _ante_. Several modern writers have treated this subject in their
+narratives of Irish history; Froude's 'History of England,' vol. ii. ch.
+viii.; vol. iv. ch. xix.; vol. v. ch. xxviii.; vol. viii. chs. vii.-xi.;
+vol. x. ch. xxiv.; vol. xi. ch. xxvii., may be consulted; but a reader
+should be put on his guard against the brilliant but partisan historian.
+There is a valuable chapter also, in a very different work, Mr. Lecky's
+'History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' vol. ii. ch. vi. pp. 92
+_seqq._; and a great deal may be learned from the 'O'Conors of Connaught,'
+and Richey's 'Lectures,' _ante_; and especially from an 'Historical
+Account of the Plantation of Ulster,' by the Rev. George Hill, and from
+Sigerson's 'History of Irish Land Tenure.' In the momentous period of
+confiscation, from the beginning of the reign of Charles I. to that of
+William III., a reader should study 'Strafford's Letters;' Carte's 'Life
+of Ormond;' Lord Clanricarde's 'Memoirs;' the 'Letters of Cromwell,'
+edited by Carlyle; the 'Acts of Settlement and Explanation;' the 'Articles
+of the Treaty of Limerick;' Sir William Petty's 'Political Anatomy of
+Ireland;' 'Macariæ Excidium;' and the Abbe MacGeoghegan's 'History of
+Ireland.' The modern authorities on this period are numerous and some of
+great value; see Gardiner's 'History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate'
+(the Irish chapters), notably vol. iii. ch. xliv.; 'The Cromwellian
+Settlement of Ireland,' by John P. Prendergast; 'The Life of Sir William
+Petty,' by Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice, with an article by me in the
+_Edinburgh Review_ of July, 1895; 'The Patriot Parliament,' by Thomas
+Davis; Macaulay's 'History of England' (the Irish chapters), vol. iv. ch.
+xxii.; vol. v. ch. xiv.-xvi.; vol. vi. ch. xvii.; and Mr. Lecky's
+'History,' _ante_, vol. ii. ch. ix. Many instructive and philosophic
+passages on all these confiscations and their results, will be found
+scattered among the writings of Burke; they are admirable.
+
+The era of violent confiscation closed with the reign of William III.; the
+modern history of the Irish land system begins from this period. For an
+account of the penal code, as it affected Irish landed relations,
+reference may be made to Vincent Scully, 'On the Penal Laws;' to Howard's
+'Popery Cases;' and especially to Burke's 'Tracts on the Popery Laws.'
+Much, too, can be gathered from Curry's 'State of the Irish Catholics;'
+from Primate Boulter's and Archbishop Synge's 'Letters;' from the writings
+on Ireland of Swift and Berkeley; and from various passages in the 'Works
+and Correspondence of Burke.' For the state of the Irish land from the
+beginning of the reign of George III. to the Rebellion of 1798, study the
+celebrated 'Tour' of Arthur Young, written in 1776-78; Crumpe's 'Essay;'
+an admirable sketch by Mr. Lecky in his 'History,' _ante_, vol. vii. ch.
+xxvii.; and Sir George Lewis on 'Irish Disturbances,' a book which gives
+an account of the rise and progress of the Whiteboy movement, and carries
+the narrative down to 1836. Froude has illustrated this subject very
+skilfully in his 'Two Chiefs of Dunboy;' but his account, in his 'The
+English in Ireland,' is very inaccurate and one-sided. The nature of Irish
+landed relations during the troubled period before the Union is fully
+explained in many passages of Mr. Lecky's 'History,' _ante_, vols. vii.
+and viii.; and the reader should peruse Lord Clare's speech in the Irish
+House of Lords during the debates on the Union. From the Union to the
+present time, the authorities on the Irish land system are very numerous;
+it is not easy to make compendious selection. For the period of the Great
+War, Edward Wakefield's 'Account of Ireland' is valuable, and so is, for
+the immediately subsequent period, the evidence on the state of Ireland
+taken by a Committee of the House of Commons in 1825. The nature and the
+characteristics of the Irish land system, in 1843-44, are fully explained
+and commented upon in the well-known Report of the Devon Commission, and
+the voluminous evidence; and for the revolution wrought in the Irish land
+by the Famine of 1845-47, see the 'Irish Crisis,' by Sir Charles
+Trevelyan, republished from the _Edinburgh Review_; and a 'History of the
+Great Irish Famine,' by the Rev. John O'Rorke. Much information, too, on
+the subject, as a whole, may be obtained from 'L'Irlande, Sociale,
+Politique, et Religieuse,' of Gustave de Beaumont; from 'Ireland from the
+Treaty of Limerick to 1851,' by John Mitchell; from parts of 'Two
+Centuries of Irish History,' edited by James Bryce, M.P.; from several
+'Reports' of the Loyal National Repeal Association; and from parts of Mr.
+Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,' and 'Irish Wrongs
+and English Remedies.'
+
+The Irish land question has given birth to a literature of its own in the
+last half-century; legislation on the Irish land system has been
+extraordinarily active. With respect to the first, reference may be made
+to 'Two Centuries of Irish History,' _ante_, and to Mr. Barry O'Brien's
+works, _ante_; to 'Emigration and the Tenure of Irish Land,' by Lord
+Dufferin; to John Stuart Mill's 'The Irish Land Question;' to 'The Irish
+People and the Irish Land,' by Butt; to Sir George Campbell's 'The Irish
+Land,' a very good little book; to Judge Longfield's essay on the Irish
+land in 'Systems of Land Tenure;' and to my own 'Letters on the Land
+Question of Ireland,' republished from the _Times_. I am happy to think
+that, on this subject, I have always 'pitched my Whiggery low;' my first
+essay was on the Encumbered Estates Act; when fresh from Oxford I
+condemned that scheme of confiscation as unequivocally as, in the present
+and other works, I have condemned Irish agrarian legislation since
+1880-81. Other books contain passages on the Irish land system that may be
+read with profit; see the 'Recollections and Suggestions' of Earl Russell;
+'Ireland in 1868,' by Gerald Fitzgibbon; 'Ireland,' by Lord Grey;
+'Journals, Conversations, and Essays relating to Ireland,' by Nassau
+Senior; and 'New Views on Ireland,' by Lord Russell of Killowen. As
+regards recent legislation on the Irish Land, from 1870 to 1896, the Acts
+passed by Parliament must of course be studied, and also the important
+debates reported in Hansard. Butt wrote a very able volume on the Land Act
+of 1870; I contributed a short treatise; an exhaustive and technical work
+of great value, on all the Irish Land Acts, has been produced by Messrs.
+Cherry and Wakely; this, with the Irish Reports, supplies ample
+professional, and even general, information. With respect to the
+administration of the Irish Land Acts, see the Report of the Committee of
+the House of Lords, and the evidence published in 1872; the Report of, and
+the evidence collected by, the Bessborough Commission of 1880-81; the
+Report of a Committee of the House of Lords on the working of the Land Act
+of 1881, published, with the evidence, in 1882; the Report, with the
+evidence, of the Cowper Commission, 1888-89; the Report, with the
+evidence, of the Morley Commission, 1894-1895; and, especially, the Report
+of Sir Edward Fry's Commission of 1897, with the important evidence it has
+put together. Mr. Lecky, in his 'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. ch. ii.,
+has criticised, almost as severely as I have done, recent Irish agrarian
+legislation; no serious defence of it has ever been made or attempted.
+
+To understand the real state of the financial relations between Great
+Britain and Ireland, it is necessary to go back to the times of the Union;
+those who resist the Irish demand avoid an appeal to history. The debates
+in the Irish Parliament in 1800 should be carefully studied, especially
+the speeches of Castlereagh, Grattan, and Foster. The Seventh Article of
+the Treaty of Union, set forth in this work, should also be diligently
+scanned and perused. See, too, the debates in the Imperial Parliament in
+1816; the resolutions passed by the House of Commons in that year; and the
+Act abolishing the separate Exchequer of Ireland. Reference, moreover,
+should be made to the evidence taken before General Dunne's Committee in
+1864, in which sophistry triumphed for the moment over truth. All these
+sources of information, however, are scanty and imperfect compared to the
+celebrated Report of the Childers Commission, with the valuable evidence
+annexed to it; this for the first time completely brings out the whole
+facts on the subject. The debates in Hansard on the financial claims of
+Ireland may also be looked at; but they are not of peculiar importance;
+the same remark applies to nearly all the articles in reviews, magazines,
+and journals, in which endeavours have been made to answer the Report. I
+may be allowed to say that I have some claim to have a distinct opinion in
+this matter; when still quite a boy I often heard my grand-uncle, the late
+Sir John Newport, one of the ablest and last of the Chancellors of the
+Irish Exchequer, condemn the financial treatment of Ireland from 1800
+onwards; many years afterwards I was intimately acquainted with several of
+the independent Irish gentlemen, survivors of the great school of Grattan,
+who protested against Mr. Gladstone's fiscal Irish measures from 1853 to a
+later date; Butt and Judge Longfield, both very able economists, fully
+concurred. With respect to local government and administration in Ireland,
+see Mr. Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,' vol. i.
+books iv. and v.; the Report of the Commissioners on Irish Corporate
+Reform issued in 1833-34, and the Irish Municipal Corporation Reform Act
+of 1840; the Irish Towns Commissioners Acts; a report made by Mr. W. P.
+O'Brien in 1878; a good treatise by Mr. Bailey published in 1888; and the
+recent Irish Local Government Act of 1898, with the debates in Hansard on
+this measure, should be perused. The authorities on Irish education of all
+kinds are numerous, and some valuable. Froude has glanced at the subject,
+with characteristic unfairness, in his 'The English in Ireland;' the
+refutation of Mr. Lecky, in his 'England in the Eighteenth Century,' is
+complete. A good description of education in Ireland, in all its branches,
+as it existed in 1812, will be found in Edward Wakefield's 'Account of
+Ireland,' vol. ii. ch. xxiv.; another in Mr. Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty Years
+of Concessions to Ireland,' vol. i. book i.; vol ii. book x.; the author
+brings the narrative down to 1881. As regards high education in Ireland,
+reference may be made to 'The History of the University of Dublin,' by the
+Rev. W. Stubbs; to 'The Constitutional History of the University of
+Dublin,' by D. C. Heron; to the Report of Archbishop Whateley's
+Commission, in 1853, on the University of Dublin; to Mr. Gladstone's Irish
+University Bill of 1873, and the able debates on the subject in Trinity
+College and the House of Commons; to Mr. Fawcett's Act of 1873; to a
+masterly pamphlet by Butt, on the whole question, published in 1875; and
+to the 'Irish University Question,' by Archbishop Walsh, with recent
+debates in Parliament on Irish University reform. For the nature,
+constitution, and working of the Queen's Colleges and the Queen's
+University, see the debates in Parliament when Peel introduced this
+policy; many Reports; the work of Archbishop Walsh, _ante_; and the Act
+creating the Royal University in Ireland may be examined. As regards
+primary and secondary education in Ireland, see the Reports of the
+Education Commissioners from 1810 to 1825; the Reports of the National
+Education Board; the Reports of the Kildare, Rosse, and Powis
+Commissions, noticed in this work; and Mr. Godkin's 'Education in
+Ireland.' An excellent synopsis of the subject, as a whole, will be found
+in 'The Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland,' by Mr. Graham
+Balfour.
+
+WILLIAM O'CONNOR MORRIS.
+
+  GARTNAMONA, TULLAMORE,
+    _14th May, 1901_.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+                                                                     PAGES
+
+  CHAPTER I
+
+  IRELAND IN 1901
+
+    Ireland has passed through a revolution in the Victorian
+    age--Material progress--Dublin--Belfast--Improvement in
+    Catholic places of worship and in the habitations of the
+    people--State of the Irish community--Symptoms of
+    retrogression--Decline of agriculture--The progress of Ireland
+    Ireland much less than that of England and Scotland, and
+    why--State of the Irish land system--Recent legislation has
+    done some good, but it has been unjust, and has had pernicious
+    effects--Ireland divided into three peoples--Notwithstanding
+    great reforms Catholic Ireland is still, in the main,
+    disaffected--Presbyterian Ireland--Cry for the confiscation of
+    the Irish land--Protestant Ireland--Fall of its old
+    ascendency--Discontent among the landed gentry--Nature of the
+    government of Ireland by the Imperial Parliament--Its merits
+    and defects--Attitude of the greater part of Ireland towards
+    it--The administration of Irish affairs--The bureaucracy of
+    the Castle--The Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic Irish
+    Churches--The administration of justice in Ireland--Irish
+    literature and public opinion--General survey of the present
+    state of Ireland--Irish policy of Lord Salisbury's
+    Ministry--'Present Irish Questions' to be discussed in this
+    work                                                              1-38
+
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+  THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE
+
+    The question of Home Rule not extinct--The reasons--Butt's
+    scheme of Home Rule--It is denounced and ridiculed by Mr.
+    Gladstone, and defeated in the House of Commons--Death of
+    Butt--The Home Rule movement becomes allied with a foreign
+    conspiracy--Davitt and Parnell--The Land League--Mr.
+    Gladstone's surrender to it--The movement makes no progress
+    in the Parliament of 1880-85--The General Election of
+    1885--Mr. Gladstone suddenly adopts the policy of Home
+    Rule--The probable reasons--The Home Rule Bill of 1886--Its
+    nature and tendencies--Decisive objections to the
+    measure--It is rejected at the General Election of 1886,
+    having been previously rejected in the House of Commons--
+    Policy and conduct of Mr. Gladstone--The Home Rule movement
+    makes some progress in England, and why--The Home Rule Bill
+    of 1893--It is much worse than that of 1886--The reasons--It
+    is rejected by the House of Lords--Home Rule under different
+    forms--The Union must be maintained--Proposal that Parliament
+    should occasionally sit in Dublin--The over-representation
+    of Ireland should be redressed                                   39-83
+
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+  THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND--SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE
+  LAND SYSTEM OF IRELAND TO THE YEAR 1870
+
+    Great importance in the history of Ireland of the conditions
+    of land tenure--The ancient Celtic land system and its
+    characteristics--The Norman conquest of Ireland--Norman
+    feudalism in the Irish land--The policy of Henry VII., and
+    especially of Henry VIII.--The era of the conquest and
+    confiscation of the Irish land--The possessions of the
+    O'Connors of Offaly wrested from them--Forfeiture of the
+    domains of Shane O'Neill, and of the Earl of Desmond--Attempts
+    at colonisation--All Ireland made shire land--The extinction
+    of the old Celtic land system--The Plantation of Ulster--
+    Progress of confiscation during the reigns of the two first
+    Stuarts--The Civil War--Immense confiscations made by
+    Cromwell--His scheme of colonisation a failure--The era of
+    confiscation closes after the battle of the Boyne and the fall
+    of Limerick--The Penal Code of Ireland--Its fatal effects on
+    the Irish land--Dismal period in Irish landed relations--
+    Gradual improvement--The period described by Arthur Young--
+    Evil traces of the past remain--Whiteboyism and agrarian
+    disorder--State of Irish landed relations up to the rebellion
+    of 1798, and after the Union--Over-population and the
+    results--Distress after the Peace--State of Irish landed
+    relations up to 1844--The Report of the Devon Commission--The
+    Famine and its effects on the Irish land--The Encumbered
+    Estates Acts--State of Irish landed relations from 1848 to
+    1868                                                            84-129
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+  THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (_continued_)--THE IRISH LAND
+  ACT OF 1870--THE LAND LEAGUE AND THE NATIONAL LEAGUE--THE LAND
+  ACT OF 1881--SUBSEQUENT LEGISLATION AS REGARDS THE LAND SYSTEM
+  OF IRELAND
+
+    State of landed relations in Ireland in 1869-70--Mr. Gladstone
+    Prime Minister--The Land Act of 1870--Its merits and defects--
+    A short period of prosperity in Ireland--Ominous symptoms--
+    Michael Davitt--The teaching of John Finton Lalor in 1848--The
+    'New Departure' in Fenianism arranged in America--Foundation
+    of the Land League--It was a foreign rebellious conspiracy,
+    with an agrarian side, under a constitutional mask--Parnell
+    the master spirit of the League--His visit to America and the
+    results--A short period of distress in Ireland--Conduct of the
+    Irish landlords--Progress of the Land League--Mr. Gladstone
+    again Prime Minister in 1880--The Compensation for Disturbance
+    Bill rejected by the House of Lords--Outburst of agrarian
+    crime, as the Land League increases in power--Rents at
+    Griffith's valuation--Boycotting--Frightful state of Ireland
+    in 1881--After a short attempt to repress it, Mr. Gladstone
+    surrenders to the Land League--The Land Act of 1881--Mr.
+    Gladstone breaks the pledges he had made in 1870--His promise
+    of compensating the Irish landlords--The Land Act of 1881 a
+    bad and unjust measure directly inconsistent with that of
+    1870--The 'No Rent Manifesto'--The Kilmainham Treaty--The
+    Phoenix Park tragedy--Coercion--Parnell founds the National
+    League, the successor of the Land League--Renewal of agitation
+    in 1886--Struggle with law and the Government--Subsequent
+    agrarian legislation for Ireland--This is really a concession
+    to agitation, for the benefit of Irish tenants, and to the
+    injury of Irish landlords                                      130-187
+
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+  THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (_continued_)--THE ADMINISTRATION
+  OF THE IRISH LAND ACTS
+
+    The administration of the Land Act of 1870 in the main
+    good--Difficulty about claims for tenants' improvements--The
+    administration of the Land Act of 1881, and of its
+    supplements--The Land Commission and its Sub-Commissions--
+    Allowances to be made for these tribunals--Principles which
+    the Land Commission should have adopted in fixing 'fair
+    rents'--The procedure and practice it ought to have
+    established--It made mistakes as to both--The nature of the
+    Sub-Commission Courts--This was objectionable in the highest
+    degree--These Courts have, however unconsciously, done grave
+    wrong to Irish landlords--Causes of this--Characteristics of
+    their proceedings--They disregarded the principles they
+    ought to have followed, and adopted faulty and erroneous
+    methods--Different illustrations of these grave mistakes--
+    The Land Commission and appeals as to 'fair rent'--Importance
+    of this subject--Faulty procedure of the Land Commission in
+    appeals--Valuers--The second Land Commission--Its procedure
+    worse than that of the first--Theory of occupation right--
+    This another wrong done to landlords--The Fry Commission and
+    its report--Confiscation of the property of Irish
+    landlords--The proofs of this--Apologies made for the Land
+    Commission--The administration of the Land Purchase Acts       188-229
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+  THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (_continued_)--PROPOSED REFORM
+  OF THE IRISH LAND SYSTEM
+
+    Retrospect of the present Irish land system--Position of the
+    Irish landlords--Position of the Irish tenant class--This
+    not as advantageous as might be supposed--The effects of the
+    land code on Irish agriculture injurious--The effects on the
+    general Irish community--Confiscation, violation of
+    contracts, shock given to credit, increased alienation of
+    classes, and demoralisation--The land system considered on
+    the side of ownership--'Voluntary purchase'--Mischief of
+    this policy--It sets up a false standard against rent, and
+    creates unjust distinctions between different classes of
+    tenants--The results it has produced already--An instance of
+    the system--The demand for the compulsory purchase of the
+    Irish land caused by 'voluntary purchase'--Compulsory
+    purchase has some hold on opinion, but is an impossible, and
+    would be a disgraceful and ruinous policy--It would ruin
+    Irish landlords as a class--Instances--It would ultimately
+    bring Ireland into the state in which she was before the
+    Great Famine--Proposed plan for the reform of Irish land
+    tenure--Questions as to the means of compensating Irish
+    landlords, a deeply wronged order of men                       230-270
+
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+
+  THE QUESTION OF THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN
+  AND IRELAND
+
+    The subject briefly considered--Financial position of
+    Ireland before 1782, and under Grattan's Parliament--Her
+    taxation and debt small before 1798--Ireland financially a
+    distinct country--At the Union, Pitt wished to 'assimilate
+    her in finance' with Great Britain, but this impossible, and
+    why--Ireland's contribution after the Union--This was
+    unjust, but it left her financially a distinct country--
+    Ireland made nearly bankrupt--The compromise of 1816--The
+    Irish Exchequer closed, and the Irish and British debts
+    consolidated--The object of the compromise was rather to
+    relieve Ireland from her burdens than to assimilate her in
+    finance with Great Britain--She still remained for many
+    years financially distinct from Great Britain, and is so
+    still to some extent--The conduct of Peel a striking proof
+    of this--Mr. Gladstone imposes the income tax on Ireland,
+    and her spirit duties are largely raised--Injustice of this
+    policy--The Committee of 1863-64--Ireland does not obtain
+    financial justice--The Report of the Childers Commission
+    made upon a reference by Mr. Gladstone following Mr.
+    Goschen--The Commission declares that Ireland has been
+    greatly overtaxed for many years--Evidence on which it has
+    founded this conclusion--Examination of arguments to the
+    contrary--Another Commission promised, but the promise not
+    fulfilled--Importance of settling this question                271-308
+
+
+  CHAPTER VIII
+
+  THE QUESTIONS OF IRISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND EDUCATION--OTHER
+  QUESTIONS--CONCLUSION
+
+    Irish county government--The grand jury system in the
+    eighteenth century--Its merits and defects--The grand jury
+    system in the nineteenth century, and especially since
+    1836--The Irish poor law system--Elected and _ex-officio_
+    guardians--The local government of cities and towns in
+    Ireland--Municipal institutions founded in Ireland by the
+    Norman kings--Why they did not prosper--Boroughs and
+    municipalities founded by James I. and the Stuarts--Their
+    condition in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries--The
+    Municipal Reform Act of 1840--The Towns Commissioners
+    Acts--Attempts to reform the municipal system of local
+    government in Ireland--The Local Government of Ireland Act,
+    1898--Complete change in Irish local government--The County
+    Councils--The County Borough Councils--The District, Rural,
+    and the Urban District Councils--Their functions, rights,
+    and duties--All these bodies placed on a democratic basis--
+    Attitude of the County Councils in the southern provinces--
+    Education in Ireland--History of primary education--The
+    National system of education--The principles on which it is
+    founded--How it has worked, and what its results have
+    been--Secondary education in Ireland--Its history--Its
+    present condition very imperfect--The Intermediate
+    Education Act--University education in Ireland--Its
+    history--Trinity College--The Queen's Colleges and the
+    Queen's University founded by Peel--Their comparative
+    failure--Mr. Gladstone's Bill to reform University education
+    in Ireland--Its glaring errors and failures--Trinity College
+    thrown open in 1873--The Royal University founded in 1879--
+    Present state of University education in Ireland--The true
+    principles of reform--Other Irish questions--Conclusion        309-360
+
+  APPENDIX        361-428
+
+  INDEX            429
+
+
+
+
+Present Irish Questions
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+IRELAND IN 1901
+
+    Ireland has passed through a revolution in the Victorian age--Material
+    progress--Dublin--Belfast--Improvement in Catholic places of worship
+    and in the habitations of the people--State of the Irish
+    community--Symptoms of retrogression--Decline of agriculture--The
+    progress of Ireland much less than that of England and Scotland, and
+    why--State of the Irish land system--Recent legislation has done some
+    good, but it has been unjust, and has had pernicious effects--Ireland
+    divided into three peoples--Notwithstanding great reforms Catholic
+    Ireland is still, in the main, disaffected--Presbyterian Ireland--Cry
+    for the confiscation of the Irish land--Protestant Ireland--Fall of
+    its old ascendency--Discontent among the landed gentry--Nature of the
+    government of Ireland by the Imperial Parliament--Its merits and
+    defects--Attitude of the greater part of Ireland towards it--The
+    administration of Irish affairs--The bureaucracy of the Castle--The
+    Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic Irish Churches--The
+    administration of justice in Ireland--Irish literature and public
+    opinion--General survey of the present state of Ireland--Irish policy
+    of Lord Salisbury's ministry--'Present Irish Questions' to be
+    discussed in this work.
+
+
+To understand thoroughly the Ireland of the present day, it is necessary
+to have studied her history in the past. Nevertheless, if we go back to a
+comparatively recent period, say to the beginning of the reign of
+Victoria, we can obtain a reasonably clear idea of her existing
+condition. A revolution has passed over her in this space of time almost
+as complete as the revolution which has transformed France; the results
+have not yet been fully developed, but in nearly all respects they have
+been immense. The community has, for the most part, made material
+progress; but this has been far from great or decisive; it has been
+interrupted by seasons of distress, one culminating in a dire catastrophe,
+and has been retarded by many causes of trouble. Taking the external
+aspect of Ireland first, Dublin has certainly advanced in the last sixty
+years; the capital has been surrounded by fine and increasing suburbs; the
+squares, the streets, the shops have improved; above all, though much
+remains yet to be done, the contrast between the dwellings of the rich and
+the poor is much less painful than it was within living memory. No city,
+however, has made such progress as Belfast: its population, which, in
+1841, was not more than 75,000 souls, was, in 1891, upwards of 255,000;[1]
+its opulence has probably grown tenfold; it is the centre of the great
+manufacture of Ulster; its building-yards are renowned for its magnificent
+ships; its estuary is crowded with the thronging fleets of commerce. The
+towns dependent on it, too, and the whole adjoining region, are
+flourishing from the great trade in linen, which has been aggregated
+within a comparatively small space; indeed, this prosperity has extended
+over all the north-east of Ireland, and Londonderry has long been a
+thriving seaport. Few of the towns of the rest of Ulster and of the
+southern provinces have improved; but signs of augmented wealth appear in
+other directions; in this respect they are striking in the extreme. The
+places of worship and the religious houses of the Catholic Church of
+Ireland have been transformed; the mean 'chapels' of the past have largely
+disappeared; most parishes have a suitable church; fine cathedrals
+dominate many towns; we often admire monasteries and convents in
+architectural splendour. The most remarkable phenomenon, however, of this
+description is the great and fortunate change which has taken place in the
+habitations of the community throughout the country. The dense and
+wretched hovels which, sixty years ago, barely sheltered the millions of
+Irish indigence, if still too frequent, have been, for the most part,
+effaced; the houses of the better class have greatly increased in numbers,
+though the population has enormously declined.[2] And the face of the
+landscape in most counties bears witness, on the whole, to a still
+perceptible progress. The chief industry of Ireland, indeed, as I shall
+show afterwards, has certainly retrograded within the last twenty years;
+her agricultural area and resources have much diminished. The advance,
+too, which, from about 1853 to 1876, was manifest and rapid in most of her
+rural districts, has been, to a considerable extent, checked; capital has,
+for some time, been avoiding her soil. But if the process was stern, nay,
+appalling, the land has, within the last half century, been thrown open to
+husbandry, infinitely better and more fruitful than had existed before;
+the exertions which were made, for a long space of time, to improve
+cultivation have left far-spreading traces; we still behold the beneficent
+results. The land over the greater part of its surface is not 'puckered
+up' in thousands of squalid patches, the holdings of masses of cottar
+paupers; it has been made more available for real farming; and it has been
+largely drained, enclosed, and covered with woodland--at least, up to a
+recent period.
+
+The material condition of the Irish community has, also, improved since
+the late Queen ascended the throne. This, no doubt, is to be largely
+ascribed to the effects of the great Famine of 1845-47, and of the immense
+emigration that followed in its train. The resources of Ireland, before
+that calamity, were unable to support, in anything like comfort, the
+teeming multitudes crowded on her soil; an official report, made in 1838,
+proved that two millions and a half of the poor in Ireland were for months
+in the year on the brink of starvation; this huge mass of indigence, which
+forced up rent, beat down wages, and was most injurious to good husbandry,
+was almost incompatible with real social progress. The great and
+continuing exodus of the Irish race, which has gone on for more than half
+a century, has not been without untoward results; but it has relieved the
+country from a destructive incubus; and this has certainly wrought a
+beneficent change, though the population has declined from about eight
+millions in 1837 to about four and a half millions in 1895.[3] Ireland,
+indeed, is still, mainly, a poor country--in some districts she is
+exceedingly poor; but the disappearance of overwhelmingly redundant
+millions has enabled her to maintain the millions that have remained much
+better than of old, and has distinctly raised the standard of living among
+all the humbler classes. The wages of agricultural labour, seldom more
+than six or seven shillings a week before the Famine, and then paid in
+potatoes by a vile truck system, have risen to ten and even twelve
+shillings, usually paid in cash; and they have not fallen, though Irish
+agriculture is very far from prosperous. The wages of the higher kinds of
+labour have also greatly increased; this is apparent in nearly all trades,
+and is especially apparent in the trades of Ulster. At the same time, the
+potato has long ceased to be the sole food of the poor; their dwellings,
+though still too often mean and bad, are infinitely better than they once
+were; their attire, and even their appearance, has greatly improved. I do
+not think, indeed, that O'Connell's description of the peasantry of
+Munster in 1825 could now be fairly applied to even the worst parts of
+Ireland, the impoverished tracts on the seacoast of Connaught: 'They have
+no clothes to change, they have none but what they wear at the moment....
+Their food consists of potatoes and water during the greater part of the
+year; potatoes and sour milk during another portion; they use some salt
+with their potatoes when they have nothing but water.'[4] There is
+evidence, also, that, even of late years, the wealth of Ireland has, in
+some measure, increased, especially in the middle and lower middle
+classes. The landed gentry, indeed, owing partly to the effects of Free
+Trade, and partly to those of legislation I shall describe afterwards,
+have been impoverished in many instances, and in many ruined; and the
+Irish tenant farmer, if gorged by the spoil of his landlord, has not
+gained all that an agrarian revolution was expected to give him. But the
+commerce of Ireland has made progress, within the last two decades, if
+this has not been by any means great; and though the capital she holds in
+the best securities has perceptibly diminished of late years, there has
+been a very large increase in most kinds of other investments.[5]
+
+This picture of Ireland, however, has dark features; her welfare has been,
+at best, partial; considerable deductions must be made from it. The
+progress of the capital, as has been the case in London, is largely to be
+ascribed to the depletion of many country districts, a change that has
+been going on for a long period, and has been accelerated by the decline
+of the landed gentry in wealth. The enormous advance of Belfast, and of
+the adjoining neighbourhood, has been, to a great extent, caused by the
+concentration of the linen manufacture within a small area; the hand-loom
+has disappeared from Ireland; this has been injurious to many petty towns
+and villages. The population and the trade of nearly all the chief towns
+in the southern provinces have diminished; Cork, with its immense natural
+advantages, has not prospered; Limerick and, notably, Galway are in decay;
+most of the inland towns show few signs of improvement; the outskirts of
+almost all are defaced by lines of ruined hovels, the wrecks of abodes a
+dwindling tale of indwellers has left. Many of these urban centres were,
+sixty years ago, seats of manufactures and of other industries, which, to
+a certain extent, were flourishing; but these sources of wealth have, for
+the most part, been dried up; they have been blotted out by the gigantic
+manufactures of England and Scotland poured into Ireland, everywhere,
+within a few hours, by steam. The collapse, indeed, of Irish manufactures
+in the last half century has been striking and mournful; 696,000 persons
+were employed in textile and dyeing industries in 1841; in 1881 there were
+only 130,000; and though the growth of machinery may in part account for
+this difference, it assuredly cannot fully explain it.[6] The same remark
+applies to Irish fishing industry; the small craft which once swarmed
+along the coast, and, rearing a breed of hardy mariners, gathered in the
+prolific harvests of the sea, have been vanishing year after year; in
+1867, 9332 boats, and 38,444 men and boys were engaged in this calling;
+the numbers were 5646 and 21,940 in 1891.[7] Turning to the face of the
+country, agriculture, we have seen, has improved, if we look back to the
+period before the Famine; but it is still centuries behind that of England
+and Scotland, and of late years it has markedly declined. It is not only
+that the prices of agricultural produce are much less than they were, in
+the last generation, and that its total value has fallen from £97,885,000
+in 1851-55, to £88,955,000 in 1889-93.[8] The agricultural area of Ireland
+has diminished from 1879 to 1899 by rather more than 400,000 acres;[9] and
+it is absolutely certain that within these decreasing limits, as I shall
+point out in subsequent chapters, agriculture has made little or no
+progress, and in some districts has distinctly become worse; we see the
+results of the vicious legislation of the last twenty years in
+deteriorated farms, in hundreds of cases, in a most injurious neglect of
+arterial drainage, and in the destruction of thousands of acres of
+woodland. And the ruin which has overtaken many of the landed gentry has
+been made only too manifest in the desolate aspect of scores of country
+seats, once happy homes, that now know their owners no more.
+
+It must be borne in mind, too, as we examine the present state of Ireland,
+that if, on the whole, she has made some progress, she is still, as I have
+said, a poor country, and that a considerable part of Connaught, her
+western province, has, for years, been in so poor a condition, that the
+Government of late has laudably made a great effort to raise it out of the
+depths of indigence. Other considerations, moreover, must be taken into
+account, if we would form a just conclusion as to the material position
+of Ireland, and, especially, as to her material prospects. The reduction
+of her population, up to a certain point, was an essential condition of
+her social progress; but that limit appears to have been far surpassed;
+this continuous decline, during more than half a century, has become an
+ominous symptom. More than 3,700,000 of souls have emigrated from Ireland
+since 1851;[10] and this number does not include the masses which fled
+from the catastrophe of 1845-47. This immense drain on the life of a
+nation has, for years, had a pernicious effect; in large parts of the
+country labourers have become so scarce that it is often difficult to save
+the harvest, which should be quickly gathered in, in a wet climate; and
+hands are wanting to industry in many places. Emigration, too, has taken
+away the best part of the people, men and women in the flower of
+existence; the reproductive power of the community has, accordingly,
+declined; the birth-rate of Ireland is less than it was; infirmity,
+disease, and, notably, insanity have increased; the population of the
+towns is seldom active and thriving.[11] At the same time, the taxation of
+Ireland has become many degrees more excessive in the last sixty years;
+the local rates have advanced from about £1,000,000 to nearly £4,000,000;
+the general taxation has been well-nigh doubled; and a tribunal of the
+very highest authority has recently declared that Ireland is immensely
+overtaxed, and has been for upwards of forty years. Nor can there be a
+real question but that large interests connected with the land have
+suffered greatly in the period that has now extended from 1878-79. It is
+unnecessary to refer to the condition of the landed gentry; I shall notice
+it at some length afterwards; but, much as the Irish people dislike the
+Poor-law, pauperism has distinctly increased during the last ten years,
+though the population has fallen off in numbers, and the charge of
+pauperism shows a corresponding increase.[12] The Income Tax returns, too,
+as regards the land, are of sinister omen; those under Schedule A have
+greatly diminished since 1890; and there is a considerable decline of
+property in the Funds.[13] As to the argument that the Tenant Right of the
+Irish farmer has risen in value, and that this proves Irish agriculture to
+be in a prosperous state, this is a complete, nay, a grotesque, fallacy.
+The rise in the value of Tenant Right is simply one of the many signs that
+a huge confiscation has taken place in the Irish land.
+
+If Ireland, therefore, has made material progress, this has been slow,
+partial, and with large drawbacks; such as it is, it must be mainly
+ascribed to the results of the Famine, which liberated the soil from a
+destructive burden. The whole country, it has truly been said, has still
+too much the look of a 'great neglected estate,' requiring development in
+most of its parts; large sections of the population are poor, feeble in
+health, and backward. Any advance, moreover, which Ireland has made in
+well being, since 1837-38, is as nothing compared with the extraordinary
+growth of the prosperity of England and Scotland, within the same period.
+True-hearted Irishmen grieve as they pass from the lesser to the greater
+island, and contrast the husbandry of Galway and Mayo with that of the
+Lothians and Kent; as they gaze on the Shannon, with scarcely a sail on
+its waters, and the Clyde teeming with its fleets of commerce; above all,
+as they turn from the decaying towns of their own country to such centres
+of wealth and of gigantic trade, as some even of the provincial cities of
+Britain, not to speak of the mighty world of London. The causes, indeed,
+of this contrast may be easily found; the mineral resources of Ireland are
+scanty; her commerce and manufactures are small; she is essentially an
+agricultural land, which has lost much from the effects of Free Trade; she
+has suffered greatly from misgovernment, agitation, and social disorder;
+all this has kept her back in the national race. The mineral products, on
+the other hand, of England and Scotland are immense, and of the first
+importance in an age of invention; they have decisively contributed to the
+huge development of the opulence and the trade of Great Britain; the
+policy of Free Trade, carried out for years, has had marvellous results in
+the same direction; if British agriculture is not progressing, British
+commerce and manufactures are still supreme; and Great Britain has been
+for ages a law-abiding land, in which order has been happily combined with
+liberty. These considerations fully explain the wide and ever-increasing
+distinction between Ireland and England and Scotland, only too manifest;
+they have been amply verified by unerring statistics. Two figures may
+suffice for a general reader; the resources of Ireland were estimated, a
+few years ago, at a sum of about four hundred millions sterling, that of
+Great Britain at not less than ten thousand millions.[14]
+
+The social structure of Ireland springs from the soil; it is most apparent
+in the relations that have been formed in the land. I shall dwell, at some
+length, in other chapters of this work, on the history and the
+characteristics of the Irish land system, and on the revolution through
+which it has passed; I can here only briefly glance at the subject. That
+system, at the beginning of the late reign, still represented, in many
+respects, the features it had borne in the eighteenth century, though
+these had been, in a great degree, modified. The land, over four-fifths of
+its surface, was still in the ownership of a small class of men, divided
+in race and faith from its occupants; the conquests and confiscations
+which had drawn deep lines of distinction between the Anglo-Protestant
+landlord and the Catholic and even the Presbyterian peasant, had still
+left their indelible traces, if these had been, to a considerable extent,
+effaced. Absenteeism had increased since the Union, though absentee
+estates were showing signs of improvement; middleman tenures, with their
+manifold and complex mischiefs, were disappearing, but were still
+numerous; various causes, to operate for many years, were diminishing the
+security of the peasants' tenure. The power of the dominant landlord class
+was declining; it was being weakened by the Castle bureaucracy, and by the
+emancipation of Catholic Ireland; but it was still nearly supreme in
+landed relations; this class was all but the absolute lords of the tillers
+of the soil. It is untrue that it was oppressive and unjust as a rule; but
+some of its members abused their excessive power; it had too much in
+common with an exclusive caste; and a whole train of economic causes were
+aggravating the evils of a land system from its origin placed on unsound
+foundations. Agriculture was advancing in not a few counties; many of the
+landed gentry were improving men, who were making a beginning in the
+scientific farming, which, before long, was to be more fully developed.
+But the population, we have seen, had increased by millions Ireland could
+not support; over whole districts, especially in Munster and Connaught,
+the land had been split up into petty holdings, the seats of a huge
+multitude of human misery. Rents, therefore, were being unnaturally forced
+up, and the wages of labour unnaturally cut down; the land system was
+disorganised, and filled with dangerous elements. The worst vice of the
+system, however, has yet to be noticed; from different causes which I
+shall point out afterwards, the occupiers of the soil in Ireland had, as a
+general rule, made even the permanent improvements on their farms, and
+large sums had repeatedly been paid on the transfer of these; they had
+thus gradually acquired concurrent rights in the land, in tens of
+thousands of instances; and yet these were outside the pale of the law,
+and could be annihilated by eviction, or even the raising of rent. These
+rights had the support, in parts of Ulster, of a long-established custom,
+and were usually respected in the southern provinces; but they ought long
+before to have had full legal protection; and they were sometimes violated
+or disregarded by unscrupulous landlords. The results were seen in the
+White Boy and the agrarian disorders which had disturbed Ireland for more
+than a century, and even ran back to the confiscations of the past.
+
+This land system, essentially bad as it was, marked by evil distinctions
+and pregnant with wrong, scarcely attracted the attention of British
+statesmen, until nearly the middle of the nineteenth century. Peel was the
+first minister who, even dimly, perceived its vices; he appointed a
+Commission to report on the subject. The labours of this body were, in
+part, laudable; but the Commissioners, filled with prejudice as to the
+excellence of British land tenure, and without experience of that of
+Ireland, made a capital mistake in the suggestions they offered. Instead
+of recommending that the concurrent rights of the Irish tenant in the
+land, often equivalent to a real joint ownership, should receive, as was
+but just, the sanction of law, they proposed to restrict these in many
+ways; they put forward a plan of 'compensation,' as they called it, that
+was worse than useless. Legislation to this effect was withdrawn from
+Parliament; the terrible visitation of 1845-47 had ere long shattered the
+Irish land system, bringing ruin on hundreds of the landed gentry, making
+thousands of farmers of the better classes bankrupt, forcing the petty
+holders of the land--the cottar population, as it was named--to fly from
+the country in despairing multitudes. The land was largely set free from a
+dense mass of wretchedness; it was the general belief of the public men of
+the day, that what was most required, at this conjuncture, was to attract
+men of capital to it to do it justice, and to get rid, as quickly as
+possible, of the large body of Irish landlords, who, even before deeply
+involved in debt, had been made hopelessly insolvent by recent events. The
+Encumbered Estates Act became law, with scarcely an opposing protest; it
+was to 'regenerate Ireland,' its authors proclaimed; its results were to
+develop a bad class of landlords, to annihilate the rights of the Irish
+peasant wholesale, and to cause an iniquitous confiscation on an enormous
+scale. The Irish Land Question, as was the phrase, was now raised once
+more; in 1852 the occupiers of the Irish soil set on foot an agitation to
+vindicate their rights, destroyed or endangered by what had lately
+occurred; the Government of Lord Derby lent a favourable ear; but it was
+defeated in the House of Commons by intrigue; the land system remained in
+the state in which it had been left; no real attempt to improve it was
+made. A series of years followed in which Ireland made distinct progress,
+and her agriculture advanced; it became a fixed idea with British
+statesmen, that there was nothing radically bad in Irish land tenure, and
+that its defects would gradually disappear; the grievances of the Irish
+peasant were ignored; his claims to what was now known as his Tenant
+Right, urged feebly by his advocates, were voted down in Parliament; and a
+general belief prevailed that what Ireland most needed was a still further
+and steady removal of what was deemed 'her surplus population' from her
+soil.
+
+As has so often happened in the affairs of Ireland, her real condition at
+this period was not understood; and the reform in her land system, which
+had become essential, was indefinitely delayed with disastrous results.
+Meanwhile, though things were serene on the surface, the inherent vices in
+Irish landed relations were not really changed, and, in some respects,
+were made worse. The Fenian troubles and outbreak of 1865-67 showed how
+much there was still peccant in the state of Ireland; Mr. Gladstone
+addressed himself, in 1870, to the task of effecting a reform in her land
+system. The measure he carried through Parliament was bold, and, in the
+main, statesmanlike; but it was injured by the predilection for English
+land tenure its author avowed, a general misconception of British
+statesmen; it was not without marked and even grave defects; and though
+unquestionably it did real good, it did not satisfy the tenant class--at
+least, the men who had become its leaders. In a few years the frightful
+period of the Land League had begun; a Reign of Terror prevailed in about
+a third part of Ireland, accompanied by far-spreading and atrocious crime.
+The movement was really a huge conspiracy, formed in America to overthrow
+British rule in Ireland; but Mr. Gladstone, now minister for the second
+time, resolved to deal with it only on its agrarian side; he wrought a
+complete revolution in the Irish land system, on principles wholly
+different from those of his measure of 1870. This legislation was prepared
+without reflection; it passed through Parliament when that assembly was
+almost in a state of panic; its author professed that his only object was
+to secure the occupier of the Irish soil in his legitimate rights; but the
+methods he adopted to attain this end have never been heard of in modern
+times, and have never been employed before in civilised lands. The
+principle of the mediæval statutes, which endeavoured to fix the price of
+bread, and the rate of wages, was extended to the Irish land system; rents
+were to be adjusted through the agency of the State, by tribunals to which
+no parallel can be found; tenants' improvements were declared exempted
+from rent; and a mode of land tenure, hitherto condemned by Mr. Gladstone,
+and known as the 'theory of the Three F's,' was applied to the great
+majority of Irish tenancies, in an exaggerated, crude, and dangerous form.
+This legislation, revolutionary and socialistic alike, has been given more
+ample scope in the last twenty years; it probably affects four-fifths of
+the rented lands in Ireland; it has fashioned the type of land tenure over
+nearly all the country. The successors of Mr. Gladstone, who, indeed, had
+boasted that it set the doctrines of Adam Smith at nought, were not blind
+to the evils it soon developed; but it is questionable if their attempts
+to mitigate these, and to place the Irish land system on a better basis,
+have not been at least as open to censure. With the ignorance of Irish
+land tenure common in British statesmen, they proclaimed, what assuredly
+was not the fact, that Mr. Gladstone had 'created a dual ownership' in the
+Irish land, and that, in order to get rid of this intolerable thing, it
+was necessary, in accord with English ideas, to bring Ireland, as far as
+possible, under 'single ownership,' and to make the occupiers of the Irish
+soil, to a large extent, its owners. The system of 'Land Purchase' in
+Ireland, begun in 1870, was freed from the limitations which made it safe
+and just, and widely enlarged under new conditions; Irish tenants were
+encouraged to acquire the fee in their holdings, by a process never
+contemplated before; instead of having to pay any part of the price, the
+State advanced them the whole purchase moneys, repayable by an annual
+charge much less than any true rent. About a tenth part of the tenant
+class of Ireland have become owners of their farms by these means; the
+transaction has been in no sense a 'purchase;' though given the name, it
+is really the exact opposite.
+
+I shall describe all this legislation, in detail, afterwards, and shall
+indicate its far-reaching effects; here I can only take a cursory survey.
+The attempts that have been made to reform the Irish land system, in the
+last sixty years, have been, with scarcely an exception, failures; the
+Irish land, it has truly been said, is strewn with the wrecks of repeated
+errors. The Land Act of 1870 was, on the whole, a well-conceived measure;
+but the recommendations made by the Devon Commission, the iniquitous and
+destructive Encumbered Estates Act, the agrarian revolution wrought by Mr.
+Gladstone, and the 'Land Purchase' Acts, as they are falsely called, have
+been monuments of want of insight and knowledge. And, what is even worse,
+legislation on the Irish land has, over and over again, been too long
+delayed, and has been inconsistent, fitful, founded on no principle; the
+results have been in a high degree disastrous. Reforms that would have
+been gladly welcomed if made years before, have been treated with contempt
+when made too late; and reforms have more than once been hasty
+experiments, carried out under the stress of menacing troubles. The fable
+of the Sibylline books has been realised in this matter; and not a few of
+the efforts to improve Irish land tenures have been little better than
+sudden leaps in the dark. As to recent legislation in this province, its
+consequences and tendencies have become manifest. That it has effected
+some good may be admitted; it has removed grievances that no doubt
+existed; it has made the government of Ireland more easy for the time; it
+has allayed discontent for a moment; but the good is far outweighed by
+the evil. It is not only that the nostrum of the 'Three F's,' and the
+adjustment of rent by the intervention of the State, have cut down the
+rental of Ireland to an extent that cannot be justified, and have
+transferred to the occupier of the Irish soil a large part of what was the
+owner's property by a process of confiscation concealed, but certain. It
+is not only that the status of the Irish landlord has been iniquitously
+transformed to his extreme injury, and that the status of the Irish tenant
+has been changed to his extreme advantage, in both instances without a
+pretence to right. The Irish land system has been reduced to an almost
+hopeless state; it presents some of the worst features of the past; its
+conditions discourage the improvement of the land, promote its
+deterioration in many ways, and banish capital away from it; and its plain
+tendency has been to make agriculture decline. And the revolution, which
+has been thus accomplished, has aggravated the divisions of classes in
+Ireland, and has been attended with ruinous litigation on a huge scale;
+and it has produced demoralisation far-reaching and profound, a sense of
+insecurity in all landed relations, and a far too general disregard of the
+respect due to contract. The policy, too, of so-called 'Land Purchase' has
+been accompanied with a train of evils on the increase. It is not
+creating, as its authors fondly hoped, a class of loyal and thriving
+freeholders; it is not even creating a body of industrious and improving
+farmers. It is, on the contrary, developing, in some of its parts, the bad
+land system of the eighteenth century; it has proved injurious to
+agriculture in one important respect. Above all, from the very nature of
+the case, it has drawn harsh, nay, unjust, distinctions between the landed
+classes, which necessarily have been a cause of much discontent; and it
+has inevitably provoked a demand for a universal confiscation of the Irish
+land even worse than any of those which have been the curse of Ireland.
+
+I pass from the material and general state of Ireland to that of the Irish
+community, in its different parts. That community is still divided, as it
+has been for ages, into three separate and distinct peoples, marked off
+from each other in race and faith; whatever 'Nationalist' leaders may
+assert, it is not, and has never been, in a real sense, a nation. The
+lines of demarcation between Catholic, Presbyterian, and Protestant
+Ireland are at least as clearly defined as they have always been; they
+have probably been widened by the troubles of late years, and by the
+legislation which has been a consequence. Catholic Ireland has a
+population of some three millions and a half of souls; it is in the main a
+Celtic race, but with a considerable admixture of other elements; it has
+passed through a revolution remarkable and immense. Sixty years ago, the
+worst parts of the Penal Code had long been things of the past; but the
+Irish Catholics had only recently thrown off the last remains of that
+thraldom, under O'Connell's guidance; and their emancipation had only been
+effected by a great and very threatening movement. They were still
+comparatively an alien and a subject people; they had not many owners of
+land; they were not numerous in the upper trading and the professional
+classes; education was greatly wanting among them; they were for the most
+part a backward and poor peasantry, almost serfs of landlords distinct in
+creed and in blood; and they formed the bulk of the teeming millions that
+vegetated on the soil in indigent misery. The Irish Catholics, too, had
+still many and real grievances; the tithe of the Established Church had
+long been an unjust burden on the petty husbandman; it had recently given
+rise to a frightful war of classes, and had only been commuted a short
+time; the Established Church itself was a moral wrong, felt acutely by the
+Irish priesthood at least. Catholic Ireland, besides, was deeply sunk in
+ignorance; the system of national education had only begun to flourish;
+and the Irish Catholic was still all but wholly excluded from county
+administration and municipal government. The worst of these grievances,
+however, was the state of the tenure of the land; this was especially
+harsh on the Catholic peasant; if oppression was not general or even
+common, he was too often subjected to excessive rent and unfair eviction.
+This order of things has all but completely passed away; the position of
+Catholic Ireland in the State has almost wholly been changed. Catholic
+emancipation has long been an accomplished fact; Irish Catholics and
+Protestants are equal before the law; and have really equal chances in
+fighting the battle of life. Though still not numerous, the Catholic
+owners of land have multiplied; the Irish Catholic middle classes have
+made a marked advance; they have grown in knowledge and increased in
+wealth; they have risen to a higher plane of existence. At the same time,
+the grievances of the past have nearly all been removed by law, often
+indeed very late, and by questionable means; but the Established Church
+has fallen from its high estate; education has been diffused through the
+Catholic masses; the Irish Catholics have obtained more than a just share
+in local government and administration of all kinds; their ascendency in
+this province is well-nigh assured. The most important, however, of these
+changes is that which has taken place in the state of the Irish Catholic
+peasantry. The process which lifted up millions of these from the land and
+sent them into exile was, no doubt, terrible; but it was the condition of
+the welfare and the progress of the population which remained. A great
+deal of the legislation, besides, which has revolutionised the tenure of
+land in Ireland, and has had a special effect on the Catholic occupiers of
+the soil, has been essentially ill designed and unjust; above all, it has
+been much too long delayed. But the Irish Catholic peasantry have long ago
+ceased to be serfs; they are more the owners of their own holdings than
+their former landlords; their rights in the land have been more than
+protected; they have acquired the fee in their farms in thousands of
+instances; the days of rack rents and harsh evictions have passed away for
+ever. If the lines of the old Irish land system may still be traced, they
+rather resemble, it has truly been said, the lineaments of a phantom than
+of a living being.
+
+The attitude, however, of Catholic Ireland, and the sentiments of the
+immense majority of the Irish Catholics, must cause painful misgivings in
+reflecting minds. Their aristocracy, indeed, and their landed gentry have
+always been loyal and true subjects; they can scarcely be distinguished
+from their Protestant fellows. The Irish Catholics, too, of the upper
+middle classes are generally attached to the institutions under which they
+live; and Catholic Ireland has produced many eminent public servants, and
+has given splendid ornaments to the Bench and the Bar. But the spirit that
+prevails among the Irish Catholic lower middle classes, and notably among
+the masses of the peasantry, and the opinions and feelings they
+ostentatiously avow, are deeply to be regretted in many respects.
+Notwithstanding all that has been done for it, and the immense reforms
+made in its interest, this part of Catholic Ireland is, beyond question,
+more disaffected and disloyal to the State than it was when O'Connell was
+its master spirit; it is more hostile to government, law, and the existing
+order of things. The teaching of the Land and the National Leagues, and of
+the successor which has taken their place, has penetrated into the
+Corporations and Local Boards, in which the Catholic Irish are supreme;
+these assemblies echo with revolutionary and socialistic cries, and
+denounce the whole system of British rule in Ireland, aiming especially at
+the Sovereign and those in the highest places. The Irish Catholics, too,
+in the three provinces of the south, have gained a complete ascendency in
+county and municipal affairs; their first object has been to exclude the
+landed gentry from them, and to destroy the influence which belongs to
+property; and they have exhibited tendencies absolutely opposed to the
+Constitution to which they owe their authority. The worst symptoms,
+however, appear in the state of the peasantry; they have obtained
+advantages of which their fathers never even dreamed; the land system has
+been turned upside down for their behoof; they have no grievance in landed
+relations; and yet they remain unfriendly to the State, and show no sign
+of gratitude. This class contains the multitudes, who for more than twenty
+years, have allied themselves with a conspiracy against our power in
+Ireland, and who, at the bidding of designing men, shout treasonable
+utterances at mob gatherings, and denounce the 'Saxon' and 'landlordism'
+with one voice; and though they are a timid and somewhat inert mass, and
+they would not rise like their fathers in 1798, they would not lift a hand
+to support our rule were foreign invaders to descend on our shores. This
+state of opinion, no doubt, is intelligible to the real student of Irish
+history; the Irish Catholics are a people who have been cruelly wronged;
+they have only slowly risen out of serf-like thraldom; above all, they
+have only attained the position they hold in the State after long years of
+trials, and by giving trouble; they treasure the Celtic traditions of the
+past; we may regret that they are what they are, but can hardly feel
+surprise. In other respects, the Irish Catholic masses, especially in a
+democratic age, must arouse the solicitude of thinkers worthy of the name.
+Many thousands of them are still illiterate; they are too generally the
+mere followers of priests and demagogues, tossed hither and thither as
+their masters direct; they are animated by crude and wild ideas, like the
+peasantry of France before the Revolution; they have scarcely anything in
+common with the corresponding class in England, trained for centuries in
+habits of well-ordered liberty. They form, in a word, a dangerous and
+easily led democracy; and yet, owing to recent legislation, ever to be
+deplored, they possess almost a monopoly of political power in Ireland,
+and have sent representatives to Parliament whose acts are a byword.
+
+Conciliation, therefore, as the phrase is, has failed in the case of the
+greatest part of Catholic Ireland; this remains an alien, even a perilous,
+element in the State; it is worse than useless to shut our eyes to the
+truth; the time is still apparently distant when it will become contented
+and loyal. Presbyterian Ireland is a people of rather more than half a
+million of souls, almost concentrated within a nook of Ulster; it was
+rebellious in sentiment a hundred years ago; it is now devotedly attached
+to the British connection, and has firmly supported the Union during a
+period of trouble. This community, nevertheless, of artisans and farmers
+is rather widely separated from the aristocracy in their midst, for the
+most part English in blood, and of the Anglican faith; and though the
+Presbyterian farmer has obtained the benefit of the late reforms of land
+tenure, and has received advantages far in excess of justice, he declares
+himself to be discontented with his lot, and is clamouring for a vast
+confiscation of the Irish land in his selfish interest. The Irish
+Protestants are a population rather larger than the Presbyterians; but
+they are scattered over all parts of the country; they do not possess the
+political influence of their distant kinsmen in Ulster. They comprise at
+least three-fourths of the leading landed gentry, and a considerable
+number of the better class of farmers; they predominate in the learned
+professions, and in the higher walks of commerce. But their lower orders
+feel the loss of the ascendency which was once their birthright; they have
+been thrust out from corporate and local government; they are isolated
+amidst a population not in sympathy with them; as a people they can hardly
+be described as prosperous. As to the Protestant landed gentry, they have
+for centuries been the most loyal of subjects; it is significant that they
+have been called the British garrison by the conspirators who seek to
+overthrow our rule in Ireland; they have given many eminent worthies to
+the State, and proved their devotion to it at the gravest crises; what
+they are has been shown in the war in South Africa. At present, however,
+profound and just discontent has sunk deep into the hearts of this order
+of men. They are the heirs of conquest and confiscation, it is said; but
+they were placed in the position they hold by English kings and
+Parliaments; is that any reason that, within the last half-century, the
+Nemesis of conquest and confiscation should have been invoked against
+them, in the Encumbered Estates Act and predatory agrarian laws? They were
+too much of an exclusive caste, separated from their dependents, and
+possessing powers over the occupiers of the soil, which were sometimes
+abused; is that any reason that they should have been deprived of
+political influence, supplanted by the bureaucratic Castle, changed from
+owners of their estates into mere pensioners, shut out by the force of law
+from local and county government? What, however, the Irish landed gentry
+most deeply feel is that, in the course of the last sixty years, they have
+been deceived, nay, betrayed, by British statesmen, who, having repeatedly
+assured them that their position was secure, have sacrificed them when it
+seemed to suit their purpose.
+
+The Imperial Parliament has, during the last century, had absolute control
+over the affairs of Ireland. No impartial student of history will deny
+that it has governed Ireland very much better than her old Parliament
+could possibly have done, after the dreadful rising of 1798 had literally
+torn the country to pieces. The large majority of thinking persons have
+long ago been convinced that the policy of Home Rule, that is, the
+substitution for the Houses at Westminster of a statutory legislature
+seated in Dublin, would be disastrous to the Empire and Ireland alike; and
+that the evils attendant on the present system would be aggravated a
+hundred-fold by the revolution Mr. Gladstone tried to effect. Nor can it
+be questioned that the Imperial Parliament has, for a long period,
+sincerely desired to legislate and rule for the good of Ireland, and has
+accomplished important Irish reforms, whatever legitimate exceptions may
+be taken to them. Protestant ascendency and the Established Church have
+fallen; the law has long been indifferent to Irishmen of all classes;
+education has been brought home to the mass of the people; the tenure of
+land has been transformed, unwisely no doubt, but wholly in the interest
+of the occupiers of the soil. Nevertheless, much that the Imperial
+Parliament has done, and left undone, in the Victorian era, remains matter
+of censure and regret; and its Irish administration has been in many
+respects unfortunate. The neglect to make a provision for the Irish
+Catholic priesthood, a main object of Pitt and of our best statesmen, when
+the Anglican Church was disestablished in 1869, was a grave and a
+calamitous mistake; the attempts that have been made to reform the Irish
+land system have, with scarcely an exception, been sorry failures; the
+results have been, in no doubtful sense, deplorable. Few, too, will
+justify such measures as the establishment in Ireland of household
+suffrage, that is, giving a monopoly of political power to an ignorant and
+priest-ridden democracy,[15] and depriving property and intelligence of
+all influence, or as the handing over county and city government, in
+three-fourths of Ireland, to much the same classes. Nor are even positive
+errors such as these the worst, perhaps, that can be laid to the charge of
+the Imperial Parliament in the conduct of Irish affairs. With rare
+exceptions, the reforms it has made have been, unhappily, too late, and
+have been obtained only through menacing popular movements; it has over
+and over again made Irish questions the mere subjects of the selfish
+strife of party, with evil consequences for Irish interests; it has
+occasionally, and even for large spaces of time, shown a marked
+indifference to reasonable Irish demands; and its administration of
+Ireland has repeatedly been inconsistent, even contradictory,
+shortsighted, and feeble. It must be acknowledged, indeed, that the rule
+of the Imperial Parliament, in the circumstances in which Ireland has been
+placed, is, from the nature of the case, faulty in many respects; it is
+that of a dominant assembly practically controlling a subject dependency;
+and, as we see in the striking instances of Athens and Rome, this kind of
+government has never been free from great and real objections. This, no
+doubt, is no reason that we should fly from less to unbearable evils, and
+adopt the fatal scheme of Home Rule; and the causes that have made our
+Parliamentary _régime_ in Ireland as defective as it is are evident, and,
+as I shall point out afterwards, may probably be removed, to some extent
+at least, without subverting the constitution of these realms. But the
+broad fact remains, and cannot be concealed; the Imperial Parliament, much
+as it has done, has not reached the hearts or gained, in any degree, the
+sympathy of an immense majority of the Irish people.
+
+This conclusion, indeed, has been made only too manifest, if we look back
+at the history of Ireland within living memory. The Catholic Association
+defied the Imperial Parliament, and was supreme in four-fifths of Ireland,
+from 1824 to 1829; O'Connell, in 1843, rallied the Irish Catholic millions
+to the cause of the Repeal of the Union, that is, to the subversion of
+British rule from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear. Home Rule became a
+popular cry when proclaimed by Butt; Parnell soon rose to the head of an
+Irish faction, which deliberately tried to paralyse and cross Parliament,
+and to make its sway in Ireland of no avail and contemptible. The Land
+League and the National League were essentially conspiracies of foreign
+origin, and they appealed to socialistic greed in a season of distress;
+but their chief object was to annihilate British power in Ireland; they
+had the support of huge Catholic masses; they returned to Parliament a
+band of more than eighty men, one of whose purposes was to checkmate its
+authority. Too much is not to be made of these movements; three-fourths at
+least of the Irish community have repeatedly been led away by able but
+unscrupulous leaders, and rush into courses to which they are not
+earnestly inclined; but these unquestionable facts assuredly prove that
+the institutions under which they exist are not acceptable to the great
+body of the people of Ireland. This attitude has been displayed with
+marked and too plain significance, within a period, as it were, of
+yesterday. The United Irish League fills the place of the Land and the
+National Leagues; it is a conspiracy against the State, like its
+forerunners; it aims ultimately at the same objects; its organisation and
+machinery are the same; it seeks to establish its domination by similar
+methods. It is, no doubt, less formidable than the Land and the National
+Leagues; it has received little support from America, and has no one to
+compare with Parnell at its head; but it has sent more than three-fourths
+of the representatives of Ireland into the House of Commons; and these
+have combined to put in force the arts of obstruction with an audacity, a
+perseverance, and a measure of success, perhaps never so conspicuous
+before. Its authority is less far-reaching than that of its predecessors;
+but it has established a reign of tyranny in not a few counties; it is
+largely backed by the Irish priesthood and by much the greatest part of
+Catholic Ireland; and its leaders boast, not without truth, that, disloyal
+as many of their utterances are, they are completely in accord with
+popular sympathies. The acts and the speeches, indeed, of these men have
+never been more unequivocal than within the last two or three years;[16]
+yet almost everywhere they obtain the applause and the support of the
+multitude. An Irish contingent was sent to fight for the Boers; the war in
+South Africa was yelled at, at huge public meetings, as an odious instance
+of English tyranny and crime; every reverse that befell our arms was
+welcomed; the Irish masses, especially of late, have made a display of
+their antipathy to, and hatred of, the State. There was an outbreak of
+disloyal rioting in Dublin at the Diamond Jubilee; but for the accident of
+the Spanish War there would have been a great commemoration of the
+rebellion of 1798; even the visit of the late Queen to Ireland was made an
+occasion for seditious speeches; if her death was very generally mourned,
+public bodies were found to refuse an expression of regret.
+
+Irish administration, I have remarked, is in many respects faulty; this is
+mainly because it is dependent on British parties; it fluctuates as one or
+the other prevails in Parliament. It sometimes represents completely
+opposite principles; besides, as Lord-Lieutenants and Chief Secretaries
+usually hold office for a short time only, they are tempted to adopt a
+hand-to-mouth policy, and to govern with little thought of the morrow. A
+marked change, however, has, in the course of time, passed over the
+ordinary system of administration carried on at the Castle. The
+aristocracy and the leading Irish gentry had still, even at the beginning
+of the Victorian age, much influence in directing local affairs; their
+authority was not nearly as great as it had been; but they were still
+looked up to and consulted by the central government. This state of things
+has long ago ceased to exist; this order of men has long ago lost all
+political, and nearly all social, power; it has been superseded by a
+bureaucratic _régime_, depending mainly on paid officials and police,
+which rules Ireland from the Castle, with little external support. This
+mode of government is imposing and apparently strong; but it is
+essentially weak, and has little real hold on the country; the
+information, with which it is amply supplied, is often false, and
+occasionally causes grave mistakes; it forms an administrative system
+resembling that of the old centralised monarchy of France, of which
+Tocqueville has exposed the defects and the vices. Under this _régime_,
+however, the law of the land has certainly been vindicated more
+successfully than had been the case before; the Government has acquired
+decidedly increased power in dealing with disorders dangerous to the
+State, and perhaps in holding the scales of justice even between divided
+classes; it has not diminished the strife of hostile Irish factions, but
+it has maintained order more completely than of old; and this
+unquestionably is a great advantage, and a real set-off against some
+mischiefs and failures. It would be untrue to assert that this system of
+rule has been the paramount and even a main cause of the great decline in
+agrarian crime and trouble which Ireland has happily witnessed of late
+years; other and far more potent causes have concurred; but it may fairly
+be said that it has contributed to it. It would, however, be a complete
+mistake to suppose that agrarian disorder, even in its worst aspects, has
+become permanently a thing of the past in Ireland, or that this
+destructive curse of Irish social life has not immense influence even at
+this moment, though its outward manifestations have been greatly changed.
+It was, so to speak, only yesterday that, under the auspices of the Land
+and the National Leagues, there was the most frightful outbreak of
+agrarian crime that had been seen since the great tithe conflict; it
+assumed the proportions, in fact, of a horrible servile war; and shallow,
+indeed, the understanding must be which imagines that this state of things
+can never recur. If open agrarian disorder, too, has been largely
+diminished, the spirit of agrarian disorder is still strong; and it is
+doing infinite mischief in many parts of Ireland. Steadily adhering to the
+precepts laid down by Parnell, the United Irish League has brought the
+detestable system of 'boycotting' to a hideous perfection in several
+counties; whole districts are subject to this secret but villainous
+tyranny; the results are seen in numbers of derelict farms, in hundreds of
+victims writhing under ever-present terror, in an infamous interference
+with trade and industry. This malignant influence is more or less felt
+through nearly the whole of the southern provinces, and even to a
+considerable extent in Ulster; it should be added that the United Irish
+League, for the present, discourages active agrarian crime, though its
+agents hold this force in reserve; it believes it can compass its ends
+without making use of this weapon.[17]
+
+A few words must be said, in this short survey, on the organisations that
+uphold the Christian faith in Ireland. The disestablished Anglican Church
+has certainly made progress in spiritual life; it has more moral and even,
+perhaps, social influence than when it was an appurtenance of the Erastian
+Castle. It has been admirably administered and ruled; the uses of
+adversity have been sweet to it, and it has been successfully launched on
+its new career; this is a strong proof of the inherent energy and capacity
+of the Anglo-Protestant Irish people. Very different, too, from what had
+been expected, moderation and wisdom prevail in its councils; its clergy
+are sincerely pious, but not given to extreme doctrines; its members are
+for the most part free from the narrow sectarian views which had formerly,
+not without reason, been laid to their charge. Its funds, amassed by good
+management, are, for the present, ample; but the rapid impoverishment of
+the landed gentry, the class from which it chiefly obtains support, and
+the confiscation with which they are threatened, no doubt expose it to
+future dangers; and it must always be the Church of a small minority,
+surrounded by influences hostile to it, but a Church which the State is
+bound to protect. The Presbyterian Church of Ireland has but little
+changed; it has felt the effect of the great religious movement, which has
+stirred the Three Kingdoms in the last half-century, and it is less
+rationalistic than it once was; but it is still what it always was, a
+powerful centre of the faith of John Knox, with a communion of strong
+democratic sympathies. The Catholic Church of Ireland still rests on the
+old foundations; but it is hardly the unshaken structure it was in the
+last generation. Its material resources have enormously increased; its
+fine edifices spread over the land; it still exercises immense influence
+over probably nine-tenths of Catholic Ireland. But a party has been
+growing up within it which resents, and has even defied, its pretensions;
+and though the power it possesses is, in the main, beneficent in the
+extreme, this has too often been abused in the domain of politics, and
+especially of late in Irish landed relations. The priesthood still largely
+direct their flocks, but they are more dependent on them than they once
+were; had it been otherwise, they would have hardly conformed to the
+bidding of the Land and the National Leagues, as unhappily they did in too
+many instances. Their leading men perceived from the first that these
+conspiracies were destructive of their moral influence; and had the whole
+body of the clergy received a just provision from the State, it would all
+but certainly have condemned the methods of the Leagues as these were
+decisively condemned by Rome. For the rest, the Catholic Church of Ireland
+is no friend of Protestant England, and of many of the institutions that
+exist in Ireland; but this has been inevitable from the events of Irish
+history; and whatever may be said, it has been essentially an ally of the
+State, by reason of its great religious authority. And if properly
+understood, it is a mighty conservative power, which ought if possible to
+be won over to the side of order and law; this is an ample, if there were
+no other, reason that statesmen should comply with its most reasonable
+demand, and remove the grievance, in high Catholic education, that only
+blind bigotry can deny.
+
+The administration of justice in Ireland is better, on the whole, than it
+was in the early Victorian era. It is not only that the law's delay has
+been to a considerable extent, remedied, as it has been, in England, by an
+improved procedure. Traces of Protestant ascendency were to be seen on
+the Irish Bench sixty years ago, though these were evanescent and few;
+such a trial as that of O'Connell in 1844, marked by partiality and even
+by wrong, would be simply impossible at the present time. Trial by jury,
+however, in Ireland too often reflects the animosities and prejudices of
+class, and is liable to grave perversion and errors; it is sometimes
+necessary, in causes where religious or political feeling is engaged, to
+make a careful selection in forming juries, in order that common right
+should be done; this inevitable, but invidious, process, held up to
+execration by the name of 'packing,' is certainly a matter that causes
+regret. The fairness seen in the administration of the law in Ireland has
+been strikingly illustrated of late years; leaders and agents of the Land
+and the National Leagues have had to answer for their offences in the
+inferior courts; but despite rabid clamour against what is called
+'coercion,' the conduct of these inquiries has not been really impugned. A
+laudable attempt, however, to make the magisterial bench more popular, has
+lately placed on it an order of men, of whom some have abused their power;
+these instances, nevertheless, have not been frequent; the experiment
+cannot be pronounced a failure. The intellect of Ireland is not so
+fruitful as it was in the generation before the union; she has no
+political thinkers to be named with Burke, no writer of fiction equal to
+Maria Edgeworth, no dramatist to be compared to Sheridan, no orators who
+have reached the heights of eloquence reached by Grattan, Curran, Plunket,
+and other glories of her defunct Parliament. But there has been progress
+in this respect within the last sixty years; Ireland cannot boast of such
+public men as O'Connell, Sheil, and even Spring Rice; but she possesses
+Dufferin in the diplomatic sphere, and Lecky, and one or two others of
+repute in that of letters; she has only recently lost Lord Cairns and Lord
+Russell. The improvement of primary education in Ireland has been
+immense; the land is full of elementary schools, which, in the last
+generation, were, comparatively, very few, and though a considerable part
+of the population is still illiterate, the greater part, whose fathers
+were sunk in ignorance, has felt the good influence of the light of
+knowledge. High education, too, has advanced in Ireland; Trinity College
+is greater than before as a place of learning; if two of the Queen's
+Colleges have certainly failed, the Royal University has been, in a sense,
+successful. But, as I shall point out, in subsequent pages, University
+education in Ireland remains defective; a University for the Irish
+Catholic upper middle class is a requirement rightly demanded from
+Parliament. As for Irish secondary education, it is still backward, but
+there is hope of improvement in this respect; the general standard of
+Irish education, it should be added, is, except at Trinity College, low,
+though this has been inevitable if we look back at the events of history.
+Irish opinion generally still embodies the deep-seated animosities and
+strife of race and faith, at least as fully as it ever did; with few
+exceptions this appears in the tone of the newspaper press. The utterances
+of many of the self-styled 'Nationalist' journals have been far more
+hostile to the State, and are conceived in a much worse spirit, than those
+of the same class of journals in O'Connell's day.
+
+If we examine the condition of Ireland, as a whole, we see that there has
+been some material progress, but with retrogression in important respects;
+and if a certain measure of good has been done, great wrong and evil have
+been accomplished, in the principal and the most far-reaching of her
+social relations. Her moral and political progress has been at least
+doubtful; notwithstanding immense and searching reforms, the mass of the
+population is more disaffected than of old; discontent largely pervades
+the classes most loyal to the State; if the mere power of government has
+increased, its beneficent influence is but little recognised; the great
+body of the community maintains a hostile attitude. The crooked has not
+been made straight in Ireland, nor the rough places plain; a state of
+society exists, in which, as the Greek poet said, 'the fountains flow
+backwards, and things are out of joint.' An old order has nearly passed
+away; but the new order that is replacing it is but of little promise; a
+type of society has been well-nigh broken up, but a strong and solid type
+is not being formed in its stead; at all events, in the phrase of Bacon,
+the time is still distant 'when the strings of the Irish harp will all be
+in tune;' many respond to the player's hand in discord. 'The Constitution
+in Ireland,' Peel once exclaimed, 'is not the British Constitution, but
+its ghastly image;' let us see what it is in Ireland at the present time.
+The Sovereign is, in England, a main pillar of the State; he is a great
+political and social force; the Monarchy is enthroned in the heart of the
+nation. In Ireland he is almost an unknown name, associated with not a few
+evil memories; his influence, which ought to be immense over a Celtic
+race, has never made itself sensibly felt. In England Parliament responds
+to the national will, and has gathered the reverence of ages around it; in
+Ireland it is a foreign and alien assembly, with which the mass of the
+people has no sympathy. In England the aristocracy is at the head of
+public affairs, leads society, commands universal respect; in Ireland it
+has lost all authority; has no weight in the National Councils; has no
+popular support, is even disliked at the Castle. In England the middle
+class is enormously strong, and is the best bulwark of order and law; in
+England the democracy is almost wholly free from revolutionary ideas, as
+regards property, and seeks reforms by constitutional methods. In Ireland,
+it is unhappily quite otherwise; the middle class is comparatively weak,
+and, in its lower strata, is opposed to the existing order of things; the
+democracy is an easily led multitude, ready at its leaders' bidding to
+rush into socialistic courses. In England, too, the Commonwealth is
+completely secure; in Ireland there is literally no Commonwealth; and such
+organisations as the Land, the National, and the United Irish Leagues, are
+dangerous symptoms of a kind of Jacobin antipathy to the State. The words
+of Peel are still unhappily true; but painful as the contrast he pointed
+out is, even this is not the worst circumstance in the present condition
+of Irish affairs. What, I think, most alarms a reflecting mind, is the
+restlessness that pervades the mass of the people, an eagerness for some
+undefined change, a demand for the universal spoliation of a class, a
+sense of insecurity spreading far and wide, a neglect of the pursuits of
+calm industry in the hope of what a revolution may effect, an instability
+in the social fabric from top to bottom. The agitation, the disorder, and,
+I will add, the vicious legislation of late years, will, however, largely
+explain these phenomena.
+
+Lord Salisbury's Ministry came into office, six years ago, at the head of
+the most powerful majority that had been returned to the House of Commons
+since the great Reform era. The time was singularly opportune to consider
+the state of Ireland, and to deal with the Irish questions that required
+sound and wise treatment. The Opposition was paralysed by a rout at the
+polls; the National League conspiracy showed few signs of life; the
+'Nationalist' party was rent asunder; the community was more quiescent
+than it had been for years. It would be unfair to deny that, since it
+acquired power, the Government has been beset by many and grave obstacles
+in legislating on domestic subjects; it has been encompassed by a sea of
+foreign troubles; it has had to conduct the protracted war in South
+Africa. It would be absurd, too, to expect that it could, once for all,
+have placed Irish affairs permanently on a secure basis; this can only be
+the result of the wisdom of years aided by the healing influence of time.
+But it has disappointed enlightened Irish opinion; it has not done, or
+even tried to do, what it might have accomplished. Undoubtedly parts of
+its policy have been good; it has effected something, if not much, in
+developing the material resources of the west of Ireland, and in
+mitigating the danger and the stress of Irish poverty; it has carried on
+the excellent work of Mr. Arthur Balfour in this respect; the Department
+of Agriculture it has lately formed will, not improbably, be of real use
+in promoting industry and self-reliance among the peasantry, on the
+principles advocated, a century and a half ago, by Berkeley. But
+commendation, I think, must here end; the Government, I believe, has made
+grave mistakes; it has assuredly not successfully dealt with the great
+'Case of Ireland,' greater now than in the days of Molyneux and Swift. It
+has not reduced the excessive representation of Ireland in the House of
+Commons; until this is done the Union will not be secure. It has
+disregarded the verdict of the important Commission which has declared
+that Ireland has been immensely overtaxed for years; here it defies
+universal Irish opinion; and having pledged itself to make a further
+inquiry, it has not hitherto taken a step to redeem its pledge. It is
+divided on the question of high education in Ireland, and professes that
+this must be an 'open question,' as if this was not unwise and perilous;
+and though it has appointed a Commission to report on the subject,
+Catholic Ireland very possibly may not obtain the place of learning which
+it is entitled to demand. Above all, on the capital question of the Irish
+land, the Government has certainly all but ignored the recommendations of
+a Commission chosen by itself, and has refused to lessen the injustice
+proved to have been done wholesale; like its predecessors, in the case of
+the Encumbered Estates Act, it is still bent on agrarian legislation that
+has done infinite mischief. Its administration, too, up to this has not
+been successful; it has allowed the United Irish League to grow up and to
+gain strength, with far-spreading evil results; its conduct of Irish
+affairs has been weak and empirical, and notably marked by false
+optimistic fancies. Of late there has been improvement in this respect; we
+can only hope it will not be abortive.
+
+'In this gigantic body,' Macaulay exclaimed fifty-seven years ago, 'there
+is one vulnerable part near the heart.'[18] The Empire has expanded into
+ampler proportions than those described by the orator; its subject kings,
+dominations, princedoms, powers, above all, its myriads of many races and
+tongues, are united by far more durable ties than those which held it
+together in a generation that has passed away. Four years ago, Canada sent
+messengers from her great lakes, Hindustan representatives of her ancient
+dynasties, the great island continent envoys from her free nations, to do
+homage to Queen Victoria; the pageant, gathered 'within London's streaming
+roar,' was a magnificent spectacle of world-wide loyalty. England has seen
+another and a still more wonderful sight; the martial sons of our great
+self-governing colonies have flocked in thousands to do battle in her
+cause, in the distant and ill-known wastes of South Africa; in a long,
+bloody, and sometimes disastrous conflict, they have proved themselves to
+be worthy companions in arms of the offspring of the soldiery of Blenheim
+and Waterloo; they have fought and bled for England as if she was their
+common country. But Ireland, as regards the mass of the people, has, on
+both occasions, stood sullenly aloof; her heart has gone out in sympathy
+with the Boers; she remains, for the most part, hostile to our rule and
+disloyal. It is mere foolishness to shut our eyes to plain facts; still
+more so to join in the false pæans of interested partisans, and ignorant
+scribblers, who announce that because Ireland is, on the surface,
+comparatively at peace, she is in every sense a contented or a happy land,
+free from grave elements of political and social danger. She is still the
+'vulnerable part at the heart of the Empire;' the spectre at the great
+national festival; the warning token, as in the case of the Oriental
+despot, that human grandeur and power are, in the nature of things,
+mortal. She is still, as she was in the day of Spenser, a malign influence
+across the path of our greatness, a riddle difficult to understand and
+interpret; the many problems she still presents to the statesman are
+perplexing in the extreme, and await solution. That any policy will
+suddenly remove the many evils apparent in her organic structure is a
+delusion a rational mind rejects; the deep-seated ills in that distempered
+frame may never be completely and finally cured. Something effectual,
+nevertheless, may, I think, be done; I proceed to examine, in the
+following chapters, the 'Present Irish Questions' that confront our
+rulers; and to consider what the amending hand may accomplish.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE
+
+    The question of Home Rule not extinct--The reasons--Butt's scheme of
+    Home Rule--It is denounced and ridiculed by Mr. Gladstone, and
+    defeated in the House of Commons--Death of Butt--The Home Rule
+    movement becomes allied with a foreign conspiracy--Davitt and
+    Parnell--The Land League--Mr. Gladstone's surrender to it--The
+    movement makes no progress in the Parliament of 1880-85--The General
+    Election of 1885--Mr. Gladstone suddenly adopts the policy of Home
+    Rule--The probable reasons--The Home Rule Bill of 1886--Its nature and
+    tendencies--Decisive objections to the measure--It is rejected at the
+    General Election of 1886, having been previously rejected in the House
+    of Commons--Policy and conduct of Mr. Gladstone--The Home Rule
+    movement makes some progress in England, and why--The Home Rule Bill
+    of 1893--It is much worse than that of 1886--The reasons--It is
+    rejected by the House of Lords--Home Rule under different forms--The
+    Union must be maintained--Proposal that Parliament should occasionally
+    sit in Dublin--The over-representation of Ireland should be redressed.
+
+
+Home Rule, it is very generally assumed, has vanished into the domain of
+extinct politics. Unlike what had been the case from 1886 to 1895, when
+this was the main of our domestic questions, Home Rule was scarcely
+referred to at the late election; it will receive little countenance at
+the hands of the present House of Commons, however Irish Nationalists may
+persist in urging their demand. It would, nevertheless, be imprudent to
+believe that this policy, as has been said, 'is as dead as Queen Anne,' as
+impossible as a return to Protection or to an unreformed Parliament.
+Isaac Butt's scheme of Home Rule was treated with scorn and ridicule by
+Mr. Gladstone during many years; Mr. Gladstone was the author of the Bills
+of 1886 and 1893, embodying Home Rule in forms few will now approve of;
+and he left nothing undone to convert them into law. At the General
+Election of 1880, Home Rule was regarded as a mere Irish craze, and hardly
+a candidate could be found, in England and Scotland, to consent to an
+inquiry upon the subject; within six years Home Rule was a Ministerial
+measure; and though the House of Commons pronounced against it, and its
+decision was emphatically ratified at the General Election of 1886, still,
+on this occasion, the votes in favour of Home Rule were not much less
+numerous than those cast against it.[19] In 1892 England condemned Home
+Rule, if not as decisively as six years before; but Ireland, Scotland, and
+Wales declared for it; and a Home Rule Bill received the sanction of the
+House of Commons, which, but for the resistance made by the House of
+Lords, would now be a fundamental law of these realms. It deserves notice,
+too, that not one of the Liberal leaders, although, as a rule, they
+avoided the subject, repudiated this policy at the late election; two or
+three, indeed, gave it a qualified support; and it is evident that they
+keep the question in reserve, in the hope of turning it to account at a
+more convenient season. Nor can it be denied, as long as Ireland can send
+more than eighty Nationalists into the House of Commons, pledged to insist
+on Home Rule as their country's right, that the subject must command more
+or less attention; for many reasons it is impossible to ignore the claims
+of a representation so large in numbers. It must be added that, under our
+system of party government, especially as this has existed of late years,
+a considerable group of politicians, with a fixed purpose, can effect much
+by throwing its weight indifferently into the Ministerial or the
+Opposition scale, and giving its support to either side, in order to
+compass its own ends; it has, sometimes with successful results, swayed
+majorities by these means, and not in vain. This is the hope of the Irish
+Nationalist leaders; 'let parties in the House of Commons,' they cynically
+argue, 'be equally divided, as must at some time happen,' and 'we shall
+gain Home Rule from either Tories or Whigs, if we assist either by our
+votes to keep them in office.' It cannot be said, if we look back at some
+political events within the last twenty years, that this expectation is
+wholly groundless; and though I am convinced it will not be realised, its
+existence alone suffices to prove that Home Rule cannot yet be dismissed
+as outside the sphere of practical politics.
+
+Home Rule, therefore, is a 'Present Irish Question,' and if not at this
+moment urgent, it remains the most important of Irish questions, for it
+directly affects the fortunes of the Three Kingdoms. It is necessary,
+accordingly, to examine it, in its principles at least; and an inquiry is
+opportune, at this juncture, for the subject can be fairly discussed in
+its different bearings, apart from the obscuring influences of national
+and party prejudice, and especially of political passion. Isaac Butt was
+the true author of the conception of Home Rule; for though a movement in
+favour of a Repeal of the Union had become dangerously active in 1843-44,
+and had been feebly intermittent since that period, this peculiar
+modification of the arrangements made at the Union, in fixing the
+relations between Great Britain and Ireland, was wholly an idea of that
+distinguished lawyer. The occasion, on which this scheme was put forward,
+was not a little remarkable for various reasons. Mr. Gladstone had just
+disestablished the Anglican Church in Ireland, and had disendowed it, to a
+considerable extent; this policy was angrily resented by a party of Irish
+Protestants; for the maintenance of the Established Irish Church had been
+made an essential condition of the Treaty of Union. These men, who were
+not without energy and parts, declared that a great international compact
+had been broken; and they gradually obtained the support of leaders of the
+'Young Ireland' following, of survivors of the 'Tail' of O'Connell, and
+even of adherents of the Fenian cause, all, in different degrees, opposed
+to the Union. Butt became the head and spokesman of this curiously
+assorted band, composed of essentially discordant elements; but he
+endeavoured to combine it into a strong Parliamentary force, by
+propounding a plan of Home Rule for Ireland, which he had thought out with
+patience and care, his hope being that this would unite his followers, and
+that his project would at least be entertained in Parliament, and would
+not be as hopeless as an attempt to repeal the Union. His views are set
+forth in his 'Irish Federalism,' a long-forgotten work, but which, even
+now, may be read with profit. Butt professed, and I have no doubt
+sincerely, that he did not seek to disturb the Union, and that the
+Imperial Parliament was to remain as it was; but he proposed to give
+Ireland a Parliament of her own, with full powers of legislation on Irish
+affairs, and an Executive practically appointed by this, which would have
+the government of Ireland in its hands. Having thus called into existence
+an Irish State, possessing State rights of supreme importance, he sought
+to connect Ireland with Great Britain by a Federal tie; representatives
+from Ireland were to repair to the Imperial Parliament, and to vote in
+that assembly on Imperial questions, but not, as I believe Butt meant, on
+those which belonged to England and Scotland.[20]
+
+The cry of Home Rule was welcomed in Ireland by her Catholic masses; at
+the General Election of 1874, sixty men were returned to the House of
+Commons to support this policy, a party formidable in numbers, if not in
+essential strength. Butt brought forward his plan, in outline, on three or
+four occasions; but the question was not discussed with the fulness of
+knowledge and the breadth of view it certainly required; on the whole, it
+was superficially treated. Neither Butt nor his opponents thoroughly
+perceived that his proposals virtually repealed the Union, for if the
+Imperial Parliament was, nominally, to be left intact, a real Parliament
+was to be placed in its stead, in Ireland, which would practically annul
+its effective authority, from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear; and they
+seem not to have understood that 'Irish Federalism' implied Federalism for
+Great Britain to a great extent, and introduced into the Constitution the
+Federal principle with its far-reaching and dangerous effects. Butt's
+scheme, however, was powerfully attacked in its details; by no one so
+powerfully as by Mr. Gladstone, who had lately announced, to an approving
+multitude, that Home Rule was sheer folly or worse, and had exultingly
+asked, 'Can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that, at this
+time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to disintegrate
+the great capital institutions of the country for the purpose of making
+ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind, and crippling any power
+we possess for bestowing benefits, through legislation, on the country to
+which we belong?'[21] Little knowing what the future was to bring forth,
+Mr. Gladstone declared that Home Rule was not to be even thought of, until
+it could be proved that the Irish affairs, to which the Irish Parliament
+was to be confined, could be separated from Imperial and British affairs,
+a partition he evidently deemed impossible; and he insisted that the
+introduction of Irish members into the Imperial Parliament, which,
+according to this plan, was to have nothing to do with Ireland, was not
+only essentially unjust, but involved the absurdity that these men 'were
+to judge as they might think fit of the general affairs of the Empire, and
+also of exclusively English and Scotch questions,' an interpretation not,
+I believe, correct. Home Rule was rejected by overwhelming majorities in
+the Parliament of 1874-80; and at the General Election of the last-named
+year, it found no countenance, I have said, in England or Scotland. The
+subject was scarcely referred to by Mr. Gladstone, wholly preoccupied by
+his Midlothian campaign, and by his persistent efforts to deprive Lord
+Beaconsfield of power.
+
+Butt had sincere reverence for the Constitution and the Law; the Home Rule
+movement, as long as he was at its head, was a constitutional and a lawful
+movement. But this eminent man had been supplanted, by degrees, by a
+politician of a very different nature; and when he had passed away in the
+spring of 1879, Parnell, and what was called the 'active Irish party,'
+which had baffled and incensed the House of Commons, became the directors
+of the Home Rule policy. The character of the movement was almost wholly
+changed; it became associated with a conspiracy hatched in the Far West,
+which aimed at the separation of Ireland from Great Britain; Butt's
+moderate followers fell away from it, especially the band of Protestants
+who had first set it on foot. Meanwhile, American Fenianism, which had in
+vain attempted open rebellion in Ireland in 1865-67, had, at the
+instigation perhaps of Michael Davitt, made another effort to compass its
+ends; the 'New Departure' in treason was made; the Land League was formed
+with the avowed purpose of overthrowing 'Irish Landlordism,' as it was
+called, as being the mainstay of British power in Ireland, and then of
+wresting Ireland by force from her British rulers. But Davitt was not well
+fitted for his work; Parnell became the leader of the Home Rule and the
+Land League movements; and during a short visit to the United States, he
+openly professed that his ultimate aim was 'to break the last link between
+Great Britain and Ireland,' though he was still the chief of an apparently
+constitutional cause. Ere long the Land League, availing itself of a
+season of distress, and subsidised by Fenians across the Atlantic, had
+taken root in different parts of Ireland; and gradually a reign of terror,
+marked by detestable crime, and essentially of the Jacobin type, had
+acquired a frightful ascendency in ten or eleven counties. By this time,
+Mr. Gladstone had become Minister: how he denounced the League in
+passionate language; endeavoured, for a few months, to hold it in check;
+succumbed to it, when he made the 'Kilmainham Treaty;' and, finally, how,
+after declaring that Parnell and his adherents were 'aiming at
+dismemberment through rapine,' he became the author of the Land Act of
+1881, and threw the Irish landed gentry as a sop to Cerberus,--is
+sufficiently known, but I shall recur to the subject. During these years,
+Parnell, artfully playing the double game, which this born conspirator
+especially made his boast, and linking what he called 'a constitutional
+with an illegal movement,' had more than once spoken on behalf of Home
+Rule in the House of Commons, his moderate and even statesmanlike language
+being in marked contrast with his treasonable harangues in Ireland. But
+Parliament had been otherwise engaged with Irish affairs; it had become
+more averse to Home Rule than ever; it had learned what the movement had
+begun to involve, veiled, if not open, rebellion against the State, and it
+voted down the question by immense majorities. Statesmen of all parties,
+Tory, Whig, and Radical, without exception, concurred in this view; Lord
+Salisbury, Lord Spencer, and John Bright alike condemned the very idea of
+Home Rule. Mr. Gladstone indeed asserted afterwards that he had a policy
+of this kind in his thoughts; but if he had, he kept it to himself; it
+cannot be gathered from his speeches of the time; he never breathed to
+his colleagues a word about it; he allowed them to pronounce against Home
+Rule with his full apparent sanction.[22]
+
+Mr. Gladstone's Ministry fell in 1885; Majuba, Gordon, and his Irish
+policy had set the best sense of the country against him. Lord Salisbury's
+Government came in his place; for a short time the tendency, too often
+seen in British parties, to temporise with sedition and even crime in
+Ireland was exhibited with untoward results; the negotiations between
+Parnell and Lord Carnarvon have not yet been explained. At the General
+Election of 1885, Parnell openly took the Conservative side, denounced the
+Liberals in the bitterest language, and perhaps, through the influence of
+the Irish vote, deprived them of a few seats in England. His principal
+object certainly was to increase his own power and that of his band by
+weakening the strongest of British parties; but this association with the
+Conservatives probably lessened the antipathy of their opponents to Home
+Rule, and was not without effect on the events that followed. Ireland,
+however, was by no means a prominent question in this electoral contest;
+the Tory, Whig, and Radical leaders dealt, for the most part, with
+different topics; and though Mr. Gladstone dropped ambiguous phrases,
+which, he ere long contended, indicated his conversion to Home Rule, his
+lieutenants continued to declare against this policy, their chief
+remaining openly in accord with them; indeed, all that could be collected,
+from what he wrote and said, was that he called upon the country to give
+him such decisive support as would make him independent of all Irish
+factions. The result of this General Election, taken as a whole, was to
+gain for the Liberals a majority of some eighty seats in Great Britain;
+but in Ireland it effected a notable change in politics. By a recent,
+and, for Ireland, a most unwise statute, the electoral franchise had been
+assimilated in the Three Kingdoms; political ascendency had, for the first
+time, been secured for the masses of Catholic Ireland, largely an ignorant
+and superstitious multitude; property and intelligence were overwhelmed at
+the polls; and Parnell and his satellites, now called Nationalists, won
+more than eighty seats out of a total of one hundred and three. The
+Liberal majority, therefore, would be effaced should the Irish leader and
+his men give the Conservatives their votes; a weak Government would be the
+inevitable result; Mr. Gladstone, now in his seventy-sixth year, could
+hardly expect to return to office. In these circumstances, it became
+gradually known that Mr. Gladstone had accepted Home Rule in principle,
+and was even prepared to legislate upon the subject. It would be unfair to
+assert that personal motives alone determined this sudden resolve; though
+obviously should the Liberal chief retain the allegiance of his party, and
+draw Parnell and the Nationalists to his side, by inaugurating Home Rule
+as a practical measure, he would inevitably be restored to power with a
+great majority. Mr. Gladstone, ever ready to yield to a popular cry, may
+have believed that five-sixths of Ireland were passionately eager for Home
+Rule; he may have been convinced himself that, as affairs now stood,
+Parliament would well-nigh be reduced to a deadlock should nothing be done
+to redress the balanced state of parties, and that Home Rule was the
+condition of a stable Government; he may have thought that since the
+Conservative dalliance with Parnell, it had become impossible permanently
+to resist this policy; yet these considerations form no apology for the
+conduct of the aged, but most impulsive, statesman. Only a few years
+before large parts of Ireland had been in a state of frightful anarchy; a
+rebellious and socialistic movement against British rule and Irish landed
+property had acquired great force; even at the present time, the National
+League, replacing the Land League, kept disorder prevalent in many
+counties. Was this the moment to effect a revolution in Ireland, to tamper
+with, and to impair, the Union, to hand over the loyalty, the property,
+and the worth of the island to the classes and the men against whom but,
+as yesterday, it had been necessary to put the severest coercion in force?
+
+Lord Salisbury resigned office in the first months of 1886; Mr. Gladstone
+became Prime Minister in his stead. Had parties in the House of Commons
+remained unchanged, the prospect for the old statesman would have been
+auspicious; the Liberals and Nationalists combined would have been
+supreme; Home Rule would have been the fruit of the new alliance. But the
+most distinguished men of the Liberal party, resenting a coalition far
+worse than that of Fox and North, and convinced that Home Rule would be
+ruinous to the State, fell off from their leader in large numbers; the
+powerful Press of Great Britain, with few exceptions, emphatically
+condemned the Minister's conduct. Mr. Gladstone, however, did not pause in
+his violent course; he introduced his first Home Rule Bill in April, 1886.
+I can only glance at the main features of this famous measure, and devote
+to it a passing comment.[23] A Parliament was to be established in the
+Irish capital; this, subject to the limitations set forth in the Bill, was
+practically to exercise supreme power in Ireland. This Parliament was to
+be composed of two Orders, the first containing one hundred and three
+members, and formed of a few Irish peers and of men of some substance; the
+second comprising two hundred and four or two hundred and six members
+elected on the existing democratic franchise. The two Orders were
+ordinarily to sit together; but should differences in legislative
+measures arise, the first Order was, for a short time, to have a
+suspensive veto on the decisions of the second Order, which, however,
+possessing an immense majority, would almost necessarily in the long run
+completely prevail. The Irish Parliament was precluded from legislating on
+many subjects, for the most part Imperial, but partly domestic; it was
+notably to have no control over the Customs and Excise of Ireland, which
+were to be kept in the hands of the Imperial Parliament; and though it was
+permitted to impose any other taxes, the whole revenue of Ireland was to
+pass through the hands of a British official, who was to pay into the
+Imperial Treasury a sum of about four millions sterling, as a contribution
+from Ireland, for Imperial purposes, before the Irish Treasury could
+receive a farthing. Bills voted by the Irish Parliament might be annulled
+by the veto of the Lord-Lieutenant and perhaps of the British Ministry;
+and the Judicial Committee of the English Privy Council, reinforced by a
+small body of Irish judges, was to have the power to pronounce Acts of the
+Irish Parliament void, if inconsistent with its constitutional rights.
+Subject, however, to these restrictions and checks, the Irish Parliament
+was to be a sovereign power in Ireland; it could practically appoint or
+displace the Irish Executive Government; it could enact, change, or repeal
+any laws it should think fit; it could pass any resolutions it pleased; if
+an assembly partly subordinate, it would be largely supreme. Ireland was
+to have no representatives in the Imperial Parliament, though this could
+dispose of the Irish Customs and Excise; no Irish protest could be made at
+Westminster against unjust fiscal exaction, by no means impossible. For
+the rest, the Union was nominally not disturbed, and the Imperial
+Parliament was nominally left intact; but it was declared that the Irish
+Parliament was to possess the rights secured to it, unless these were
+annulled by an Act of the Imperial Parliament, to which the Irish had
+given its consent, or by an Act of the Imperial Parliament, in which
+representatives from Ireland should have a voice.
+
+The Bill was debated with great force of argument, but hardly in its high
+constitutional aspects. Like the plan of Butt, and every plan of the kind,
+it impliedly, if not expressly, repealed the Union, for the very creation
+of an Irish Parliament destroyed the real authority of the Imperial
+Parliament, the symbol and guarantee of the Union, in one of the main
+parts of the Three Kingdoms. It effected a radical change in our polity as
+a whole, for practically it gave birth to three Parliaments, the Irish
+sitting in College Green in Dublin, the British at Westminster without
+Irish members, and the Imperial, properly to be only so-called, when
+assembled upon one great occasion; and, even more distinctly than the
+scheme of Butt, it let the principle of Federation into the constitution
+of the State. And it did all this obscurely, indirectly, and, so to speak,
+with reserve; the hand of a veiled prophet appeared in his work; this must
+have led to endless controversies dangerous in the extreme. Nor did the
+Bill even attempt to mark out the distinction between Irish, British, and
+Imperial affairs, which its author had declared was a _sine quâ non_; this
+distinction, in fact, cannot be drawn, as Mr. Gladstone acknowledged
+afterwards; Irish, British, and Imperial affairs so run into each other,
+that they cannot be divided into separate heads, to be under the
+jurisdiction of different Parliaments. The conditions, too, which Mr.
+Gladstone described, as essential to a measure of Home Rule, were, in no
+sense, fulfilled. 'The Unity of the Empire,' that is, of Great Britain and
+Ireland, as Mr. Gladstone no doubt had in his mind, was not secured, or,
+even in name, preserved; the subordinate Irish Parliament and its superior
+might, and probably would, come in serious conflict; this was absolutely
+inconsistent with the unity to be maintained. The 'political equality of
+England, Scotland, and Ireland' was not assured; the Bill placed Ireland
+in a degraded position, especially in all that dealt with taxation, and
+through the exclusion of Irish members from the British House of Commons.
+It did not 'produce an equitable distribution of Imperial burdens,' for
+the financial arrangements were thoroughly unjust, and subjected Ireland
+arbitrarily to a most galling tribute, without giving her the means of
+making a complaint. It did not 'provide safeguards for the minority,' that
+is, for the loyal classes of Protestant and Catholic Ireland; it handed
+them over to an Irish Parliament, certain to be for years an instrument of
+their avowed enemies; and its supplement, a Land Purchase Bill, did not
+furnish a third part of the funds required to buy out the Irish landlords,
+a class which, Mr. Gladstone declared, it was 'an obligation of duty and
+honour' to save harmless, and which he admitted an Irish Parliament would,
+probably, plunder and destroy. Lastly, the Bill did not secure 'finality;'
+it was in no sense in the nature of a 'permanent settlement,' as
+subsequent events have conclusively proved.[24]
+
+It may be urged, however, that even if this measure made a fundamental
+change in the constitution of these realms, and did not satisfy the
+conditions its author laid down, still the real question was, would it
+bring peace to Ireland, and improve the relations in which she stood
+towards Great Britain? Mr. Gladstone and his followers assumed that this
+would be the case; the 'Union of Hearts' was to accomplish marvels; but
+this assumption was without the slightest warrant. The most favourable way
+to consider the subject, from the point of view of the Home Rule party, is
+to suppose that Great Britain and Ireland were two communities, in no
+sense estranged from each other, and that Ireland was not a widely divided
+people; and that both were not unwilling to accept the Bill, as a kind of
+modification of the partnership made by the Treaty of Union. This
+supposition would be obviously contrary to the facts; but, even on this
+supposition, the proposed measure would have completely failed to attain
+its objects, and, on any ordinary view of human nature, would have
+exasperated Great Britain and Ireland alike, and could not have been a
+'message of peace' to Ireland. The Parliament at Westminster would soon
+have found out that its real sovereignty in Ireland had been practically
+destroyed; that the Irish Parliament could, in many ways, interfere with
+British and Imperial affairs; that most of the checks on its powers were
+of little avail; this would certainly deeply offend the deceived British
+nation. The Irish Parliament, on the other hand, would necessarily resent
+the harsh limitations by which it had been bound; yet as it had most of
+the powers of a real Parliament, it could very effectually evade or impair
+these; could, through its Executive, largely annul them; could, at least,
+make continual and powerful protests. Discord, and perhaps conflict,
+between Great Britain and Ireland, from the nature of the case, would be
+the result; and, besides, there were special provisions in the Bill which
+would be deemed intolerable by five-sixths of Irishmen. Even loyal Ireland
+would not endure the banishment of Irish representatives from the British
+House of Commons, which would have power to impose the Irish Customs and
+Excise; this would be taxation without representation, in the very worst
+sense. It was monstrous that Ireland was to contribute a large sum for the
+charge of the Empire and yet was to have no voice in the Empire's affairs;
+it was humiliating that a British official was to have absolute control
+over the whole Irish revenue. All this was subjecting Ireland to a
+degrading tribute; it should be added that the prerogative of the English
+Privy Council, to set aside practically Acts of the Irish Parliament,
+would have provoked the deepest and most widespread discontent. The Bill,
+in a word, revealed strange ignorance of the feelings of mankind; it would
+have worked on the assumption only that human beings in Great Britain and
+Ireland were without passions and wills of their own; it would have been
+blown to the winds, when put to the test.
+
+But 'the circumstances,' to adopt the words of Burke, 'are what render
+every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind;'[25]
+what were the circumstances in the present instance? England and Catholic
+Ireland had been long opposed; the Land and the National Leagues formed a
+conspiracy against our rule in Ireland; England had interests in Ireland
+of the first importance; she had a large community of her own blood and
+faith in Ireland, attached to the Union and the old mother country.
+Ireland had been distracted for ages by feuds of race and religion;
+Protestant and Catholic Ireland stood apart from each other; the Irish
+Parliament, created by the Bill, would certainly be an instrument of the
+heads of the Catholic masses, supported by Parnell and his band, and by
+Fenians across the Atlantic. Under these conditions, Home Rule would have
+been a fatal gift, ruinous to Great Britain and Ireland alike. Suppose,
+for example, that an Irish Parliament, established in College Green, since
+1886, had ruled Ireland during the war in South Africa. It would
+unquestionably have taken the side of the Boers, as the Nationalist
+leaders have openly done; and it would have possessed the means of doing
+infinite mischief. It could have passed resolutions condemning the war;
+have called on Irishmen to keep aloof from the British army; have
+discouraged recruiting throughout Ireland; have sent messages of good will
+to the Boer Government. But probably it would have gone far beyond these,
+its constitutional, rights; it could have winked at the preparation of an
+armed force in Ireland to be despatched to the aid of the Boers; it
+could have invited Foreign Powers to put a stop to the conflict; nay, it
+could have laid hands on the Irish taxes, and refused to 'pay tribute to
+an alien Government;' and what, in these cases, would have been England's
+means of obtaining redress, save by the power of the sword? In the
+instance of other wars, the same course would be followed; we cannot
+forget that at Nationalist meetings, the Mahdi, the Dervishes, nay, all
+our enemies, were the objects of the applause of shouting Irish
+multitudes. And as the Irish Parliament could injure England in war, so it
+could embarrass and annoy her, in a hundred ways, in peace. There was
+nothing in the Bill to prevent Protection in Ireland, for the Irish
+Parliament could vote bounties on Irish exports; there was nothing to
+prevent the issue of Irish assignats, to mask confiscation of different
+kinds; and recourse would not improbably be had to these very expedients.
+It is unnecessary to dwell on what would be the legislation of the Irish
+Parliament at home, and the administration of the Executive it would have
+a right to set up. Composed as it would be, it would abolish 'landlordism'
+by a stroke of the pen, or by merely preventing the recovery of rent; it
+would simply turn society upside down, and establish a Catholic ascendency
+by many degrees worse than Protestant ascendency ever was; it would, in a
+word, let revolution loose in the island. Protestant Ireland would, as a
+matter of course, resist; a savage war of race and creed would certainly
+follow; the scenes of 1690 and 1798 might well be repeated; and the
+struggle would end in general bankruptcy. England, in her own interest,
+and in that of her friends in Ireland, would assuredly intervene, under
+conditions like these; and the concession of Home Rule would probably lead
+to reconquest.
+
+The Home Rule Bill of 1886--apart from the fatal evils it must have
+caused--placed Ireland in such an inferior position, that every Irishman
+of spirit ought to have treated it with contempt; it was so dangerous to
+Great Britain, and, indeed, to the Empire, that John Bright declared that
+not twenty English members approved of it at heart. Mr. Gladstone himself,
+it should be remarked, regarded it with no doubtful misgivings; he
+presented it to the House of Commons as 'but a choice of evils;' his
+measure itself, in many passages, revealed the profoundest distrust of the
+Parliament he proposed to create. Parnell, imposing his imperious will on
+his followers, accepted the Bill with professions of delight; this was
+effusively welcomed by the emotional statesman, deceived by an
+unscrupulous plotter, over and over again; it is now known this was a mere
+pretence; Home Rule, under the conditions of the scheme, would have been
+made a stepping-stone only for larger demands; and this, indeed, might
+have been easily foreseen. The Bill was rejected by a majority which did
+not express the true sense of the House of Commons, and showed how strong
+may be the ties of party; the great body of the Liberals, as, doubtless,
+they now bitterly regret, threw in their lot with Mr. Gladstone in his
+most reckless venture. It is of more importance to observe what the views
+on the subject were of the conspirators in America, who had set the Land
+and National Leagues on foot, and had supplied almost the whole of their
+funds; without their assistance the movement led by Parnell would probably
+have never struggled into life. The prospect opened by the Home Rule Bill
+was thus welcomed by the Clan na Gael, the most energetic and daring of
+the Fenian parties; it will be noted that it was to be a means only to a
+very decisive end. 'The achievement of a National Parliament gives us a
+footing on Irish soil; it gives us the agencies and instrumentalities of a
+government _de facto_, at the very commencement of the Irish struggle. It
+places the government of the land in the hands of our friends and
+brothers. It removes the Castle's rings, and gives us what we may well
+express as the plant of an armed revolution.'[26] And at a great Fenian
+meeting held after the rejection of the Bill, one of the leading speakers
+dropped these significant words: 'We have no desire to force the hand of
+Parnell, or to drive the Irish people into war unprepared. All that we
+demand is this, and we will be satisfied with nothing less--that no leader
+of the Irish people, who is supposed to speak for them, shall commit
+himself, or them, to accepting as a final settlement, bills of relief
+unworthy of the dignity of Ireland's national demand. We are perfectly
+willing to see them accept such bills as that of Gladstone, as a
+settlement on account, but that must not be accepted as closing the
+transaction. We see no wisdom in it. It lowers the tone of the national
+cause. It lowers the spirit of the true people. To ask them to subside to
+a species of mere provincialism is an outrage on their struggle of seven
+hundred years for liberty. We admit that it may be good policy on the part
+of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Davitt to be what is called moderate in tone; but
+for us, who represent the national idea of the Irish people, it would be
+worse than folly to conceal our sentiments. We recognise that Ireland is
+incapable of fighting at present.'[27]
+
+Mr. Gladstone dissolved Parliament when it had thrown the Bill out; he
+appears really to have believed that the nation would give its sanction to
+Home Rule. At the General Election of 1886, he exerted himself 'in the
+sacred cause of Ireland,' with the energy he had shown in his Midlothian
+Campaign; he associated his new Irish policy with appeals to the
+multitude; the opposition to him was that 'of the classes against the
+masses;' in a word, the enthusiastic, and perhaps sincere, convert played,
+with little scruple, the part of a mere demagogue. But England pronounced
+against him, with no uncertain voice; 'men of education and property,' as
+he sadly acknowledged, resisted him with the steadfastness of the English
+nature; a great majority was sent into the House of Commons pledged
+against Home Rule; Lord Salisbury's Government came again into office. It
+deserves special notice that the rejection of the Bill did not, as was
+predicted would be the case, arouse anything like real discontent in
+Ireland, or cause her Catholic community to stir; this spectacle, which
+has been seen over and over again, proves how little the main body of the
+Irish people care for a political revolution of the kind; and how Home
+Rule, as Parnell and his band conceived it, was the work of a conspiracy
+of foreign origin, seeking, through it, to subvert British rule in
+Ireland. The real purpose of these men was very clearly shown at a
+Convention assembled at Chicago, in the summer of 1886; speeches of the
+most incendiary nature were made; and two of Parnell's envoys, despatched
+to collect funds 'for the cause,' announced that, after the failure of Mr.
+Gladstone's measure, their 'duty was to make the government of Ireland by
+England impossible.' Two or three years of trouble in Ireland followed; it
+is unnecessary to refer to these at any length. A season of agricultural
+distress and of a fall in prices made the payment of Irish rents
+difficult; the occasion was seized by the heads of the National League,
+which had gradually been acquiring formidable strength; the 'Plan of
+Campaign' was set afoot; and another attack was made on the Irish landed
+gentry, with the ultimate object of paralysing the Irish Government, as
+had been solemnly proclaimed at Chicago. The social disorder of this
+period was not so deeply marked with horrible deeds of blood, as the
+Saturnalia of the Land League were; but the movement was, perhaps, not
+less dangerous; the cruel practice of 'boycotting' was reduced to a
+system, and caused widespread misery and distress; an agrarian war was
+carried on in a few counties; judges, magistrates, and juries were
+terrorised in the administration of the law; and there were too numerous
+instances of atrocious crimes. But a firm hand was at the helm of the
+Irish Government; Mr. Balfour did not palter with sedition and treason;
+the conspiracy was before long put down; and it should be added that
+'boycotting' and 'the Plan of Campaign' were unequivocally condemned at
+Rome.
+
+In this struggle between the forces of disorder and law, the Rump of the
+Liberal party, which had accepted Home Rule, freely declared itself on the
+side of the National League and of anarchy. Mr. Gladstone, however,
+towered over his fellows; his vehement and, when aroused, unscrupulous
+nature, has never been more unfortunately displayed. He had been three
+times at the head of the State, charged with the administration of Irish
+affairs; the Government in office was engaged in a conflict with a
+conspiracy of no contemptible strength; yet Mr. Gladstone did not shrink
+from throwing his full weight into the scale against it, and giving his
+sanction to the movement led by Parnell and his creatures. His conduct was
+so flagrantly at odds with his former self, that, but for the gravity of
+the situation, it would have been ludicrous; it consisted in adoring what
+he had burned, and burning what he had adored; nothing like it had been
+seen since Fox, breaking away from the traditions of British statesmen,
+flung himself into the arms of Jacobin France, and rejoiced at every
+reverse that befell England.[28] A remarkable episode in the politics of
+the day was not without real effect on events that followed. The acts of
+the Land and, in part, of the National Leagues, and of the leaders of the
+revolutionary movements which had convulsed Ireland, were investigated by
+the judges of the Special Commission appointed by Parliament for the
+purpose; the inquiry, which lasted many months, was of supreme importance;
+such a damning sentence was never pronounced on a body of public men, as
+that pronounced on Parnell and his followers, though the accusation of
+treason was not brought into question.[29] This decision was sufficient
+for well-informed and sensible men; but Parnell was acquitted on a
+personal, but minor, charge, that of having been the author of the
+well-known forged letters all but approving of the assassinations in the
+Phoenix Park; Mr. Gladstone and his adherents welcomed him as an injured
+martyr; the House of Commons rang with their plaudits when he re-entered
+its walls. For a few months Parnell became a popular personage in
+democratic England; he had negotiations with Mr. Gladstone with respect to
+Home Rule, the tenor of which has not transpired; his satellites appeared
+at many public meetings, and split the ears of the groundlings with
+plausible talk about 'self-government' for Ireland and the 'Union of
+Hearts.' This mystification and falsehood were not without effect; the
+cause of Home Rule made a kind of progress in England; and, strange to
+say, the fall of Parnell which ere long followed--I shall not dwell on its
+squalid and grotesque incidents--had an influence in the same direction.
+Ireland had been brought into a state of comparative repose; the power of
+the National League appeared broken; the formidable leader of the
+conspiracy had left the stage; his adherents were scattered sheep, which
+had not a shepherd. With the ignorance of Irish affairs so common to
+Englishmen, and the desire, partly selfish, but partly generous, to 'get
+rid of the Irish difficulty,' by any tolerable means, thousands in the
+constituencies, even in England, lately bitterly hostile to it, were
+gradually won over to the idea of Home Rule.
+
+The General Election of 1892 followed; a number of causes, in addition to
+that I have set forth, contributed to favour the Home Rule movement. The
+'swing of the pendulum,' seen in British politics, since Democracy has
+gained the ascendant, very distinctly appeared; the 'idea that each side
+ought to have its innings' was widely spread; many Unionist seats were
+lost by these means. The extraordinary energy shown by Mr. Gladstone, at
+an age far beyond the ordinary span, had considerable influence on the
+masses; and though his real authority had been long on the wane, he was
+still the popular figure in England and, above all, in Scotland. He had,
+also, carefully kept his Home Rule scheme to himself; it was announced by
+his followers that his next measure for securing 'self-government,' as it
+was called, for Ireland, would be free from the manifest faults of that of
+1886, and would finally, and happily, settle the question. A large part of
+the electorate was gained in this way; but the influence that most
+effectually assisted Mr. Gladstone was, essentially, of a very different
+kind. The Anti-Unionist Liberals had been out of power for many years;
+though they had long been split into separate groups, they resolved to
+combine against the common enemy, and to drive the Unionist Government
+from its seat, by appeals to the ideas they assumed were dominant in
+democratic England and Scotland. The Newcastle programme was
+ostentatiously published; the question of Home Rule was mixed up with
+projects for disestablishing the Church in England and Wales, for the
+destruction or the emasculation of the House of Lords, for enforcing
+temperance by the tyranny of the Local Veto, for extending the suffrage
+and raising the labourer's status; in this way they satisfied themselves
+they 'would sweep the country.' They knew, indeed, that Mr. Gladstone had
+no heart for much of their policy; but his passionate eagerness to
+accomplish Home Rule was notorious; they believed that by giving him a
+cordial support on this question, they would secure his powerful aid for
+the others, and that by the process known as 'log-rolling,' they would
+attain their objects. The Unionist party was weakened at the election; but
+the sanguine hopes of its opponents were not fulfilled. Many of the
+Radical cries were far from popular; they nearly all combined large
+classes against them; England returned a large majority to the House of
+Commons pledged against Home Rule, if not so considerable as six years
+before; and though Scotland and Wales were, in the main, favourable to Mr.
+Gladstone's policy, still the electorate of Great Britain, as a whole,
+pronounced against it. The election in Ireland presented features which,
+with respect to Home Rule, were of marked significance. In 1886, as in
+1885, the educated and upper classes were swamped at the polls, by the
+flood of illiterate and indigent multitudes; the Irish Catholic Church
+used, nay, abused, its immense authority, to secure votes for Mr.
+Gladstone's coming measure. The same spectacle was beheld in 1892; but an
+element of confusion and disorder came in; the leaders of the factions,
+divided by the fall of Parnell, though Nationalists, ferociously flew at
+each other's throats; the election was marked by disgraceful scenes of
+lawlessness. These certainly prefigured what would be the character of a
+future Irish Parliament sitting in College Green.
+
+This election gave Mr. Gladstone a majority of some forty seats in the
+House of Commons, but a majority composed of not well-united elements; and
+the best opinion of England was strongly averse to his policy. But the
+veteran statesman--he was in his eighty-third year--did not pause for a
+moment in his headlong venture, though ominous sounds were being already
+heard; after the resignation of Lord Salisbury, through a weak adverse
+vote, his rival became Prime Minister for the fourth time. He had staked
+everything to obtain the success of the cause to which he had passionately
+devoted his declining years; he brought in his second Home Rule Bill in
+the first months of 1893. The measure had much in common with that of
+1886; but in some respects it was very different, especially in one
+feature of supreme importance. An Irish Parliament was again to be set up
+in Dublin; but it was to be a much smaller body than that proposed by the
+previous Bill; it was to be composed of a Legislative Council of
+forty-eight members only, and of a Legislative Assembly of only a hundred
+and three; these were analogous to the First and Second Orders of 1886,
+but were not to be even half in numbers; and no Irish peers were to have a
+place in the new Parliament. The Legislative Council and Assembly,
+differing here from the original scheme, were to sit, not together, but
+apart; but the Legislative Council, like the First Order, was to have a
+temporary suspensive veto on the Assembly's acts; the Assembly, too, like
+the Second Order, possessing a majority which would place real power in
+its hands; and both bodies, it should be added, being more democratic than
+the two which were to have been created in 1886. The new Irish Parliament,
+like that to be formed seven years before, was restricted by
+limitations--these much the same as those contained in the former Bill--in
+a number of Imperial and domestic matters; it was, like its predecessor,
+to be subjected to the same kind of veto, and to nearly the same authority
+of the English Privy Council. In finance, the 'tribute,' which had been
+loudly condemned by all parties in Ireland, was given up; there was to be
+no British official to lay his hands on Irish revenue, and to divert it
+from its legitimate uses; but the Irish Customs were to be appropriated to
+the Imperial charge, which Ireland was declared to be justly liable to
+pay; and this was a sum of about two millions and a half, with an addition
+for a time of one million, a sum less than the estimate made in 1886. The
+Irish Parliament, however, if thus made largely subordinate, was like the
+Parliament of the preceding Bill, to be in many, and most important,
+respects supreme. It was to rule Ireland as a sovereign power, subject to
+the limitations by which it was to be bound; it could make, change, and
+repeal laws, as regards the Irish community, almost as it pleased; it
+could, in a word, do nearly everything within the province of a real
+Parliament. Above all, it could appoint and control the Irish Executive
+Government, to which the administration of Irish affairs would belong; and
+it would thus have complete power over the most important machinery of the
+State.
+
+The Bills of 1886 and of 1893 so far resembled each other, with some
+distinctions; but, in other respects, they markedly differed. The
+supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, implied but not expressed in the
+first scheme, was unequivocally asserted in the second, though this
+supremacy could not be effective, as respects Ireland. The Imperial
+Parliament was nominally left untouched by both Bills, though this was a
+play on words only; but it was to hold a position in the second it was not
+to hold in the first; the Union was not in terms repealed by either
+measure, though virtually it was repealed by both, through the mere
+creation of an Irish Parliament. The Bill of 1886 had, as its complement,
+a Land Purchase Bill; in fact, both were made parts of the same policy; a
+sum of £50,000,000 was to be an indemnity for Irish landlords who should
+think fit to part with their estates; for Mr. Gladstone, we have seen, had
+declared that it was 'an obligation of duty and honour' to protect this
+order of men; and he asserted that Parliament would, doubtless, vote any
+further sums required, a singular exhibition of credulous hope, for these
+would have amounted to £150,000,000 at least; and he had himself, in a
+speech addressed to Lord George Hamilton, valued the lands of Ireland at
+£300,000,000. But what was to be deemed sacred, in 1886, had a very
+different aspect in 1893; the settlement of the Irish land was, indeed,
+withheld for three years from the Irish Parliament, but, after this brief
+space of time, this was to be certainly left to a body, which Mr.
+Gladstone had evidently thought would make short work of the Irish landed
+gentry, and would drive them, in beggary, out of their own country. These
+differences, however, between the two Bills, sank into insignificance
+compared to a vital distinction which made them essentially unlike each
+other, and made their projects of Home Rule completely dissimilar. The
+exclusion of Irish representatives from the House of Commons at
+Westminster, under the measure of 1886, was palpably unjust, and had been
+condemned with much force of argument. Mr. Gladstone proposed to redress
+this wrong by summoning eighty Irish members into the Imperial House of
+Commons; these were to have no cognisance of British questions, but were
+to have a right to vote on Imperial and even Irish questions, though the
+Imperial Parliament was to have little or no power in Ireland, and an
+Irish Parliament was practically to fill its place, and to have all but
+supreme authority over Irish affairs. This strange expedient obviously
+made the Home Rule schemes of 1886 and 1893 altogether different; but Mr.
+Gladstone never saw the essential distinction; he maintained that the
+inclusion of the Irish members was little more than a detail of the
+measure. It would be perhaps unfair to insist that he introduced this
+immense change in order only to strengthen his already enfeebled party,
+which would be greatly in want of Irish votes at Westminster; more
+probably his intellect, yielding to old age, did not thoroughly grasp all
+that was involved in his project.[30]
+
+The Bill of 1893, from a purely constitutional point of view, was
+infinitely more objectionable than that of 1886. It not only, I have said,
+virtually repealed the Union; it created a kind of Federalism in these
+realms to which there has never been a parallel. The Irish Parliament was
+practically to rule Ireland; no British members were to show their faces
+in it; it was to be all but the sovereign of the Irish State. The British
+Parliament was nominally to be sovereign of the British State;
+representatives from Ireland were not to appear in it, and, in theory,
+they were not to deal with British questions. The Imperial Parliament was
+to be analogous to a supreme Federal Council; this ought to have
+jurisdiction over Imperial affairs alone; but eighty Irish members were to
+have seats in it, and they were to have a right to vote on Imperial and
+Irish questions, though Ireland was to have a separate Parliament of her
+own. This arrangement, in conception, was simply monstrous; it gave
+Ireland powers to which she had no pretence to a claim; it really
+subjected Great Britain to her; it formed a Federation in which a weak and
+small State was to have immense authority over another tenfold as strong;
+it might be described as one-sided Federalism run mad. Passing from the
+main principles to the details of the Bill, this, like its predecessor,
+did not satisfy the conditions Mr. Gladstone had deemed to be essential.
+It did not separate British, Irish, and Imperial affairs; its author
+admitted at last that this was not possible. It asserted the supremacy of
+the Imperial Parliament, and gave it a more imposing position than it had
+under the Bill of 1886; but it did not maintain the Unity of the Three
+Kingdoms; the mere creation of an Irish Parliament placed this in
+jeopardy. It did not provide for the 'political equality' of Great Britain
+and Ireland, for, in contradiction to the measure of seven years before,
+it practically gave Ireland a kind of ascendency; her representatives were
+to possess rights in no sense to be justified. It did not provide an
+'equitable distribution of Imperial burdens;' in this province it would
+have done wrong to Great Britain; for, while it abandoned the odious Irish
+tribute of 1886, and an effective control over Irish revenue, its
+expedient of allocating the Irish Customs, and nothing else, as the only
+source for the payment of Imperial charges, would, in all probability,
+have caused the Imperial Treasury a great loss; the Customs would have
+been enormously reduced by smuggling, to which Irishmen have always been
+much addicted, which the Irish Parliament would have no interest to
+prevent, and which, very likely, it would directly encourage. Again, it
+did not create 'safeguards for the minority;' as we have seen, it threw
+the Irish landed gentry, after a brief respite, to the wolves, that is, to
+the tender mercies of the Irish Parliament; and, like the measure of 1886,
+it took no heed of Protestant and loyal Catholic Ireland, as a whole,
+though this assuredly was 'a minority' that required protection. Finally,
+it could not have effected a 'permanent settlement' of the affairs of
+Ireland; a 'lopsided' and iniquitous arrangement like this would certainly
+have had a very short existence.
+
+The measure of 1893, in short, would have effected a complete revolution
+in the polity of these realms; it would have given the least important of
+the Three Kingdoms an iniquitous authority over the most important; it
+would unnaturally have placed weakness in superiority to power; it would
+have subjected the dominant to the lesser partner; all this, it will be
+observed, followed from the inclusion of Irish representatives in the
+Imperial Parliament, who, though a Parliament in Dublin was to rule
+Ireland, were to have a right to deal with Imperial and Irish questions.
+Mr. Gladstone, I repeat, seems never to have understood the strange and
+ruinous consequences this would involve; but this can be made manifest by
+one or two examples. The Irish members would be excluded from the British
+Parliament, and would have no right to vote on purely British questions,
+say upon the extension of the British railway system, or the
+disfranchisement of an English or Scottish borough. But they would have
+eighty seats in the Imperial Parliament; and as it was impossible to
+separate a number of British questions from those of an Imperial or Irish
+character, they would have a most potent influence over British affairs;
+for example, they could legitimately vote upon such subjects as the
+confidence to be placed in a British Ministry, the financial relations
+between Great Britain and Ireland, or the validity of British incumbrances
+affecting Irish estates. The exclusion, however, of Irish members from the
+British Parliament, and their introduction into the Imperial Parliament,
+would have led to even more disastrous results; it must, in many
+instances, have caused a complete paralysis of the State. This in-and-out
+plan, as it was derisively called, must have made Parliamentary government
+well-nigh impossible; if Irish members were to have a right to vote in the
+same House of Commons on Imperial and Irish questions, but were not to
+have a right to vote on British questions, to vote, say, upon a war with a
+Foreign Power, and upon the domicile and status of Irish subjects, but not
+to vote on matters of purely British commerce, there might, and very often
+would be, two conflicting majorities in the leading House of Parliament;
+Parliamentary affairs would be brought to a stand; the tenure of even the
+strongest Ministry would be utterly insecure. It is needless to point out
+that the relations between Great Britain and Ireland would almost
+certainly have been more strained, under the Bill of 1893, than they would
+have been under that of 1886; and that the government of Ireland by the
+Irish Parliament, would, under both, have been much of the same character.
+The British nation would have been indignant at the humiliation of their
+ancient Parliament, which would be sometimes placed at the mercy of Irish
+members; it would have condemned the weakening in Ireland of its
+authority, through the mere establishment of an Irish Parliament; it would
+have been sorely vexed that Irish smuggling would filch away a large part
+of British revenue. It should be borne in mind, too, that the Irish
+members, who would have been let into the Imperial Parliament, would have
+been more difficult to deal with, by many degrees, more openly disloyal,
+more obstructive, than Irish Nationalists could be, as affairs stand at
+present; they would have the support of the Irish Parliament; the Imperial
+Parliament could hardly impose a check on them. As for the rule of the
+Irish Parliament, within its proper domain, it would have been the same,
+or much the same, under either measure; that is, it would have been a
+succession of angry wranglings with England and oppression in Ireland,
+leading to anarchy and general ruin.
+
+The Home Rule Bill of 1886, in a word, bad measure as it was, was
+innoxious compared to the Home Rule Bill of 1893. The fatal tendency of
+the scheme was quickly perceived; the sound mind of England was profoundly
+stirred; the Bill was publicly burned in the City of London; innumerable
+petitions against it flowed in; an immense assembly, representing loyal
+Catholic and Protestant Ireland, met in the capital, and denounced this
+whole policy in most determined language. As had happened, too, seven
+years before, the Press of Great Britain, all but universally, condemned
+the new measure as hopelessly bad; it was significant that the Liberal
+Press was well-nigh silent, and that Mr. Gladstone was supported by very
+few petitions. The Opposition simply tore the Bill to shreds in the House
+of Commons; but the self-deluded Minister desperately held his course; the
+Radical groups servilely gave him their votes; the process of
+'log-rolling,' never before so recklessly displayed, kept his petty
+majority almost intact, a crying disgrace to any party in the State. At
+last, whether afraid of the country rising against him or yielding to the
+instigation of his Irish allies--his subserviency to their truculence had
+been most painful--Mr. Gladstone forced the measure through the House of
+Commons by a method never employed before; 'closure by compartments,'
+rightly compared to the 'guillotine,' put an end to resistance by
+iniquitous means. The Bill passed the Lower House by thirty-four votes
+only; not half of it had been examined or discussed; the part that had,
+had been so completely transformed, that its parent could hardly have
+known his own offspring. The most notable of these changes was that the
+in-and-out plan was given up; its ruinous effects had been fully dragged
+into the light, but an arrangement, perhaps even worse, had been placed in
+its stead. Ireland was to retain her Parliament in College Green; but the
+eighty Irish members were to have a right to sit in the Imperial
+Parliament, and to vote on all questions, not only Imperial and Irish, but
+strictly British alike. A philosophic and calm-minded writer has indicated
+what this would involve: 'Irish members may disestablish the Church of
+England, though England is to have no voice in the pettiest of Irish
+affairs. Irish members are to be allowed to impose taxes on England, say,
+to double the income tax, though of these taxes no inhabitant of Ireland
+will pay a penny; the Irish delegation, and this is the worst grievance of
+all, is to be enabled, in combination with a British minority, to detach
+Wales from England, or to vote Home Rule for Scotland, or to federalise
+still further the United Kingdom by voting that Man, Jersey, and Guernsey
+shall send members to the Imperial Parliament.'[31] To say that this
+proposal would be unconstitutional would be to do it too much honour; it
+was scandalous in the existing situation of affairs; it implied that heads
+of the National League, leaders of a rebellious and socialistic movement,
+would have the power, without restriction or check, to rule the Imperial
+Parliament, in many instances, with reference to exclusively English and
+Scottish questions; it practically bound Great Britain hand and foot in
+fetters to Ireland; it was rightly called 'an absurd piece of infamy.' It
+is unnecessary to say that the system it would have established could not
+have stood a trial of even three months; England, whenever crossed, would
+have indignantly swept it away. But Nemesis had commended the poisoned
+chalice to Mr. Gladstone's lips; the project, on which he had staked his
+fortunes, was that which he had incorrectly ascribed to Butt, and had
+declared to be impossible and worse.
+
+The Bill, it was notorious, could not have passed the House of Commons had
+not its rejection by the House of Lords been assured beforehand. It
+received its quietus, in that assembly, by a majority of about ten to one;
+the mind of England felt unquestionable relief; a great national peril had
+been averted. Exactly as had happened in 1886, scarcely a sound of
+discontent was heard in Ireland; the demand for Home Rule, in fact, is
+largely a fictitious cry, with which the great body of Irishmen has little
+or no sympathy; the evidence of this can be no longer doubtful. Mr.
+Gladstone retired, within a few months, from public life; one of his last
+acts was to shoot a Parthian arrow at the House of Lords, which, happily
+for these realms, had wrecked his policy; since that time he has
+disappeared from the scene; few eminent statesmen have been so soon
+forgotten. Home Rule was scattered to the winds at the General Election of
+1895; it has not been a prominent question at that of 1900; but if Ireland
+has sent more than eighty of its supporters into the House of Commons, the
+best elements in her community remain angrily hostile; and the opinion of
+Great Britain is distinctly adverse. For many reasons, however, as I have
+remarked, it is impossible to ignore the subject; in the strange chances
+and changes of British politics, and under our system of party government,
+a minister may again become an advocate of Home Rule, though certainly
+not in the present Parliament. Mr. Gladstone's Bills, it is likely, will
+not be heard of again; but Home Rule may be embodied in other forms; I may
+briefly refer to, and comment, on these. The project of restoring the
+Parliament of 1782-1800, an ideal of O'Connell during many years of his
+life, will hardly be revived in these times; the conditions in Great
+Britain and Ireland have so completely changed. The centripetal forces
+which, a hundred years ago, held the British and Irish Parliaments, in the
+main, together--they differed, however, on important questions--have long
+ago been all but completely destroyed; the present Irish Parliament could
+not be an assembly identified in race and faith with England; its House of
+Commons could not be elected by a small body of Protestants, and latterly
+by masses of Catholic peasants, the serfs of their landlords. The
+centrifugal forces, on the other hand, those which would keep the two
+Parliaments utterly apart, would probably be overwhelmingly strong; the
+Irish House of Commons would practically, at least for years, be ruled by
+the nominees of the National League and of the Irish Catholic priesthood;
+its electorate would, for the most part, be subject to these dominant
+powers; and Protestant Ireland would alike be swamped and incensed.
+Nevertheless, the restoration of what has been called Grattan's
+Parliament, would, in my judgment, be a much better project than either of
+Mr. Gladstone's schemes of Home Rule. The Irish Parliament would be bound
+by known and fixed precedents, which it would be difficult wholly to
+disregard; an Irish House of Lords would exist as a check on the House of
+Commons; above all--and this is of the very first importance--the Irish
+Executive would not be subject to the Irish Parliament; it would be
+appointed from Westminster by British statesmen. A Parliament of this type
+could hardly effect the ruinous mischiefs which Mr. Gladstone's Irish
+Parliaments could certainly effect.
+
+Ireland, it has been urged, would obtain Home Rule, if she were
+assimilated to one of our self-governing colonies. These nations, as they
+may fitly be called, are by no means, as is commonly supposed, wholly
+independent of the Crown and the Imperial Parliament; they have
+Parliaments and Executives of their own; but these in theory, and partly
+in fact, are subordinate. No Act passed by the Parliament of a
+self-governing colony can in any way contravene an Imperial statute; the
+governor of a self-governing colony is a real governor; appeals run to the
+English Privy Council from colonial Courts of Justice. Nevertheless,
+self-governing colonies are practically all but independent; they pay no
+contribution to Imperial charges; they maintain their own garrisons,
+without a British army in their midst--at least, in a great many cases;
+they are hardly ever interfered with by the Imperial Parliament, or by the
+men in power at Westminster. Why, it may be argued, should not the same
+liberties belong to Ireland, for centuries the peccant part of these
+kingdoms; would not the concession make her as loyal as most of our
+self-governing colonies? The answer is short, but amply sufficient; the
+circumstances of our self-governing colonies and of Ireland are altogether
+different. In none of these settlements is there the profound estrangement
+which has long divided Great Britain from Ireland; in none is there a
+community in which a loyal minority is separated from a disaffected
+majority by long-standing discords of race and faith; Ireland is at our
+doors, our self-governing colonies distant. Give Ireland a Parliament like
+that of Victoria, and Ireland would break off from the British connection;
+the Irish Parliament would possess ample power to trample on and oppress
+hundreds of thousands of law-abiding men, of whom the protection was
+England's duty; the Irish Parliament and Executive, within a few leagues
+of our coasts, could, in innumerable ways, do infinite mischief. The
+supposed analogy, therefore, completely fails; it would be treason to the
+State, and to loyal Irishmen, to make Ireland a self-governing colony; and
+no British politician has as yet countenanced this mode of Home Rule. It
+has been hinted again, but with bated breath and humbleness, that the
+relations of Great Britain and Ireland have been so long unfortunate, such
+a dreary record of disputes and miseries, that we should say to our
+intractable partner, 'Depart in peace;' in a word, separation is a
+conceivable Home Rule policy. This proposal has never been discussed in
+Parliament; the interest, the self-respect, the pride of Englishmen almost
+forbid the thought. Yet separation, strange as it may appear, would be a
+better and more safe expedient than either of Mr. Gladstone's schemes of
+Home Rule. The Imperial Parliament would have complete liberty to exercise
+its sovereign power in Great Britain; it would have a free hand to prevent
+injustice in Ireland, either by the strong arm, or by fiscal and other
+expedients, say, by laying an embargo on Irish products; it would not be
+subject to the exasperating but often effective checks which Home Rule
+would in any form involve; and the Imperial Executive would possess ample
+means to protect the interests of England and of her friends in Ireland.
+Let it not be forgotten that in perhaps the ablest speech ever made, in
+the House of Commons, on this subject, Peel declared that he would
+infinitely prefer separation to a repeal of the Union, by no means so evil
+a policy as Home Rule.
+
+A few politicians, however, have put the theory forward that 'Home Rule
+all round' will meet the 'national demand' of Ireland, and give her what
+they are pleased to call 'self-government.' England, Scotland, Ireland,
+and perhaps Wales are to have local Parliaments to deal with their own
+affairs; Imperial affairs are to be directed by an Imperial Council. I am
+willing to admit that a scheme of this kind would be better than Mr.
+Gladstone's Home Rule Bill of 1893; it would be less illogical, possibly
+not more disastrous. But I must be permitted to doubt whether these sages
+understand what their project certainly involves; this, indeed, seems to
+be rather in the nature of a device to angle for Nationalist votes,
+without scruple, and then to propose a plan which England, Scotland,
+Ireland, and Wales have never asked for, and which England and Scotland,
+at least, would indignantly reject. This scheme is pure Federalism, in the
+proper sense of the word; let us briefly consider what this means from the
+very nature of the case. England, Scotland, Ireland, and, I assume, Wales
+would form separate States; they would have separate Legislatures and
+Executives to manage their local affairs, separate local forces, separate
+Courts of Justice; they would be, essentially, separate countries. The
+Imperial Parliament and its Executive would be the only link between them;
+there would be an Imperial army, and navy, and Imperial tribunals; but the
+Imperial Parliament and its Executive would only have jurisdiction over
+Imperial affairs, and would be only the head of the separate States as
+respects Foreign Powers. But as it would be difficult in the extreme,
+under these conditions, to distinguish local from Imperial affairs, an
+arbiter of some kind, armed with sufficient powers, would be necessary to
+say what affairs were local and what Imperial, and decisively to pronounce
+on the subject, on the innumerable occasions when the question would
+arise; and it would be necessary, too, that there should be some means,
+perhaps a Referendum to a popular vote, to effect any constitutional
+change, to reform or to abolish the Constitution itself. This scheme
+obviously would be complex, intricate, and difficult to carry into effect;
+it would be a huge system of divided, and probably conflicting, powers,
+not easy to reconcile with each other; for this, and other reasons, it
+would require a formal Constitution reduced to writing, and setting forth,
+under distinct heads or articles, the conditions of the Federation that
+had been established, the spheres of the authority of the separate
+States, and the sphere of the authority of the Imperial Council. Is it
+possible to suppose that the Parliament of the United Kingdom would ever
+break up this ancient and undivided Monarchy; would tamely surrender its
+sovereign rights, and would substitute a new-fangled fabric of this kind
+for the venerable and unwritten constitution of these realms--a majestic
+temple that has grown up in silence; and that the British people, at all
+events, would not rise up in wrath at the very thought of such a change?
+For Federalism 'amounts to a proposal for changing the whole constitution
+of the United Kingdom. It is, in fact, the most "revolutionary" proposal,
+if the word "revolutionary" be used in its strict sense, which has ever
+been submitted to an English Parliament. The abolition of the House of
+Lords, the disestablishment of the Church, the abolition of the Monarchy,
+might leave the English Constitution far less essentially changed than
+would the adoption of Federalism.'[32]
+
+It should be observed, too, with respect to this subject, that the
+conditions, under which Federalism would have a chance of success, would
+be absolutely wanting in the present instance. England, Scotland, Ireland,
+and Wales have long been moulded into a single sovereign State, and united
+under a supreme Monarchy; no Federation, I venture to assert, has been
+formed out of communities that have had a government of this kind.
+Federations, in fact, have almost always grown out of an association of
+existing States, which desire to remain separate, and yet to be a nation
+for some purposes; they have not been evolved out of the fragments of one
+State artificially rent asunder. Again, Federalism requires that no single
+State should be enormously more powerful than the other partners; there
+must be something like equality between the different States;[33] it is
+unnecessary to remark that England has tenfold the resources and strength
+of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; and, in truth, would annihilate the
+Federation were her will really crossed, and break through the arbitrary
+limitations imposed on her. Suppose, for example, that England had set her
+heart on a great foreign war, and had the support of her own Parliament;
+does any one suppose that, if she were outvoted, by deputies from
+Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, in the Imperial Council, even though backed
+by their own Parliaments, the people of England would submit to be
+thwarted in this way; was Samson bound by the withs of the Philistines?
+Something like this, indeed, was seen in the great Civil War; the result
+was the subjugation of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and the complete
+ascendency of England, under Cromwell; an attempt to federalise the Three
+Kingdoms might lead to a similar issue. Let us assume, however, that,
+through some evil stroke of destiny, Federalism were made the constitution
+of these realms, and that this strange arrangement could be made to work
+even for a few years; the inevitable consequences, from the nature of the
+case, would follow. The omnipotence of the Imperial Parliament, the
+mainstay of the Empire, would be gone; so would the omnipotence of the
+Imperial Executive Government, the best security for justice and for equal
+liberties. Their powers would be parcelled out and subdivided; they would
+not survive anywhere in their complete fulness; they would be distributed
+in fractions between separate States, and would be transformed and
+impaired in the process; real Imperial unity and sovereignty could have no
+existence. General national weakness would be the probable result,
+leading, perhaps, to despotism within a short time; for Federalism is
+essentially weak; I have no sympathy with Jacobin France, but the
+Committee of Public Safety rightly put Federalism down, when they were
+engaged in their death-struggle with Europe; and Napoleon--perhaps the
+ablest ruler of the nineteenth century--approved of their conduct. But
+weakness would not be the only consequence; the dissemination of different
+powers would certainly produce disputes and conflicts between the Federal
+and the State authorities; above all, the very existence of separate
+States and of a Federal Government would divide allegiance, and powerfully
+tend to disruption, as was seen in the great Civil War in America. As
+regards Ireland, the establishment of 'Home Rule all round' would
+necessarily be attended by all the evils inseparable from Mr. Gladstone's
+schemes; but Federalism, having been thus made manifest, would probably
+increase, and in some sense justify, the alienation of Ireland from the
+other parts of these kingdoms.
+
+Home Rule, therefore, whatever the form it may assume, would be, it is my
+firm conviction, incompatible with the welfare of the Three Kingdoms,
+injurious to Great Britain, a curse to Ireland. In the peculiar
+circumstances which exist in Ireland, and to which I have adverted before,
+separation, I believe, would be an expedient less disastrous than Home
+Rule of any description, this involving the creation of an Irish
+Parliament, and of an Irish Executive, which would be its instrument. Home
+Rule, in fact, gloss it over as you please, has been forced to the front
+by an Irish faction, hostile to a man to the existence of British rule in
+Ireland, and depending on Fenianism in the United States; this party would
+be all-powerful in an Irish Parliament; and Home Rule would be made the
+means to a ruinous and disgraceful end. Thousands of Irishmen, indeed,
+honestly think Home Rule would do their country good, and have little or
+nothing to do with this bad conspiracy; this too, doubtless, is the case
+with the followers of Mr. Gladstone; but Home Rule is an Irish Nationalist
+movement, and Irish Nationalist movements are dangerous to the safety of
+the State. The Union, therefore, must be maintained in the interest of
+Great Britain and Ireland alike; and the Union is an international
+settlement that has endured for a century. But no candid student of Irish
+history, no impartial observer of Irish affairs, from 1800 to the present
+time, can deny that the Union has been in many respects a failure. It has
+been an incident, perhaps a result, of the Union, that Presbyterian
+Ireland, rebellious from 1795 to 1798, has, we have seen, become attached
+to the British connection, and is now devotedly attached to England. The
+power of the Imperial Parliament and of its Executive have kept
+lawlessness and disorder down in Ireland, and has restrained the evil
+passions of Irish factions more than was ever the case under the rule of
+the Irish Parliament. The Imperial Parliament, too, has accomplished
+reforms in Ireland, if often unwise, in the main beneficent; and, under
+the Imperial Executive, justice in Ireland has been administered, for many
+years, in a very different way from that which was seen a century ago; its
+tribunals are perfectly free and impartial. But the Union was, in itself,
+a bad half measure, tainted with iniquity and false promises; it did gross
+wrong to Catholic Ireland; the evil consequences are felt to this hour.
+The Union has not fulfilled the sanguine hopes of Pitt; Ireland, as I have
+pointed out, is far more behind Great Britain in wealth than she was sixty
+years ago; she is perhaps the poorest country in Europe at the door of the
+richest. The Union, too, has not reconciled the feuds of religion and race
+in Ireland; they are as marked as they were a century ago, if not attended
+with such deeds of violence; above all, the Union has not made the chief
+part of the Irish community attached to England, as Pitt confidently
+predicted would certainly happen. Nor can it be denied that the Irish
+reforms of the Imperial Parliament have too often been ill-designed and
+faulty, especially, as we shall see, as regards the land; and they have
+unfortunately, in many instances, been concessions to agitation and
+dangerous social movements, and have been effected too late to do real
+good. The administration of Ireland reveals the same defects; it has been
+marked by good intentions, which, sometimes, have proved gross mistakes;
+and notably it has, over and over again, been shifty, vacillating, without
+principle, and showing a curious disregard of sound Irish opinion.
+Unquestionably, too, Ireland has, on many occasions, to the indignation of
+true-hearted Irishmen, been made the mere plaything of British faction,
+with the worst results to her best interests; this has been perhaps the
+most pernicious incident that has followed the Union; and in the immense
+revolution which has transformed Ireland, within the last hundred years,
+the effects that may be traced to the Union have by no means been wholly
+on the side of good.
+
+These evil consequences cannot be really questioned; it is very advisable
+to consider their causes, and if possible to see how they can be removed
+or lessened. They are partly to be ascribed to the fact that Great Britain
+and Ireland are countries differing from each other in most important
+respects, and standing, so to speak, on different planes of existence;
+this alone makes British rule in Ireland difficult, and perplexes and
+embarrasses British statesmen. They are partly due to defects in the
+English national character, essentially just in intention, and even
+generous, but with no sympathy with races of a character unlike its own,
+self-asserting, obstinate, sometimes rude and offensive; this has had
+marked and evil effects in the affairs of Ireland. They are largely to be
+attributed to the nature of Irish administration, seldom consistent, and
+changing with party changes: British statesmen appear at the Castle; rule
+for a few years; and then depart and give place to successors, who
+probably carry out a very different policy. They are largely due to the
+nature of the representation of Ireland, notably of late years; the
+Nationalist party--and the same remark applies, in some degree, to the
+'Tail' of O'Connell--have shown such an aversion to England, have used
+such seditious and even criminal language, have been so extravagant and
+wild in their demands, and have been such a dangerous element in the House
+of Commons, that Englishmen and Scotchmen turn away from Irish questions
+with disgust, and Ireland unfortunately has often been the sufferer. But
+the most important of these causes, one which may be traced throughout
+Irish history, and has been scarcely less evident since the Union, has
+been the strange but signal ignorance of Irish affairs--of all, in a word,
+that relates to Ireland--which has been but too characteristic of the
+British people, and, in a lesser degree, of many British statesmen. This
+capital fault aroused the _sæva indignatio_, of Swift; it was exposed by
+Grattan, O'Connell, even by Lord Clare; it was condemned in severe but
+thoughtful language by Burke; it has been conspicuous during the events of
+the last twenty years.[34] The resulting mischiefs have been numerous and
+grave in the extreme; can nothing be done to mitigate these and to make
+them less, consistently with maintaining the Union in its full
+completeness? I, for one, have long thought that much could be effected
+were the Imperial Parliament occasionally to hold its sessions in Dublin,
+and to govern Ireland directly, so to speak, on the spot. This very
+measure was proposed by many distinguished Irishmen, during the agitation
+for Repeal in 1843-44; it was made the subject of an eloquent eulogy by
+Sheil at O'Connell's trial; it was seriously entertained by the Whig
+opposition of the day, as we know from a remarkable letter of Lord
+Waveney. This policy unfortunately passed out of sight; but even now, I
+believe, it would do the greatest good in Ireland. It would be something
+that the proposed change would cause the wealth of England and Scotland
+largely to flow into a poor country; that Irish absenteeism would be
+diminished; that Ireland would become, more than she is now, an attractive
+place of resort to the traveller. But it would be far more that the
+presence of the Imperial Parliament in College Green would necessarily
+largely remove the ignorance of Irish affairs I have just referred to; it
+would make English and Scotch members familiar with the requirements, the
+feelings, the wishes of Irishmen; as has happily been said, it would
+render our Irish legislation and administration 'racy of the Irish soil.'
+And probably more than any other expedient, it would exorcise the weak
+phantom of Home Rule by bringing Irishmen in contact with the majesty of
+the Sovereign Assembly of the British Empire. I shall not comment on the
+petty inconveniences the scheme might cause; really they are not worthy of
+serious attention.
+
+The occasional presence of Royalty, too, in Ireland, as was made manifest
+during the late Queen's visit, unquestionably would have beneficent
+results. It would gratify a sentiment of Celtic nature, always attached to
+persons rather than to institutions and laws, and especially attached to
+rulers and chiefs, which, in Ireland, has been scarcely gratified before;
+it would spread far and wide a happy and good influence; it would
+certainly improve the social life of Ireland, and add something to her
+scanty material wealth. The maintenance of the Union, however, is the
+first requirement of a sound Irish and Imperial policy; one means of
+strengthening that fundamental law of these realms, consistently with
+strict constitutional justice, nay, if constitutional wrong is not to
+continue, has long been apparent to impartial minds. The
+over-representation of Ireland, in the House of Commons, is a flagrant
+anomaly, acknowledged for years; as I have remarked, it was largely
+expected that this important subject would have been taken up before this
+by Lord Salisbury's Government, and have been settled in the Parliament of
+1895-1900. Taking the test of population alone, Ireland has, compared to
+England, Wales, and Scotland, an excess of twenty-three members; taking
+the test of population and property combined, she has an excess probably
+of from thirty to forty. I am willing to allow that, in this matter, we
+ought not to follow arithmetic only; Ireland, a poor country, far away
+from Westminster, may have a claim to a representation somewhat more
+numerous than mere figures would give her. But can anything be more
+unjust, nay, absurd, than that Ireland should have one hundred and three
+members, and that the world of London, with a population about the same as
+that of Ireland, and probably possessing tenfold wealth, should have
+little more than half that number? This excessive representation must be
+reduced, and Irish Nationalists cannot here appeal to the Union; the Union
+did not save the Established Church of Ireland, secured by the Treaty in
+emphatic terms; and the Union must not be wrested to work gross injustice.
+The anomaly can be only removed by a large scheme for the redistribution
+of seats, founded on sound constitutional principles; and should this
+become law, as I confidently hope will be one of the achievements of the
+existing Parliament, the Union will acquire a new security, for the
+Nationalist vote in the House of Commons would be greatly reduced, and the
+Irish Unionist vote would be greatly increased. A very few figures will
+prove this: the rural populations of the Unionist counties of Antrim and
+Down are upwards of four hundred and thirty thousand souls; the rural
+populations of the Home Rule counties of Kildare, Kilkenny, King's,
+Longford, Wicklow, and Louth have a population less than three hundred and
+ninety-eight thousand;[35] yet Antrim and Down have only eight members,
+the other six counties have no less than twelve. The same disparity runs
+through all the Irish counties; in the boroughs of Ireland it is even more
+visible. Protestant and Unionist Ireland, in a word, has probably fifteen
+or sixteen members too few; Catholic and anti-Unionist Ireland fifteen or
+sixteen too many; it is high time this plain wrong should be redressed; it
+is unnecessary to point out how this would strengthen the Union. And what
+probably is not less important, it would make the representation of
+Ireland, not, what it is now, an utterly false index of Irish opinion, but
+a reasonably fair and trustworthy index; were the Irish representation cut
+down to eighty members, the Nationalists would probably command not more
+than fifty seats; the Unionists would command about thirty; and this,
+taking all things into account, would be a proportion approaching what is
+just. The 'doing' of right, in this matter, has been too long deferred;
+loyal Ireland feels strongly upon the subject; the reform would be
+altogether in the interest of the State.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND--SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE LAND SYSTEM
+OF IRELAND TO THE YEAR 1870
+
+    Great importance in the history of Ireland of the conditions of land
+    tenure--The ancient Celtic land system and its characteristics--The
+    Norman conquest of Ireland--Norman feudalism in the Irish land--The
+    policy of Henry VII., and especially of Henry VIII.--The era of the
+    conquest and confiscation of the Irish land--The possessions of the
+    O'Connors of Offaly wrested from them--Forfeiture of the domains of
+    Shane O'Neill, and of the Earl of Desmond--Attempts at
+    colonisation--All Ireland made shire land--The extinction of the old
+    Celtic land system--The Plantation of Ulster--Progress of confiscation
+    during the reigns of the two first Stuarts--The Civil War--Immense
+    confiscations made by Cromwell--His scheme of colonisation a
+    failure--The era of confiscation closes after the battle of the Boyne
+    and the fall of Limerick--The Penal Code of Ireland--Its fatal effects
+    on the Irish land--Dismal period in Irish landed relations--Gradual
+    improvement--The period described by Arthur Young--Evil traces of the
+    past remain--Whiteboyism and agrarian disorder--State of Irish landed
+    relations up to the rebellion of 1798, and after the
+    Union--Over-population and the results--Distress after the
+    Peace--State of Irish landed relations up to 1844--The Report of the
+    Devon Commission--The Famine and its effects on the Irish land--The
+    Encumbered Estates Acts--State of Irish landed relations from 1848 to
+    1868.
+
+
+The fortunes of many communities, it has truly been said, have been
+decisively affected by the conditions of the ownership and the occupation
+of the soil. The social, even the political, life of modern Europe has
+been, in a great measure, moulded by the land tenures that have grown out
+of the feudal system; I need only refer to the history of England, of
+France, and of Germany. This remark, however, especially applies to the
+events that make up the annals of Ireland; that long and unhappy tale of
+misfortunes and errors is intimately associated, all through, with the
+land, and with the relations connected with it. Modern research has shown
+how grotesque and mischievous was the ignorance of the Tudor lawyers and
+statesmen, who described the ancient organisation of the Irish land as a
+medley of barbarian and pernicious usages; it was an archaic and imperfect
+specimen of the feudal system, with differences indeed, but marked with
+its essential features. Norman feudalism, lawless and ill-ordered, was for
+centuries, after the first Conquest, placed beside this primitive form of
+society, in parts of a country not half subdued; the results were seen in
+incessant strife and discord, and in social anarchy, which prevented
+civilisation growing up. The Irishry had well-nigh driven the Englishry
+into the sea, when Henry VII. tried to make his authority felt in Ireland;
+his successor, partly a Celt in blood, and a real statesman, devised a
+noble scheme for bringing an ill-governed dependency within the domain of
+order and law, by planting an Anglo-Norman and native aristocracy in the
+soil, subject to a strong monarchy that would have protected the community
+as a whole. Most unfortunately the policy of Henry VIII. was not carried
+out; in the great conflict of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries,
+Ireland was drawn into a long struggle with England, and was repeatedly
+made a place of arms for her foes; an era of savage conquest, accomplished
+piecemeal, with ruthless confiscation following in its train, was
+protracted during nearly a century and a half; and at the close of the
+reign of William III., nine-tenths probably of the land of Ireland had
+been wrested from its former possessors, and the old Celtic land system
+had been destroyed by the sword and by law. Race and religion made this
+position of affairs much worse; the age of Protestant ascendency in
+Ireland began; in infinitely the greatest part of the island the land was
+parcelled out among a caste of owners distinct in blood and faith from the
+children of the soil, and lording it over an oppressed peasantry; and the
+system was propped up by a code of cruel laws, which maintained and, so to
+speak, stereotyped these evil divisions. The lines of the land system of
+Ireland were thus finally laid down; a variety of economic and social
+causes increased and deepened their extreme harshness; and though they
+have gradually been softened, and are now all but effaced, their traces
+and the results are still to be seen. The last thirty years have witnessed
+repeated attempts to effect radical changes in the modes of the ownership
+and the occupation of the land in Ireland; they have wrought a revolution
+in Irish landed relations, and have well-nigh turned them upside down; but
+the consequences have assuredly not been fortunate. The land system of
+Ireland has been made a chaos of economic disorder, of dissensions of
+class, of legalised wrong, absolutely incompatible with social progress
+and the general welfare.
+
+I must glance, for an instant, at the distinctive features of the land
+system of Ireland in the Celtic age, for despite the effects of
+confiscation and conquest, faint traces of it may still be seen, and have
+a kind of influence.[36] As was the case in all communities of the Aryan
+stem, the land originally was largely held in collective ownership; but
+agriculture developed individual ownership by degrees, though less so in
+Ireland than in more progressive countries. The people were settled on the
+soil in tribes, clans, and septs, these being the larger and the smaller
+units; the modes of the tenure of the land, misinterpreted by Elizabethan
+sages, differed widely from each other, but revealed the traditions of old
+patriarchal usage and power, especially in their canons of descent and
+succession. The feudalisation of the land, as it has been significantly
+called, a process which took place in nearly the whole of Europe, was also
+witnessed in Ireland, to a certain extent; but this was not so complete
+and strongly marked as in France and England. The land, nevertheless, was,
+throughout the island, held ultimately from a supreme monarch; it was
+divided, under him, among families of princely chiefs, who ruled vast
+tracts with scarcely controlled authority; inferior chiefs were subject to
+these; the organisation of the land had much in common with the
+organisation of the Anglo-Norman manor, and with the position of the Lord
+Paramount of every manor, the head of the English State. The Irish kings
+and chiefs had lands in demesne; they had a landed and a personal
+_noblesse_; the territories they ruled were held by classes strongly
+resembling the free tenants, the villeins, and the serfs of the feudal
+system. All this, however, was not as perfectly defined as it was in lands
+feudalised to a higher degree; and though the Davieses and Spensers were
+wholly in error in representing the dependents of the Irish kings and
+chiefs as little better than a horde of fighting men and slaves, Ireland
+never fully possessed the liberties feudalism secured. The Ceile of
+substance, who had lands of his own, seems to have been in an inferior
+position to the English freeholder; the Saer stock and Daer stock tenants
+held their lands by a tenure like that of the metayers of France; the
+Fuidhirs were kept in complete subjection, and had not even the rights of
+the villein. The land, too, was still largely held in collective
+ownership; in its occupation this is even now seen in backward and poor
+districts; and, curiously enough, distinctions were drawn between what was
+a 'fair' and a 'rack rent,' words still common in the mouth of the Irish
+peasant, and to which recent legislation has given its sanction.
+
+As in the case of most lands where anything resembling feudalism
+prevailed, with the single exception of England, under her strong
+Monarchy, Ireland in these circumstances was torn by continual discord,
+increased by the recurring struggles with the Dane. The Celtic kings and
+chiefs, nevertheless, were beloved by their people; the land system fell
+in with Celtic tribal ideas and sentiments. I pass over the incidents of
+the first Norman Conquest; in the course of time, an Anglo-Norman colony
+was established, within a Pale ever-varying in extent, and held parts of
+the country under feudal conditions, the remaining, and by far the
+greatest, parts being left in the possession of the Celtic kings and
+princes. Anglo-Norman feudalism, however, was completely different, in
+Ireland, from what it was in England; it was not subject to vigorous
+kingly rule; it was confined within comparatively small limits. In these
+circumstances the Pale fell into the hands of a few leading and great
+families; these, as had been largely the case in Scotland, formed a
+domineering and oppressive _noblesse_, continually engaged in quarrels
+between themselves, and in petty wars with the Celtic chiefs, and
+completely superior to the royal power in England. The Geraldines, the
+Butlers, the De Burghs, and other great houses, had no law but their own
+wills in their vast lordships; their exactions and tyranny became a
+byword; their lives were spent in savage feudal strife, and in 'hostings
+against the Irish enemy.' Strange to say, too, these scions of a mighty
+conquering race fell under the spell of the Celtic genius, and, as it was
+said, 'became more Irish than the Irish themselves; they were at least
+largely assimilated to a Celtic model, and they adopted many of the usages
+of the Celt. It was not much otherwise in the Celtic region outside the
+Pale; the Irish chiefs often blended in marriage with the Anglo-Norman
+settlers; but they were continually at war with them, and with each
+other. Under these conditions, feudalism, in its best aspects, could take
+no root, in the land, in Ireland; and there is much reason to believe that
+the archaic Irish land system was gradually changed and almost broken up,
+the power of the kings and chiefs being greatly increased, and the
+position of their dependents being made essentially worse. It is obvious
+that in a land, a scene of such disorder and misrule, civilisation and all
+that the word implies could not exist; Ireland was probably more barbarous
+at the close of the fifteenth century than she had been when she first saw
+Henry of Anjou. The Pale had been restricted within ever-narrowing bounds;
+generations of colonising 'Englishry' had entered the country, and had
+left it in angry despair; the 'Irishry' had encroached on their
+conqueror's domain; the work of Strongbow and Fitzstephen appeared to be
+undone. Especially it was observed that nothing like a middle class, even
+then the best element in the social life of England, had been able to
+develop itself in Ireland, and that the humbler classes were always in a
+state of wretchedness, ground down by exaction, and exposed to incessant
+wrongs of all kinds. 'What common folk of all the world'--these were the
+words of a State paper of the age--'is so poor, so feeble, so evil be seen
+in town and field, so greatly oppressed and trodden underfoot, fares so
+evil, with so great misery, and with so wretched a life, as the common
+folk of Ireland?'
+
+Henry VII. strengthened the authority of the Crown in Ireland; the
+Viceroyalty of Poynings marks an epoch in her chequered annals; but the
+conduct of the king was shifting and weak; the land fell under the control
+of the great House of Kildare; the Irishry were driven back, but in no
+sense subdued. Surrey, the victor of Flodden, intreated Henry VIII. to
+make the country his own by sheer force of arms; but his master refused in
+striking language; and proposed a scheme for bringing Ireland under the
+control of the Monarchy, for encouraging civilisation and promoting order,
+the wisest that has ever suggested itself to a British statesman. He made
+several of 'the degenerate' Norman _noblesse_ peers; he extended the same
+dignity to several Irish chiefs; he assembled representatives of Ireland
+in a Parliament composed of both races; he appointed commissioners to go
+through the country and to punish crime; above all--and this deserves
+special notice--he tried to conciliate the Celtic community by bringing
+their usages within the cognisance of the law, and giving them effectual
+legal sanction; and he condemned the attempts being already made to force
+laws on them peculiar to England. Had this enlightened policy been
+steadily pursued, the history of Ireland would have run a wholly different
+course; but destiny, that has played so sinister a part in Irish affairs,
+interfered to thwart the admirable designs of the king. The great
+Geraldine rebellion broke out, supported by irregular Celtic risings; from
+this time forward, during five generations of man, the era of cruel but
+intermittent conquest, accompanied by wholesale confiscation, set in. The
+powerful tribe of the O'Connors of Offaly, closely associated with the
+fallen House of Kildare, was the first to feel the weight of the arm of
+England; its territories were forcibly overrun and annexed, given the name
+of the King's and the Queen's Counties, and peopled with a colony of
+settlers from England. Celtic Ireland ere long was brought into the
+conflict between Elizabeth and Philip II., the representatives of the
+faiths that were dividing Christendom; the princely chief, Shane O'Neill,
+fell a victim to the English conquerors, though their quarrel with him was
+not wholly one of seeking the assistance of a foreign enemy; his vast
+domains were, also, in part forfeited, in part handed over to a puppet of
+English power. The frightful Desmond rebellion followed; it was directly
+encouraged by the Pope and by Spain; after a protracted struggle
+approaching a real civil war, the immense lordships of the great Geraldine
+House were confiscated, and granted to a colony of English blood. Tyrone,
+the real successor of his kinsman, Shane O'Neill, a soldier and statesman
+of no ordinary parts, seeing, as he bitterly said, that his 'lands were
+marked down by the spoiler,' endeavoured, not without partial success, to
+combine a great Irish League against England; he entered into an alliance
+with Spain; a Spanish army landed on the southern coast of Munster; after
+a long and sanguinary contest, Tyrone yielded, but his resistance had been
+so formidable that he was allowed to retain his possessions.
+
+The subjugation of a large part of Ireland, in the Elizabethan wars, was
+marked by incidents of a most atrocious character. The Government had no
+regular army to act in the field; it was compelled largely to rely on
+armed levies of the Englishry, and on bodies of the Irishry attached to
+the conqueror's standards; for in this, as in nearly all instances
+throughout their history, the Irish Celts were at feud with each other;
+Celtic Ireland was a house divided against itself. The queen, it has been
+written, 'ruled over blood and ashes,' when Mountjoy sheathed his
+victorious sword; the memory of this period still lives in Irish
+tradition. A season of exhaustion and repose ensued after James I. had
+ascended the throne; but the time, in the phrase of Tacitus, had an evil
+aspect in peace itself. The Pale had long before this been effaced;
+conquest and confiscation had spread over nearly the whole island; the
+domination of England was felt almost everywhere. As the result, the whole
+of Ireland was made shire land; the old Celtic land system, which still
+widely prevailed, was swept away by decisions of the Anglican Courts of
+Justice; it was declared to be 'a lewd and not law-worthy thing;' all the
+Irish land was subjected to English modes of tenure; they were imposed on
+a people which detested these gifts of the stranger; innumerable tribal
+rights were destroyed. Ere long the work of confiscation began again; the
+domains of Tyrone and of his kinsman O'Donnell were pronounced forfeited
+for reasons that have never been ascertained; the Crown was placed in
+possession of nearly six counties of Ulster. Up to this time the
+settlements of English colonists, which had been made in Ireland by Tudor
+conquest, had failed; the colonists had been almost lost in the midst of
+the Irishry, who hemmed them around. This immense confiscation was,
+however, in part successful; it was carried out on comparatively
+enlightened principles; it has produced the famous Plantation of Ulster;
+and this, with other settlements in the counties of Antrim and Down, has
+established, in a large part of the northern province of Ireland, a hardy
+and thriving community, in the main, of Scottish blood. Confiscation,
+nevertheless, did not stop here; 'the ravages of war,' in Burke's
+language, were 'carried on amidst seeming peace;' enormous tracts were
+torn from their former owners on pretexts usually of the flimsiest kind,
+and were flung to Court favourites, to jobbing speculators, to greedy
+adventurers of the baser sort. By this time three-fourths probably of the
+soil of Ireland had passed into the hands of a new race of possessors; the
+descendants of Anglo-Norman nobles and of the Celtic princes had been
+sufferers well-nigh in the same proportion. At last Strafford marked out
+the whole province of Connaught, for what has been called 'his majestic
+rapine;' this and other innumerable acts of spoliation and wrong
+unquestionably were the paramount cause of the great Celtic rising of
+1641. Another and soon to be a most potent element of evils and troubles
+had already begun to make its sinister presence felt in Ireland. In the
+great religious schism of the sixteenth century, England had become
+Protestant, Ireland had remained Catholic, and each had taken opposite
+sides in the conflict that followed; though the Elizabethan wars were
+rather struggles of race than of faith. But as conquest and confiscation
+progressed in Ireland, the Anglican Church, a scion of the Norman Church
+of the Pale, was erected on the ruins of its Celtic Catholic rival; the
+land more and more became possessed by settlers alien in creed from the
+old owners, and from the vanquished children of the soil; and harsh laws
+had begun to deepen the distinctions between them. Nevertheless, though
+its signs had in some measure appeared, the era of Protestant ascendency
+and Catholic subjection had not been developed in Ireland, as yet, in its
+worst aspects.
+
+The wild Celtic rising of 1641 was followed by a rising of the old
+Englishry of the Pale--the descendants of the first Anglo-Norman settlers;
+both movements were probably encouraged from France; though widely
+different, they ran into each other. The great Civil War was now running
+its course in England; Ireland, for the most part, took the side of the
+king; the majority of Englishmen were certainly on the side of the
+Parliament. I cannot retrace the scenes of the contest in Ireland; after a
+fierce and protracted struggle, in which an envoy of the Pope became the
+representative of an ill-united Irish League; in which Preston and Ormond
+led the forces of the Pale, and Owen Roe O'Neill was at the head of the
+Irish Celts,--the whole island was subjugated by the sword of Cromwell, as
+it never had been subjugated before. Drogheda and Wexford are names of woe
+in the annals of Ireland; but the conquest of the Protector, ruthless as
+it was, was not so cruel as that of the Elizabethan soldiers; if deeply
+stained with blood, it was rapid and completely decisive. The colony in
+Ulster had begun to flourish; Cromwell designed a scheme for the
+colonisation of the vanquished country more thorough and extensive than
+any which had been designed before. Three-fourths of Ireland had been in
+arms against the Parliament; that assembly had made grants by
+anticipation of Irish forfeited lands to 'adventurers' who had advanced it
+moneys; an opportunity for immense confiscations had arisen; the Protector
+was not slow to take advantage of it; his Puritan fanaticism, his hatred
+of the Irish people, especially of its 'idolatrous Papists,' his strong
+English and religious sympathies, united to confirm him in his purpose.
+The forfeited lands in four of the Irish counties were appropriated to the
+Commonwealth and its uses; those in eighteen were to be granted to the
+'adventurers' and the soldiery of the late conquest; those in seven were
+to be allotted to the army in England. The grants were to be either free,
+or to be purchased at nominal prices; the owners, who had lost their
+lands, were to be deported to Connaught--'Hell' was the alternative, the
+tradition runs--and 'Courts of Claims,' as they were called, were to be
+set up, to adjudicate on the conduct of those who were to be
+dispossessed--they were to be subjected to a test which scarcely one could
+satisfy--and practically to measure confiscation out under the pretence of
+law. By these means Cromwell calculated that some forty thousand
+colonists, of English blood and of the Puritan faith, would be poured into
+the millions of acres which the sword had placed in the hands of his
+Government; these would form a prosperous settlement loyal to England;
+would keep rebellion in Ireland for ever down; and would regenerate a land
+taken from a race akin to the Amalekites of old. As a foretaste of the new
+and glorious order of things, Sir William Petty, a very able man,
+remarkably skilful in feathering his own nest, made a cadastral survey of
+Ireland, which still remains.
+
+Cromwell's scheme of confiscation was thoroughly carried out, spite of
+much angry wrangling between the Puritan warriors. The remains of the
+defeated Irish armies went, in thousands, into exile in foreign lands;
+they were the heralds of the renowned soldiery who, for a century and a
+half, were deadly, but honourable foes of the British name. The rule of
+the Protector in Ireland was stern but enforced peace; Ireland was
+prostrate in the exhaustion of despair; there is much proof that, under
+the Cromwellian settlement, the country made a kind of material progress.
+But Cromwell's great scheme of colonisation failed, as such schemes had
+failed in many instances before; a large majority of the 'adventurers' and
+the soldiers sold their possessions, usually for a mere nothing: many
+'degenerated' like the old Norman families, and, won over by the spells
+'of the daughters of Heth,' had, in one or two generations, become 'mere
+Irish.' The ultimate result of the Cromwellian conquest was to establish
+in Ireland three or four thousand owners of the soil, of English blood and
+Puritan leanings, without the support of inferior dependents, in the midst
+of a vanquished population hostile in race and faith; the sentiments thus
+engendered have never died out; to this day 'a Cromwellian landlord' is a
+name of reproach in Catholic Ireland. At the Restoration hope for a moment
+revived in the hearts of the ruined owners, who had been dispossessed by
+Cromwell, and of whom hundreds had fought for the Crown; but this was
+dashed by the perfidy of Charles II. and his courtiers; the Cromwellian
+forfeitures were, in the main, confirmed; large tracts were given back to
+favourites of the Stuarts, but thousands of beggared families lost their
+estates for ever through a policy of cruel baseness and wrong. Ireland
+remained quiescent for nearly thirty years; she even prospered under the
+wise rule of Ormond--one of the noblest figures in her unhappy history;
+but the bitter memories of the past lived in the conquered people, though,
+as has repeatedly been seen in a Celtic race, they were treasured in
+silence, and caused little apparent trouble. James II. ascended the throne
+in 1685; he had a great opportunity to mitigate many of the wrongs of
+Ireland; he might have removed some of the evils of the Cromwellian
+conquest, and have effected changes in the settlement of the land, which,
+at least, would have done partial justice. But the unfortunate king was a
+bigot, and, in no sense, a statesman; like his father he tried the
+desperate policy of making use of Ireland in his designs against English
+liberties; he sent Tyrconnell to Dublin, and, in a few months, revolution
+had broken out through the country; English and Protestant Ireland was
+well-nigh trampled underfoot; Catholic and Celtic Ireland rose up in a
+wild hope of revenge. I cannot even glance at the stirring events that
+followed; the descendants of ruined barons of the Pale and of Celtic
+princes driven from their lands and their homes, joined in a great effort
+to raise a large armed force; the rising almost assumed a national aspect;
+but after the Boyne and the fall of Limerick, it was finally quelled by
+William III. The process of confiscation was once more renewed; thousands
+of acres were taken forcibly from those who had resisted in the field, and
+were handed over to a new race of colonists belonging to the blood and the
+creed of the victors; and the shameful violation of a solemn Treaty made
+all that was cruel in spoliation worse.
+
+The era of conquest in Ireland and of confiscation by force--an agony
+prolonged for a century and a half--was brought to an end in the reign of
+William III. This is not the place to examine the question on which side,
+as between England and Ireland, the balance of the wrongs that were done
+inclines; but if much that is cruel and shameful is to be laid to the
+charge of England, Ireland, it cannot be forgotten, crossed her path
+repeatedly in an age of grave national perils and troubles, and, moreover,
+wrecked her own cause by her wretched dissensions. The Irish land had now
+nearly all fallen into the hands of a caste of owners, of English and
+Scottish descent, and in faith Protestant, divided from a people of
+Catholic occupiers for the most part of the Irish race; wide lines of
+demarcation had been drawn between them; and there was no middle class to
+bridge over the gulf. In a part of Ulster alone where the proprietors and
+the holders of the soil were largely of the same religion and blood, was
+there the promise of a more auspicious order of things; even here causes
+of disunion were not wanting. Nor were these the only vices and dangers of
+a land system which has scarcely had a parallel. Enormous tracts had been
+bestowed on owners who never saw their estates; absenteeism existed to an
+immense extent; their lands, too, had, in thousands of instances, been
+underlet to a class of intermediate owners, who were to form a body of
+most oppressive landlords. In addition, the representatives of numbers of
+ruined families still vegetated on the domains which had been their own;
+the few families which had escaped from the spoilers, were held in
+reverence by the peasantry around; elements of disorder and trouble
+continued to fester. The destruction, too, of the old Celtic modes of land
+tenure, and the substitution of the English system, had unjustly
+annihilated tribal rights wholesale; the free, and other dependents of the
+Irish chiefs, had sunk into the position of mere tenants at will, that is,
+at the mercy of foreign and often unknown masters. One of the worst, if
+not the most apparent evil, of the gigantic confiscations which had taken
+place, and on which the land system had, so to speak, been founded, was
+that the respect which attaches to the ancient ownership of land, and
+which forms, perhaps, its surest support, could hardly exist in any part
+of Ireland; the disastrous consequences may be traced to the present hour.
+Landlords, with titles of yesterday, won by the sword, could not feel the
+interest in their estates and in the inhabitants on them, naturally felt
+by owners of gentle and ancient descent; the land which, as has been said,
+had been flung like a fox to ravening hounds, could not attract to it
+happy and peaceful memories; the very Government had learned to think it
+could deal with the land as it pleased, and treated the rights gained by
+confiscation with contempt. Prescription, the strongest cement of
+property, had no place in this ill-compacted land system.[37]
+
+The era of Protestant ascendency bringing Catholic subjection with it, had
+now set in for many years in Ireland; its evils were aggravated by harsh
+divisions of race, and by more than a century of bitter memories; its
+effects were more conspicuous in the land than in other social relations.
+This unnatural and calamitous position of affairs might, however, have
+been replaced ere long by a better order of things, had it not been
+artificially maintained and made enduring by legislation unexampled for
+its far-reaching cruelty. I cannot attempt to describe the Penal Code of
+Ireland; in the emphatic words of Burke, 'it was a complete system, full
+of coherence and consistency; well digested and well composed in all its
+parts; it was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance; and as well
+fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people,
+and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from
+the perverted ingenuity of man.'[38] The objects of these execrable laws
+were threefold: to exclude the Irish Catholic whether of Anglo-Irish or
+Celtic descent--misfortune had well-nigh effaced the distinction--from
+every office of trust in the State, from every profession, almost from
+every walk of life; to persecute and proscribe the Catholic Church of
+Ireland, and to place its priesthood under a humiliating ban, and finally
+to ruin and degrade the few remaining Catholic owners of the soil; to
+prevent the Irish Catholic from acquiring any real interest in it; and,
+above all, to keep the Catholic peasantry in a condition of thraldom.[39]
+The Code was only too successful in compassing its ends; I pass from its
+operation as regards the two first, to point out how it sought to attain
+the third, and how its provisions affected the Irish land and the manifold
+relations connected with it. The estate of the Irish Catholic owner was
+not to follow the ordinary courses of descent; it was 'to gavel,' and to
+be divided among many persons; this was for the avowed purpose of making
+'the landed property of Papists crumble away, and disappear.' The Irish
+Catholic owner was subjected to cruel enactments that literally set his
+household against him; his wife and children were bribed to become his
+foes; law sate at his hearth to make his existence wretched. The Irish
+Catholic, too, was forbidden to acquire land by purchase or even to
+possess an incumbrance on it; as far as possible the ownership of land was
+strictly confined to the Protestant caste. But the wrong that, in its
+consequences at least, was perhaps the worst, was that the Catholic
+occupier of the Irish soil could not obtain anything like an advantageous
+tenure; he could not have a lease for a period beyond thirty-one years,
+and this, too, at an excessive rent; and, in the great mass of instances,
+he was a serf holding merely at will.
+
+The forty years that succeeded the death of William III. are certainly the
+most mournful period in Irish history. The memories of conquest and
+confiscation were still fresh; the Penal Code kept Catholic Ireland in its
+chains; society was fashioned on the type of the domination of a class,
+separated from a whole community in race and faith. Nothing was left
+undone to perpetuate this evil order of things; the Irish Parliament was a
+mere oligarchy of the sons of the colonists of Elizabeth, Cromwell, and
+William, apart from a few leading men in Ulster; its legislation for the
+vanquished race was barbarous; Lords-Lieutenant spoke of the Irish
+Catholics as of 'the common enemy;' a 'Papist was presumed not to exist'
+in the Irish Courts of Justice. Meanwhile the penal laws were relentlessly
+carried out for years; the Irish Catholic was placed under a universal
+ban; the Catholic Church of Ireland lay, as it were, in the valley of the
+shadow of death. But the direst consequences appeared in the land, and in
+the social life of the landed classes; these were most calamitous and have
+still left their traces. Many of the few Catholic owners abandoned their
+estates, and carried their swords into foreign lands, where some rose to
+well-deserved eminence; a small number conformed to the dominant faith in
+order to exist in comparative peace at home; the majority clung to their
+lands and bowed their heads to oppression. The Protestant lords of the
+soil were what their antecedents and the law had made them; they were long
+a harsh and exacting order of men, filled with bigotry and the pride of a
+conquering race; they regarded the inferiors they ruled as pariahs and
+helots. But, as usually happens, when society is in an unnatural state,
+they did not prosper amidst the ruins around them; their lands were kept
+on a kind of pernicious mortmain, as they could not mortgage or sell them
+freely; absenteeism with all its mischiefs greatly increased; and
+middleman tenures largely multiplied, subjecting the peasantry to a
+detestable breed of landlords, Protestants and of English descent, like
+their superiors, but much worse tyrants. As for the mass of the Catholic
+occupiers of the soil, they were kept down in the lowest state of serfdom;
+but multitudes found their way into foreign armies; 'the wild geese,' as
+they were pathetically called, flew to Austria and, above all, to France,
+where, in the ranks of the celebrated Irish Brigade--'ever and everywhere'
+true to the Bourbon lilies--they won renown at Dettingen, Fontenoy, and
+other fields of fame. The aspect of Ireland bore too faithful witness to
+the misery engendered in this evil order of things. The country was still
+covered with the wrecks of the late wars; the habitations, even of the
+Protestant gentry, were squalid and mean; the towns were, in many
+instances, sinking into decay; the peasantry were huddled together into
+villages of huts; the traveller roamed through vast wastes of unfenced
+pasturage, evidences of a land almost left in a state of nature. Hideous
+famines were of repeated occurrence; one, that of 1739-41, swept the
+population away in tens of thousands; the Irish Parliament
+characteristically did nothing to help the sufferers; it met the emergency
+by strengthening the means to enforce the payment of rent. The miserable
+condition of Ireland was made worse by the legislation of the British
+Parliament, which treated the country as a conquered colony; and, true to
+the principles of the mercantile system, impeded or prevented the growth
+of several Irish industries. This was, of course, most injurious to the
+Protestant settlers; but these were held down by the ruling power; as was
+finely said, 'they knelt to England on the necks of their countrymen.' The
+state of things in the colonised parts of Ulster was somewhat better; but
+the Scottish and Presbyterian population of this corner of Ireland had not
+a few causes of serious complaint.[40]
+
+In the next generation a great but gradual change passed over the state of
+the Irish community. The Penal Code was not in letter relaxed; but the
+evil spirit which had conceived it lost much of its force. The men who had
+fought at the Boyne and at Aghrim had passed away; the human conscience,
+moved by the influences of the eighteenth century, revolted from the
+barbarous legislation of a half-fanatical age. The Irish Catholics slowly
+began to make themselves felt in the State; many amassed large fortunes in
+foreign commerce; shut out as they still were by law from almost every
+profession and office, they made their way into the medical calling, and
+especially at the Bar, where their disabilities were evaded or ignored.
+The Catholic Church was no longer proscribed; its worship, indeed, was
+still carried on under degrading conditions; but its priesthood were
+permitted to perform their sacred functions in peace; its dignitaries were
+even countenanced by the men in power at the Castle. This great social
+change was conspicuously seen in the land; landed relations were markedly
+improved, and partly transformed. The Catholic owners were permitted to
+hold their estates free from the cruel vexations of the past; they began
+to live on terms of friendship with the Protestant caste; legal fictions
+annulled the laws which had made their lives wretched; their lands were,
+in many instances, held by the Protestant gentry on secret trusts; and
+these, though contrary to law, were, as a rule, most honourably fulfilled.
+The principal, however, and most decisive change appeared in the position
+and the sentiments of the Protestant lords of the soil. As time rolled on,
+and threw its kindly growths over the settlement of confiscation and the
+sword, these men began to feel that Ireland was their country and home;
+they became, to a certain extent, Irishmen; they felt sympathy, by
+degrees, with the conquered serfs in their midst. This feeling was
+strengthened by the tyrannous selfishness of the British Parliament, which
+treated Ireland as if she were its footstool, and of the official class,
+nearly all Englishmen, who lorded it over the land they despised; an
+'Irish interest' grew up in the Parliament at College Green, composed very
+largely of the Protestant landlords; this became patriotic, in a certain
+sense, and a protector of the scanty rights of Ireland. As social order,
+too, was seldom disturbed, the wealth of the country had considerably
+increased; the gentry acquired a greater interest in their estates, and
+became more and more attached to them; absenteeism, as the result,
+perceptibly lessened; and middleman tenures, though still prevalent,
+diminished remarkably in the more progressive counties. The deep lines of
+demarcation which kept apart the owners and the occupiers of the soil were
+thus to a certain extent bridged over; the Irish landlord, especially if
+resident, became a kindlier superior than his fathers had been; the Irish
+peasant became less a stranger to him.
+
+The evidences of this better order of things became manifest on the face
+of the country. Agriculture, though still backward, made real progress;
+the breeds of farming animals greatly improved; the huge breadths of
+pasturage had a less deserted aspect. The country towns had generally
+advanced; the land had been opened by good roads; the means of locomotion
+had been largely multiplied. The rental of Ireland had doubled within
+living memory; in some counties, indeed, it was nearly as high as it is
+now; the land was at a price of more years' purchase than it is at the
+close of the nineteenth century. It was at this period that the great
+country houses of Ireland were built, and their vast demesnes laid out;
+the wages of labour were low, but had distinctly risen; the peasant hind,
+Arthur Young tells us, in point of food and clothing, was as well off as
+his fellow in England. The land was largely parcelled out into
+considerable farms; but small holdings were on the increase; and the
+cottar system, in the course of time to become a source of manifold evils,
+was not yet a cause of much mischief; the pressure of population on the
+soil was not severely felt. Many of the great landlords, too, were
+excellent men; they ruled the country well, and greatly improved their
+estates; in numberless instances they had won the hearts of dependents,
+who regarded them as kind masters. Yet the picture was not without a dark
+side; this land system still had evil, nay, repulsive, features. Except in
+the best part of Ulster the deep divisions of race and faith continued to
+be profoundly marked; the Penal Code had made these, to a great extent,
+indelible. There was still much oppression and exaction in landed
+relations; the class of small landlords and the class of middlemen were
+too generally tyrannical and harsh; complaints of over-renting were not
+infrequent; and if the great landlords, as a rule, were not severe
+superiors, many were extravagant, addicted to excess, and reckless
+duellists; they bore a strong resemblance to the seigneurie of the old
+French Monarchy. The peasantry, too, remained serfs, illiterate,
+ignorant, and superstitious; the good feelings they often had for their
+lords had too much of the submissiveness of the slave; and virtuous as
+their women ordinarily were, they too generally yielded to the lusts of
+their masters. The habitations, besides, of this population were still
+wretched; if their lot had assuredly become better, it was often hard,
+above all, degraded. They had begun to feel more acutely the ills they
+suffered; in many counties they had banded themselves together into
+lawless leagues, to protect themselves and to resist authority. These
+associations, known by the general name of Whiteboys--perhaps taken from
+the Camisards of the Cevennes--had as their objects the preservation of
+rights of commonage, the extinction of tithes, and the reduction of rents;
+they may be traced back to the great confiscations of the past; they were
+held together by secret leaders and passwords; and they often kept whole
+districts in a state of terror. A Draconic Code was directed against them;
+though often put down they have risen to life again; Ireland has never
+since been completely free from them; their influence still is distinctly
+apparent. Associations of somewhat a similar kind, known as Steelboys and
+Oakboys, were formed even in the good parts of Ulster; but they were much
+less dangerous and were not permanent. It is a characteristic of
+Whiteboyism, as it has ever since been called, that it has always had a
+political side, and lends itself to revolutionary movements against
+government itself.[41]
+
+Though Protestant ascendency was still supreme at this period, the
+confiscations of the past had not been forgotten; they were treasured in
+the minds of the descendants of the old Catholic families, and of the
+population among which they lived. The extinction, too, of the tribal
+Irish tenures, had, we have seen, been a cause of grievous wrongs; this
+was a tradition, also, handed down from father to son, and was still fresh
+in the remembrance of a whole race. The land system, though to outward
+seeming secure, nevertheless rested on unstable foundations, as was to
+appear in the course of time; another element of disturbance was being
+formed, which ultimately was to have immense force. Under the modes of
+land tenure, which prevailed in England, since the system of small
+holdings had been broken up, the land had generally been laid out in large
+farms; partly from this circumstance, and partly owing to custom, the
+charge of making permanent improvements of the land had almost everywhere
+devolved on the owner of the soil; a tenant, who rented a farm, took it,
+so to speak, equipped with the buildings and other things of the kind that
+were suitable to it. But in Ireland, partly because small farms were
+numerous, and partly because the custom had never grown up--the history of
+the past fully accounts for this--the permanent improvements were very
+seldom made by the landlord; the tenant, who held land, had to add, as it
+were, its plant to it; he had to do much that gave it any real value. As
+the inevitable result, the Irish occupier of the soil felt that he had
+acquired a concurrent right in it; this, if the improvements were solid
+and lasting, might almost amount to a partial joint-ownership, at least
+give him, in equity, a real hold on the land. But a right of this kind was
+not recognised by the law, founded as this was upon notions of English
+tenure; it was liable to be destroyed should the tenant be dispossessed;
+and as the tenure of the immense majority of the occupiers of the soil in
+Ireland was either at will, or for a short term at a high rent, this
+right, essentially of a quasi-proprietary kind, was made precarious, and
+had no legal protection. With the prescience of genius, Burke perceived
+the evils that might grow out of this state of things, though, as yet,
+these were not much felt; he saw that it discouraged improvement of almost
+every kind; especially he saw that the denial of legal sanction to the
+rights in the land a tenant might have, and the fact that his tenure was
+short and uncertain, might become a source of grave wrong, and of
+far-reaching discontent. In a word, he detected an economic vice in the
+land system of Ireland which, in the long run, was to do great mischief;
+and curiously enough he indicated the remedies that ought to be applied,
+and pointed out the true principles of a reform of Irish land tenure. It
+would have been well had British statesmen adopted these; his simple,
+just, and statesmanlike plan puts to shame the ill-designed and
+unsuccessful attempts that have been made to recast the Irish land system
+of late years, and the false, reckless, and socialistic theories at
+present current on this important subject.[42]
+
+I must pass over even the main events of the history of Ireland, after
+this period, up to the close of the eighteenth century. The 'Irish
+interest,' mainly composed of the great landed gentry, and turning to
+account the American War, compelled the Parliament at Westminster to relax
+many of the commercial restraints on Ireland, and to concede her a partial
+free trade; under the guidance of the illustrious Grattan it obtained
+legislative independence for the Irish Parliament. At the same time the
+Penal Code was largely repealed; the Irish Catholic was permitted to
+acquire the ownership of the soil; before long he received the electoral
+franchise, though he was still excluded from the Irish Houses of Lords and
+Commons. In these circumstances, Ireland made real material and social
+progress; the wealth of the country rapidly increased; the Protestant and
+Catholic upper classes began to unite in marriage; a commercial middle
+class, if still very weak, grew up. Ireland seemed about to enter a
+happier era; yet there were drawbacks to this partial welfare, especially
+as regards the land system. Middleman tenures were becoming much less
+frequent; absenteeism was markedly on the decline; but partly owing to
+their contact with the Parliament in College Green, and to the brilliant
+social life it created in Dublin, the landed gentry became more
+extravagant than their fathers had been; they began to raise their rents
+and to encumber their estates; over-renting became more common than
+before; Whiteboy movements and agrarian disorder prevailed in many
+districts. Ireland, however, probably would have made a great advance but
+for the evil passions which the French Revolution engendered in the frame
+of a society still deeply diseased. I cannot dwell on the unhappy years
+that followed, leading to the Rebellion of 1798; I must confine myself to
+their influence on the Irish land system. The object of Tone and of the
+United Irish leaders was to combine Scottish and Presbyterian Ulster, and
+the great mass of the Irish Catholics, into a league against British rule
+and for 'Irish freedom;' unhappily, they were but too successful. They
+appealed, not in vain, to thousands of farmers and traders in the Northern
+Province, who had long had solid grounds of discontent, and had been
+deeply stirred by the Revolution in France; they laid hold on the elements
+of disorder and of division of race and faith, abounding in Catholic
+Ireland, but largely concealed, and called on the peasantry to overthrow
+their Protestant tyrants, and to strike a decisive blow in 'the cause of
+Ireland.' Evil incentives were recklessly employed to arouse popular
+passions; maps of the old confiscated lands were made; and active
+emissaries went through the country, reviving dangerous traditions of the
+past, and stimulating the worst sentiments of hatred, greed, and revenge.
+As the result, sedition ran riot in Ulster; in the Southern Provinces
+there was a great outburst of Whiteboy crime, and a widespread rising
+against the payment of rent; and thousands of the occupiers of the soil
+were swept into the United Irish ranks, scarcely conscious of the perils
+to which they were exposed. How the movement led to the bloody rebellion
+of 1798, and how this was put down after a desperate struggle, it is
+unnecessary to consider here; the consequences in Irish landed relations
+were most unfortunate. It is untrue that the large majority of the owners
+of the Irish soil were guilty of the crimes that have been laid to their
+charge; but they bitterly resented the allusions to the confiscations of a
+bygone past; they became more estranged from their inferiors than they had
+been for years.[43]
+
+This terrible outbreak shook society in Ireland to its base, revived the
+old divisions of race and faith which had been disappearing to a
+considerable extent, and left memories behind which have not been
+forgotten. Its inevitable result was to lead to the Union, a measure long
+in the contemplation of British statesmen, and especially of Pitt, and
+perhaps necessary in the most critical circumstances of the time. I cannot
+even refer to the events attending this great constitutional change; a
+large majority of the leading Irish landlords disliked it at heart; but a
+minority, alarmed for their possessions, gave it support; how strong this
+feeling was may be seen in a famous speech of Lord Clare, who described
+the whole order of men as 'the heirs of confiscation hemmed in by enemies
+brooding on their wrongs.' The Union greatly weakened the influence of
+the Irish landed gentry, which had been very powerful in the defunct
+Parliament; the 'Irish interest,' for many years a real force, was almost
+subverted; English officials became again supreme at the Castle; a
+bureaucracy gradually began to supplant the aristocracy of landlords in
+every sphere of government. As respects the land and landed relations, the
+class of Catholic owners slowly augmented; but the consequences were
+trivial and not marked; middleman tenures continued steadily to disappear;
+but absenteeism certainly increased, though absentee estates were usually
+better managed than before. Meanwhile causes of grave importance, tending
+to momentous social results, were profoundly affecting the whole land
+system, and the position of the classes dependent on it. Partly owing to
+the corn laws of the Irish Parliament, partly to the extension of the
+Parliamentary franchise, in 1793, to the great mass of the Catholic
+peasantry, but principally to the effects of the long war with France,
+Ireland, it may be said, was well-nigh changed from a pastoral to an
+agricultural country; large farms were generally replaced by small; the
+land in most districts was divided into little tillage holdings; the
+cottar system multiplied apace; the population, about three millions of
+souls in the day of Arthur Young, increased to more than six millions at
+the Peace of 1815; and this population becoming every year more dense, for
+the most part eked existence out on a precarious root. The economic and
+social consequences were very great, and continued in operation during a
+long series of years. The competition for the possession of land became
+intensely keen; rents were unnaturally forced up in thousands of cases;
+the value of landed property enormously rose; all this encouraged
+extravagance among the landed gentry, and especially induced them largely
+to encumber their estates. At the same time the wages of labour distinctly
+declined; the condition of the Irish labouring peasant, when Edward
+Wakefield, a very industrious and able observer, wrote on the state of
+Ireland in 1812, was markedly worse than it had been in the time of Arthur
+Young. Yet these were not the most serious, at least, the most lasting,
+effects of the revolution taking place in landed relations. As the large
+farm system was being broken up, as the small farm system had come in its
+stead, and as population had rapidly grown, the occupiers of the soil had
+more and more made the permanent additions to their holdings; they had
+built, fenced, and reclaimed land, more and more; and in the general
+eagerness to obtain the possession of land, considerable sums were often
+paid for farms on their transfer. The concurrent rights of the tenant
+classes in Ireland had thus become enormously increased; they often
+amounted, equitably, to a real joint-ownership; yet these rights were
+without the support of law, and were liable to be extinguished often at
+the mere will of the landlord. In Ulster alone, in its Presbyterian and
+Scottish parts, where the landed classes had been less disunited than in
+the South, a custom, now of considerable strength, had for a long time
+made the tenure of the peasant comparatively secure; yet even this was not
+under the ægis of law.[44]
+
+Made wise, after the event, we now clearly perceive what ought to have
+been done for Ireland in this position of affairs. There never had been an
+Irish poor law; Protestant property was not to be charged for Catholic
+want; but the population was fast increasing; a mass of wretched poverty
+was being formed; this should have been supported, and yet checked, by a
+poor law. At the same time legislation, as Burke had contended, should
+have vindicated the moral rights of the occupier of the soil, should have
+made what really was his property his own, should have rendered his tenure
+profitable and secure. Nothing of the kind, however, came into the minds
+of British statesmen, or even, it must be said, of the best Irishmen of
+the day--the age was one of Toryism harsh and unfeeling; the abuses of the
+poor law in England were great; it was not contemplated to apply it to
+Ireland; above all, the equitable claims of the Irish tenant were not
+understood or deemed worthy of notice; English tenure, utterly unfitted to
+his true position, was good enough for him. The land system, nevertheless,
+was not much disturbed while the high prices of the war prevailed; there
+was a good deal indeed of disorder connected with the land, but society
+was not deeply affected. And it is only just to observe that the
+landlords, as a class, did respect the concurrent rights of their tenants
+in the soil; the conclusive proof is that these could not have grown up
+had they been generally, or even largely, set at nought. But a great and
+calamitous change passed over Ireland when the comparative wealth caused
+by the war collapsed, and when the return to cash payments made the
+effects worse. Rents suddenly fell greatly, and even disappeared; the
+wages of labour, which had usually been paid through what may be called a
+wretched truck system, were reduced to a remarkable degree; hundreds of
+thousands of the cottar peasantry sank to the lowest depths of indigence.
+A great social convulsion, in a word, took place; this culminated in
+famine in several counties; a miserable population was deprived of the
+means of subsistence. In these circumstances the owners of the soil acted
+as a class would ordinarily act; many, impoverished themselves, let things
+drift; many made themselves conspicuous for good works of charity; a
+minority had recourse to severe measures, like the English landlords of
+the sixteenth century, to get rid of a mass of poverty clinging in despair
+to the land. The old divisions of race and faith unquestionably
+aggravated this state of things; but the Government of the day showed
+little forethought, and, in fact, was infinitely the most to blame; it met
+the emergency, not by wise and healing measures, but by legislation, which
+made the eviction of the peasant from his holding easy and cheap, and by
+having recourse to repression unjust and severe in the extreme. In too
+many instances, 'clearances' of estates, an evil word, were witnessed;
+hundreds of families were driven from their homes and cast on the world;
+as the necessary result, in numberless cases, the equitable rights of the
+Irish tenant were ruthlessly destroyed. As a matter of course,
+Whiteboyism, never completely suppressed, broke out in formidable agrarian
+disorder; the peasantry, deprived of the protection of law, leagued
+themselves together to enforce a law of their own; crime multiplied to an
+immense extent; all the machinery of coercion could not wholly keep it
+under.[45]
+
+I must pass rapidly over the next twenty years, though a very important
+period in Irish history. Catholic emancipation was wrung by O'Connell,
+from a reluctant Ministry, through violent agitation, which distracted
+Ireland for years; the Irish Catholic was admitted into Parliament at
+last. This great event was followed by the savage Tithe War, a movement
+against the Anglican Church in Ireland stained with detestable deeds of
+blood; the representation of Ireland passed largely into O'Connell's
+hands, the head of what was called 'his Catholic Tail.' Protestant
+ascendency in Ireland received a mortal blow; the influence of the Irish
+landed gentry still further declined; that of the bureaucracy at the
+Castle increased. From this time forward the Irish landlord began to feel
+his position really insecure; it is remarkable how few large mansions and
+demesnes have ever since been designed or completed by this order of men.
+After the disastrous period which came to an end about 1826, the wealth of
+Ireland perceptibly grew; a kind of prosperity existed in many parts of
+the country. The age, too, had become more liberal and humane; the
+middleman was got rid of in not a few districts; the absentee landlords
+devoted more attention to their estates than they had ever devoted before.
+The process of eviction, moreover, became much less frequent, though too
+frequent for social order and peace; a considerable number of Irish
+landlords expended large sums in improving their lands; farms were
+consolidated, with good results, in many parts of the country. But the
+essential features of the land system were not much changed; its economic
+conditions became, in important respects, worse. The landed gentry, if
+much less extravagant than their fathers had been, were, nevertheless, as
+a class, much involved in debt; and, as usually has been seen in cases of
+the kind, they became less really prosperous, as their authority declined.
+Meanwhile, the population had continued rapidly to increase; by the close
+of this period it exceeded eight millions of souls, a total far too great
+for the resources of the land. The phenomena, already critical, became
+more sinister; rents were again forced up as the wealth of the country
+augmented, and reached the highest level they have ever attained; the
+wages of labour did not fall, indeed, they could hardly fall lower; but
+the cottar population had become more than ever dense; the competition for
+the possession of the soil grew fierce; as necessarily followed, the
+quasi-proprietary rights of the tenant in his holding had been enlarged,
+and yet these were still outside the pale of the law. A Report, made in
+1837-38, disclosed the appalling fact that two millions and a half of the
+Irish community were for months in every year on the verge of starvation,
+and always in a condition of extreme misery. Though Ireland had made, in a
+sense, progress, her economic state had thus become dangerous, and very
+bad; and a poor law, enacted at last in 1838, was utterly unable to cope
+with the evil. Whiteboy crime and disorders continued to abound; in 1844,
+an average year, there were more than a thousand instances of offences in
+landed relations.
+
+The year 1843 was that of the great Repeal movement, of which O'Connell
+was the master spirit. Peel had been Prime Minister for two years; his
+attention had been already turned to the vices and the perils of the Irish
+land system. He had been Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1812 to 1818;
+but he had been identified with the Tory misrule of that time; and though,
+like Chesterfield in another age, he had been too sagacious not to see
+that poverty made the social ills of Ireland more acute and worse, he had
+been the ablest opponent of the Catholic cause, had supported Protestant
+ascendency in many ways; and had not been in any sense an Irish reformer.
+A strong Conservative of the great middle class in England, he looked on
+Ireland as an almost foreign land, and had scarcely any knowledge of her
+real needs; and though his severe administration at the Castle had been
+wise and just, he carried out coercion with a steady hand, and is supposed
+to have been the author of the code of cheap ejectment, a cause of a great
+deal of evil and wrong. But his mind, if slow in moving, was moved at
+last; he saw that Ireland largely required the amending hand; the conduct
+of O'Connell, no doubt, had quickened his purpose. I cannot dwell on
+Peel's other Irish measures; at the close of 1843 he appointed a
+Commission charged to inquire into the state of Irish landed relations;
+had he continued long at the head of the State, he would probably have
+done much to improve the Irish land system. The Commission had, as
+President, the chief of the great House of Courtenay; it was almost wholly
+composed of Englishmen, more or less associated with land in England; it
+was, therefore, ill constituted to deal with what may be called the Irish
+Land Question. But it investigated the subject it treated with most
+praiseworthy care; entering into every detail of Irish landed relations,
+their history in the past, the state of land tenure, the condition of the
+different classes seated on the land, the working of the law with respect
+to tenant's improvements, the means of diminishing the wretched millions
+squatting on the soil, agrarian crime and all that it involved; the mass
+of evidence it collected is still of the greatest value. The Report it
+made, if somewhat over-cautious and timid, was very instructive in many
+respects; especially it showed how the Irish land system grew out of the
+conquests and confiscations of the past, and still bore the marks of its
+ill-omened origin, notably in the lines drawn between the owners and the
+occupiers of the soil marked by a profound division of race and faith; and
+many of the suggestions it made were wise, nay, excellent. But on the
+capital subject of land tenure, by many degrees the most important, the
+Report only too clearly revealed the ignorance of Englishmen as regards
+Ireland, and, above all, as regards her landed relations. The Commission
+ought to have fully recognised the concurrent rights in the soil, which
+the Irish occupier had acquired in tens of thousands of instances, rights
+often equivalent to more or less joint-ownership; it ought to have
+insisted that the Tenant Right, as it was now called, of the Ulster
+Custom, and the claims arising from improvements, the work of the tenant,
+and from sums paid on the transfer of farms, should be made law-worthy,
+and effectually secured. With a want of insight which would have made
+Burke gnash his teeth, it took exactly an opposite course; it warned the
+Irish landlord that these concurrent rights were creating against him 'an
+embryo copyhold,' and eating away his freehold ownership; it plainly
+hinted that he would do well to get rid of them. It even refused to
+acknowledge that the tenant had a claim to any improvements if made in the
+past; but it proposed a scheme for compensating him for improvements made
+in the future, so limited and fenced round with restrictions, that it was
+quite illusory, and indeed deceptive. The Report caused intense
+indignation in Ulster, and was not well received in any part of
+Ireland.[46]
+
+Bills, founded on the Report of the Devon Commission, as it was called,
+were brought into Parliament, but never became law. Within a few months
+Ireland was in the throes of an agony, the most terrible, perhaps, that
+has befallen any land in the nineteenth century. In the autumn of 1845,
+the potato, which formed the only food of the indigent multitudes fastened
+on the land, failed, to a considerable extent, in many districts; in the
+following year the crop was all but completely destroyed. Famine, far more
+general and appalling than that of twenty-five years before, had soon held
+a wretched population in its grasp; the results may almost be compared to
+those of the Black Death, and of the famines of the Middle Ages. The land
+system went to wreck in whole counties, especially in the west and along
+the seaboard; hundreds of the landed gentry were involved in ruin;
+thousands of farmers of the better class became bankrupt; the dense cottar
+multitudes were literally lifted up from the soil, and cast adrift, the
+waifs and strays of a far-reaching tempest. This is not the place to
+review the measures adopted to meet the dread visitation; if not free from
+errors, inevitable in a situation of the kind, they were, essentially,
+and, in the main, successful. Peel was still in office in 1845; well
+knowing what poverty in Ireland was, he introduced supplies of food into
+the remote and backward districts, which the energies of commerce could
+hardly reach; this wise policy saved tens of thousands of lives; as is
+notorious, he repealed the corn laws in the interest of the afflicted
+country. The Government of Lord John Russell had succeeded him in 1846; it
+had to confront an emergency infinitely worse; it followed, in many
+respects, the example of Peel, who had established 'relief works' in many
+counties; but it did not assist the most impoverished parts of Ireland
+with food through the agency of the State; this possibly was a real
+mistake. Nevertheless, it manfully and humanely met the tremendous crisis;
+it is easy to censure some of its acts, for instance, the wasteful and
+useless public works it set on foot, and the gigantic outdoor relief it
+was compelled to lavish; but millions in starvation were thrown on its
+hands; and the poor law, only lately in operation, could not cope with
+universal distress. On the whole, the statesmen in power did their duty
+wisely and well; thousands of unhappy victims succumbed, indeed, to
+famine, and to dire diseases following in its train; but Ireland as a
+people was saved; assuredly she could not have saved herself. A word, too,
+must be said on the magnificent charity which flowed in from many lands
+into the community in its woe. England had turned in sympathy towards
+Ireland in the season of distress which had followed the Peace; she
+bestowed great sums on her, in 1845-46, through private subscription. The
+United States, France, Germany, and Italy joined in the good work; even
+the Ottoman Empire was not behindhand.
+
+I must dwell for a moment on the conduct and the position of the classes
+connected with the land during this appalling trial. The attitude of the
+landed gentry was much the same as it had been at an infinitely less
+disastrous crisis; but, on the whole, it was marked by nobler and more
+attractive features. The charity of the great landlords of Ireland was
+most praiseworthy; many devoted large sums for the support of the poor on
+their lands by instituting fine works of enclosure and drainage; some, I
+know, even mortgaged their estates for this very purpose. Hundreds of the
+lesser gentry, stricken down as they were, imitated their superiors as
+well as they could; old divisions were forgotten in the common misfortune;
+spite of the interested lies of a calumnious faction, as an order of men
+they acted extremely well. One of their bitterest enemies, who wrote at
+the time, has placed it on record, 'that the resident landlords and their
+families did, in many cases, devote themselves to the task of saving these
+poor people alive. Many remitted their rents or half their rents; and
+ladies kept their servants busy and their kitchens smoking with continual
+preparation of food for the poor.'[47] Many, however, of the Irish
+landlords, as was to be expected, looked hopelessly on at the misery
+around them; this was the case with feeble and incapable men, and the
+sight has always been seen in grave social crises; it was but in
+conformity with our frail and imperfect nature. A certain number,
+moreover, of the class had recourse to severe measures to remove from
+their lands the masses of wretchedness crowded upon them; the process of
+eviction became too frequent; hundreds of families were in this way
+dispossessed of their holdings. These acts of harshness were certainly to
+be deplored; but it was almost universally believed that the cottar in
+Ireland could not live from the land after the failure of almost his only
+means of subsistence; it must be added that, in this very matter, the
+conduct of Parliament and the Government was by many degrees more severe.
+A strict test of destitution had to be applied; a law was passed that, as
+a condition of obtaining relief, no person possessing more than a quarter
+of an acre of land should be entitled to support from the State; thousands
+of families abandoned their homes, through the effects of this measure;
+for one evicted by a landlord, fifty perhaps were practically evicted by
+this stern policy. The law was possibly required in the terrible
+circumstances of the time; but it was condemned by the Lord-Lieutenant,
+Lord Bessborough, a great Irish peer, and an able man; at all events, it
+justified, to a considerable extent, all that could be laid to the charge
+of a few Irish landlords whose acts were most unfairly denounced by many
+writers, and were falsely described as common to the great body of the
+class. For the rest, as I have said, the land system was broken up in many
+districts; and not only the owners but the occupiers of the soil suffered
+cruelly from the highest to the lowest grade.
+
+After the first months of the famine, the immense exodus of the Irish
+race, as it has fitly been called, began. The population fled from the
+country in hundreds of thousands; some found a home in England and in our
+Australian colonies; nine-tenths, probably, in the great Republic of the
+West. The sufferings of numbers of the emigrants were terribly severe;
+huddled together in the ill-found vessels of the time, hundreds perished
+before they beheld the lands they were seeking; that some check was not
+placed on the greed of the merchants, who subjected these victims to
+horrors like those of the Middle Passage, was certainly the worst mistake
+of the Government of the day. During the agony of the famine there was
+comparatively little crime; the minds of men were engrossed by a dire
+calamity; but in a few months Whiteboyism had been again aroused; there
+was a widespread outbreak of agrarian disorder followed by the abortive
+rising of 1848. The time was now ripe, in the judgment of even leading
+statesmen, for making another of the great experiments on the Irish land,
+which had been their policy since the age of the Tudors. Many of the Irish
+landed gentry had been ruined; the estates of many were heavily charged
+with debt, in part caused by extravagance in the past, but chiefly by
+large provisions made for their families in more prosperous times,
+especially during the period of the high prices of the war.[48] The
+object of the Government--and Peel concurred--was to make a clean sweep of
+the embarrassed owners, and to transfer their lands to a new order of men;
+'English and Scottish capital was to be attracted to the Irish soil;' the
+Irish landlord was to be 'sold out cheap;' his successor was to be a
+person fit 'to discharge the duties of property;' the 'regeneration of
+Ireland' was to be the magnificent result.[49] The sale of encumbered
+estates in Ireland had from various causes been a slow and a costly
+process, an Act was run through Parliament with scarcely an expression of
+dissent,[50] making the process as rapid and inexpensive as the wit of man
+could devise; a Commission was appointed to carry the law into effect; and
+intending purchasers were to be given an indefeasible title to any lands
+they might acquire. This was a strong measure, but it was not nearly all;
+the concurrent rights of the tenants in the estates to be sold were
+absolutely ignored, and left without protection; the new possessors were
+empowered to destroy them if they pleased. The results were such as might
+have been looked for when lands were forced into the market wholesale,
+when Ireland was still reeling from the strokes of a terrible famine, and
+agricultural ruin was seen everywhere. The Commission acted as such
+tribunals invariably act when skilfully selected to carry out a policy; it
+addressed itself to its task of 'selling land cheap;' it was egged on by
+the Lord-Lieutenant of the day; and it sacrificed estates, in scores of
+instances, at less than half their value. This iniquitous proceeding went
+on for years, until the market for land in Ireland righted itself at last;
+but the Encumbered Estates Act was often renewed; about a sixth part of
+the lands of Ireland has been transferred by these means. As the result
+many of the Irish gentry, who might have tided over the crisis, were
+beggared and cast on the world penniless; and confiscation from above had
+its counterpart in confiscation from below; the partial joint-ownership of
+thousands of the occupiers of the soil was ruthlessly annihilated in
+numbers of cases. And what were the consequences of this scheme of
+spoliation and wrong, which English politicians would never have thought
+of but for their traditional contempt of the rights of property in land in
+Ireland? English and Scottish capital, indeed, reached the Irish soil; but
+it reached it in the form of large mortgages, a heavy drain on the
+country's resources; the English and Scottish purchasers of the Irish land
+were a mere handful of men. The estates, in fact, transferred under the
+Encumbered Estates Acts, as a rule, passed into the ownership of jobbers,
+speculators, and mortgagees, people without the associations old
+possession ensures; they have formed, as a class, harsh and exacting
+landlords, the true successors of the almost defunct middleman; they are
+responsible for much that is bad in Irish landed relations of late years.
+A huge confiscation, in a word, failed, as those of Elizabeth and Cromwell
+failed before; the fact ought to be a warning to public men, who have been
+parading theories about the Irish land--strewn as this has been with
+monuments of misdeeds and errors--as false and more dangerous than those
+which produced the Encumbered Estates Acts.[51]
+
+The exodus had, by 1851, reduced the population of Ireland by nearly two
+millions of souls; this decline has continued ever since; the population
+which, in 1846, was considerably more than eight millions, is now, we
+have seen, only about four and a half millions. In 1852 an agitation
+sprang up, which might have wrought a great change in Irish landed
+relations, had it not been brought by mere accident to an untimely end.
+The Report of the Devon Commission, I have said, had troubled Ulster; the
+Famine had driven peasants, in tens of thousands, from their homes; the
+operation of the Encumbered Estates Act was destroying their concurrent
+rights in their holdings. At the General Election of 1852 Ireland returned
+a large party of representatives to the House of Commons pledged to
+vindicate the claims of the tenant farmers; these were expressed in a
+demand that has been called the 'Three F's,' 'Fair Rent,' 'Fixity of
+Tenure,' and 'Free Sale,' a mode of occupation which had been largely
+secured by the Custom of Ulster, and to which O'Connell had given his
+sanction. The Government of Lord Derby was now in office; it had brought
+in measures which, in some degree, would have legalised the rights of the
+Irish tenant; but the Ministry was defeated, partly through an
+intrigue;[52] the cause of the Irish farmer was baffled and kept in
+suspense for years, largely owing to dissensions and treachery on the part
+of some of the Irish members. By this time the country had begun to
+revive, and to throw off the worst effects of the Famine; vast depopulated
+tracts had been opened to new husbandry; the land had been set free, over
+an immense area, from the incubus of a mass of wretchedness which had
+preyed on it, and had completely disorganised the land system, unnaturally
+forcing up rent and cutting down wages. Under these conditions the
+statesmen in power, already expecting great things from the Encumbered
+Estates Act, believed that the Irish land system would right itself, and
+that it was unnecessary to consider or to protect the rights of the
+tenant classes; these would either disappear, or would be fairly adjusted
+in the improved landed relations that were being formed. At all events,
+there was no legislation to secure these claims; the scanty legislation,
+that dealt with the Irish land, was unfavourable, in many ways, to these,
+and endeavoured to assimilate Irish to English tenures, as Tudor lawyers
+had done three centuries before; and Lord Palmerston, for a long time the
+head of the State, discouraged Irish tenant right, in more than one
+speech, and declared that it only meant landlord wrong, unwise utterances
+that showed he did not understand the subject. At the same time, the
+policy of clearing the land for cultivators of a capitalist class, able to
+occupy and do justice to large farms, was generally advocated in high
+places; more than one Lord-Lieutenant announced that nature had made
+Ireland a great grazing tract, and that her petty occupiers were little
+better than a social nuisance.[53]
+
+For some time it seemed as though the forecasts made by the great majority
+of our statesmen would prove correct. The immense emigration from Ireland
+to the United States had important results, unfortunate in many respects;
+but the uplifting of redundant millions from the soil greatly contributed
+to the country's welfare. Holdings were consolidated over very large
+areas, a beneficent process, if humanely carried out; a certain number of
+Englishmen and Scotsmen rented large farms; the progress of husbandry of
+all kinds was distinct; a vast field for agriculture, really worthy of the
+name, was opened. A new standard for the management of land was, in fact,
+set up; at the same time a few purchasers, under the Encumbered Estates
+Acts, laid out considerable sums in improving their estates; the Treasury
+made large advances to many Irish landlords; these did much in works of
+enclosure, draining, planting, and the like. Ireland began to wear a new
+aspect in several counties, especially in the more thriving parts of the
+southern provinces; the ruins made by the Famine, indeed, caused hideous
+eyesores, in wrecks of villages and the remains of peasant dwellings; but
+the mud hovels of the cottar population had largely disappeared, and the
+habitations of farmers of the better class very markedly improved. The
+economic conditions of landed relations became more conducive to
+prosperity than they had ever been before; rents fell considerably during
+a series of years, as the intense competition for land diminished; though
+they gradually rose in the course of time, they never reached the
+excessive rates of 1840-45; and the wages of labour greatly increased, and
+attained a level that, happily, has since been preserved. Many
+circumstances concurred to quicken and augment this unquestionable social
+and material progress. Agricultural prices were high from about 1852
+onward; Free Trade was as yet adding to the wealth of Ireland; and there
+was a long succession of good harvests, the most important element in her
+general welfare. The railway system, too, introduced of late years, opened
+a number of new markets to her products, and greatly facilitated their
+access to British markets. At the same time the turnip replaced the potato
+over hundreds of thousands of acres; farm machinery greatly improved in
+Ireland; the importation of the best stock from England and Scotland had
+excellent results, and almost transformed the old breeds of Irish farming
+animals. An era of prosperity, in a word, had seemed to dawn on Ireland;
+and though agrarian disorder had not disappeared, the Whiteboy secret
+societies were greatly broken up, and political agitation well-nigh
+ceased.
+
+In these circumstances, it was a common belief in England that 'the Irish
+difficulty,' as it was called, was passing away, and that the 'Hibernia
+Pacata' had at last become a happy reality. Yet the progress and
+tranquillity of this brief period were largely superficial and even
+deceptive; fires were still alive beneath the smouldering ashes. The
+partial prosperity of Ireland mainly depended on good harvests and high
+prices; it was interrupted, even in these years, by two or three seasons
+of distress. Notwithstanding the widespread consolidation of farms, and
+the removal from the soil of indigent millions, the land still, for the
+most part, remained in the possession of a mere peasantry; very few of the
+English and Scottish capitalist farmers settled in Ireland, and really
+throve; the great majority left the country, like the 'Englishry' of a
+bygone age. And though things wore a serene aspect, the inherent vices of
+the land system continued to exist; in some respects they increased, or
+were more painfully felt. The old divisions of race and faith between the
+owners and the occupiers of the soil remained; they had but little changed
+and even had perhaps widened; much had happened to keep the landed classes
+more apart than before. The new purchasers, under the Encumbered Estates
+Acts, were, we have seen, often hard-fisted and grasping landlords; they
+raised their rents, without scruple, in too many instances; standing on
+the letter of the law, they too often ignored the partial joint-ownership
+in their farms of their tenants; they had sometimes recourse to unjust and
+severe evictions. The old landlords, too, never recovered from the effects
+of the Famine; they were overshadowed by the bureaucracy of the Castle,
+which, for many years, had been growing in power; they thus became an
+order of men with privileges, but without authority, in the midst of
+inferiors, who had little sympathy with them, a dangerous position like
+that of the French seigneurie in the later years of the eighteenth
+century--a position described by Tocqueville in very striking language. At
+the same time the peasantry stood aloof from them more than in the days of
+their fathers; and though they remained quiescent for years, as has often
+happened in Irish history, there were causes for this increasing
+estrangement. They were no longer the grossly ignorant multitude of fifty
+years before; education had made some way among them, though in this
+respect they were still backward; they felt more acutely all that was hard
+in their lot, like the French peasantry before the great Revolution of
+1789-94. This sentiment, however, owed its principal force to sentiments
+engendered in far distant lands. The thousands of the exodus had left
+their country with memories embittered against some Irish landlords, and,
+notably, against the British Government; a new Ireland was rising across
+the Atlantic; the emigrants and their sons were in constant communication
+with the old Ireland once their home; socialistic ideas as regards the
+land, blending with dislike of the superiors and the rulers, under whom
+they lived, were gradually diffused among the Irish peasantry. The
+economic conditions, too, of landed relations by degrees made these
+feelings more general and intense. Rents were rising as the wealth of the
+country increased, though, except in the cases of the new landlords, and
+of a very few surviving middlemen, they were, as a rule, by no means
+excessive. Simultaneously a concurrence of causes had extinguished
+leasehold tenures in most parts of Ireland, and had reduced the status of
+the Irish farmer to that of a mere tenant at will, liable to be
+dispossessed by a notice to quit, at the mercy, in fact, of the lord of
+the soil. And, meanwhile, the equitable rights of the occupiers as a
+class, due to improvements, and to sums paid for the goodwill of farms,
+had been increasing to an immense extent; and yet a grievous wrong--they
+were not even recognised by law. Law and fact had long been sharply
+clashing in landed relations; there was much that was essentially bad in
+the land system; and agrarian trouble and crime was on the increase.
+
+The mind of England had turned away from Ireland after the petty outbreak
+of 1848; it charged the Irish community with ungrateful folly, as it
+recollected the charity lavished during the Famine. This sentiment was
+replaced by what was worse, indifference; throughout this period--from
+1850 to 1868--Parliament gave little attention to the affairs of Ireland.
+British statesmen continued to pin their faith to their policy; they
+disregarded ominous symptoms on the increase; Ireland was rapidly becoming
+more prosperous; the claims of the Irish tenant farmer were a delusion, or
+worse. This apathy was augmented by the state of the representation of
+Ireland in these years; this was in a feeble, even a degraded condition;
+and largely owing to the authority of Cardinal Cullen, who prohibited the
+Irish priesthood from taking any part in politics, agitation, I have said,
+had become a mere tradition of the past. Yet the causes I have glanced at
+were silently at work, which ultimately were to lead to grave social
+troubles. The first sign of disturbance was seen in a little outbreak, the
+result of a conspiracy hatched by one of the rebels of 1848, and supported
+to some extent from America: but the 'Phoenix plot,' as it was called,
+almost at once collapsed; the Government thought it hardly worthy of
+notice. Another and much more formidable conspiracy was matured in
+1864-65; and though it was put down with little difficulty in time, it
+showed that there was much that was peccant in the state of Ireland; and
+it deeply affected the minds of Englishmen, aroused as it were out of a
+fool's paradise. The millions of the Irish race in the Far West were
+passionately appealed to by leaders, not without parts, to assist in a
+crusade against 'landlordism,' and British rule in Ireland; they gave the
+movement very general support; they found numerous allies in thousands of
+Irishmen disbanded after the great conflict between the North and the
+South. The Fenian conspiracy was launched on its course; its directors
+made skilful attempts to debauch whole regiments, and to stir up the
+passions of the mob in many of the towns of Ireland; and they especially
+turned their attention to the mass of the peasantry. Here, however, their
+policy was injudicious and ill-conceived; they promised the Irish land as
+a spoil to those who would join the ranks of the 'patriot Irish army;' but
+all this alarmed the occupiers of the soil, whose only object was to
+acquire a better mode of tenure for their farms, and who rightly thought
+the Fenian movement made their possessions insecure, a belief generally
+encouraged by the Catholic priesthood. A short-lived rising, conducted by
+a few American soldiers, and backed by the rabble of a few villages and
+towns, found no real support in Ireland, and was finally quelled in 1867;
+but in England there was a spurt of Fenian disorder, and this, though
+easily quenched, made a profound impression. It was generally felt in
+England and Scotland that, notwithstanding the optimism of a generation of
+public men, there was still much that was rotten in the state of Ireland,
+and that this should be removed by large and searching reforms. The chief
+sign of this change in British opinion was seen in the result of the
+General Election of 1868; Mr. Gladstone, who, hitherto, had taken
+comparatively little part in Irish affairs, but who, with his keen
+instinct of every turn in the public mind, had been vehemently enlarging
+on the wrongs of Ireland, was placed in power with a great majority, and
+at once addressed himself to the task of Irish reform.[54]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (_continued_)--THE IRISH LAND ACT OF
+1870--THE LAND LEAGUE AND THE NATIONAL LEAGUE--THE LAND OF
+1881--SUBSEQUENT LEGISLATION AS REGARDS THE LAND SYSTEM OF IRELAND
+
+    State of landed relations in Ireland in 1869-70--Mr. Gladstone Prime
+    Minister--The Land Act of 1870--Its merits and defects--A short period
+    of prosperity in Ireland--Ominous symptoms--Michael Davitt--The
+    teaching of John Finton Lalor in 1848--The 'New Departure' in
+    Fenianism arranged in America--Foundation of the Land League--It was a
+    foreign rebellious conspiracy, with an agrarian side, under a
+    constitutional mask--Parnell the master spirit of the League--His
+    visit to America and the results--A short period of distress in
+    Ireland--Conduct of the Irish landlords--Progress of the Land
+    League--Mr. Gladstone again Prime Minister in 1880--The Compensation
+    for Disturbance Bill rejected by the House of Lords--Outburst of
+    agrarian crime, as the Land League increases in power--Rents at
+    Griffith's valuation--Boycotting--Frightful state of Ireland in
+    1881--After a short attempt to repress it, Mr. Gladstone surrenders to
+    the Land League--The Land Act of 1881--Mr. Gladstone breaks the
+    pledges he had made in 1870--His promise of compensating the Irish
+    landlords--The Land Act of 1881 a bad and unjust measure directly
+    inconsistent with that of 1870--The 'No Rent Manifesto'--The
+    Kilmainham Treaty--The Phoenix Park tragedy--Coercion--Parnell
+    founds the National League, the successor of the Land League--Renewal
+    of agitation in 1886--Struggle with law and the Government--Subsequent
+    agrarian legislation for Ireland--This is really a concession to
+    agitation, for the benefit of Irish tenants, and to the injury of
+    Irish landlords.
+
+
+Mr. Gladstone, after his conversion to Home Rule, more than once declared
+that, almost from early manhood he had given special attention to
+Ireland; either his memory was at fault, or he had kept the fact to
+himself. He had been a conspicuous figure in politics, for many years
+before 1868; but until he had been placed at the helm of the State, he had
+shown little acquaintance with Irish questions, and, indeed, had expressed
+few opinions on them. In 1866 he had said in the House of Commons, that
+the existence of the Anglican Irish Church would be probably long; he had
+been in high office almost since 1853, and, as a colleague of Lord
+Palmerston, had acquiesced in the philippics of that statesman against
+Irish tenant right, conduct that revealed ignorance of the land system of
+Ireland. But, in 1868, when the Fenian outbreak had caused the nation to
+demand large reforms in Ireland, he suddenly abandoned his attitude of
+reserve; he threw himself into Irish affairs; his zeal, it may be
+remarked, as often happened, fell in with his interests, and with those of
+the Liberal party, and gave him a leverage to drive Disraeli from office.
+During months before the General Election that ensued, the orator
+thundered on Irish grievances, and on the manifold ills of Ireland; in
+figurative and impassioned language, he said that the island was blighted
+by a huge upas tree, the Church, the land, and education being the three
+main branches. These harangues, addressed to the new democracy,
+contributed powerfully to the fall of the Conservative Ministry; it was
+little noticed, at the time, that one of the results was ere long to
+compel Mr. Gladstone himself to subject Ireland to severe repressive
+measures, for Whiteboy and agrarian outrages became frequent In 1869, the
+Minister addressed himself to the task of hewing down the first branch of
+the poisonous upas; he disestablished and disendowed the Protestant Church
+of Ireland. This is not the place to comment upon that great measure; it
+was well designed upon its professed principles; it dealt liberally, nay,
+generously, with the voluntary Church, which replaced the Church of the
+State it overthrew. But essentially it was a scheme of destruction, formed
+in Nonconformist not in Irish interests, and opposed to the views of
+generations of statesmen; it made no provision for the clergy of the Irish
+Catholic Church, a policy which Pitt, Castlereagh, and Lord John Russell
+had had at heart, which had been all but a condition of the Union, and
+which, if carried into effect, would have done much to strengthen and
+maintain that fundamental law, and to promote tranquillity in Ireland and
+her general welfare.
+
+Mr. Gladstone now turned to the second branch of the upas, the land system
+of Ireland and her landed relations. His whole career, especially in its
+Home Rule phase, proves that his knowledge of Ireland was not exact or
+profound; at this time he had had little experience of the Irish land
+question. But the mind of England was still attracted to Irish affairs; a
+number of distinguished Englishmen and Scotchmen went to Ireland, to
+investigate the state of the country on the spot; the British Press sent
+some of its best contributors; the time was singularly opportune for a
+fair and complete inquiry; no Minister has had, before or since, such
+assistance in dealing with Irish problems. I must glance at the state of
+the Irish land system in 1869-70, as this was fully explored and made
+manifest.[55] The material progress being made, since about 1854, had
+been largely developed in by far the greatest part of the island. The
+population was being still diminished by emigration and other causes; the
+area for real husbandry had been greatly extended; the rural community, at
+least in its lower grades, was infinitely better off than it had been
+before the Famine. The look of the country, in most places, bore witness
+to a change beneficent in the main; it had been almost transformed since
+1844-45. The cottar system, no doubt, was to be found in backward
+counties; but even in these it had been largely effaced; it was all but
+passing away in the more thriving counties; masses of indigence were to be
+seen only in tracts west of the Shannon; and these were aggregated on an
+area comparatively small. The general consolidation of farms had,
+meanwhile, gone on; and though Ireland remained, on the whole, a land of
+small farms, her land system had, from top to bottom, ceased to depend for
+its support on a perishable root. In every conceivable respect a marked
+improvement was visible in the state of the peasantry; they were by many
+degrees better clothed and fed than their fathers had been; the wages of
+agricultural labour were still rising, and were now paid in money, and not
+in plots of potatoes; and though the habitations of this whole class were,
+as a rule, still mean, the dwellings of the class of substantial farmers
+had shown signs of distinct social progress. At the same time agriculture
+had made a marked advance, owing to the influences I have referred to
+before; fine specimens of extensive farming were very commonly to be seen;
+thousands of acres had been reclaimed and enclosed of late years; at no
+period certainly had the landed gentry, in a great measure through moneys
+borrowed from the State, expended such large sums in improving their
+estates, especially in arterial drainage, and the introduction of the
+best breeds of stock of all kinds. The wealth of Ireland, too, was
+increasing, if not rapidly; and a change for the better might be traced in
+what we may describe as her general social life. Her middle class was
+still weak and small compared to that of England and Scotland; but it had
+been growing in wealth and power; and this, to some extent, had had a good
+effect on a community still mainly dependent on the land.
+
+The material and even the social progress of Ireland, since the Famine,
+had thus been marked; it had been more decided than it has been, at any
+period, except, possibly, that from 1782 to 1800. Her land system, too,
+had become better in important parts; but in many respects it remained
+vicious; some of its vices had been aggravated, or were more sensibly
+felt. The hope that the land would pass generally into the hands of large
+farmers, able to develop its resources, had not been realised, or had been
+realised only to a relatively trivial extent; it was still held in the
+main by a peasantry of small occupiers of the soil, though the
+consolidation of farms had gone on over extensive areas, especially over
+wide tracts of pasturage, in the eastern, midland, and western counties,
+and this, in some instances, through a process of harsh eviction. The
+profound divisions of race and faith, the distinctive feature in the
+organic structure of the whole community, were at least as visible as ever
+in the land system; from causes I have pointed out before, they had, not
+improbably, been widened; this tended to increase the old dissension in
+landed relations, and the long-standing separation between the landed
+classes. Middleman tenures, with their mischievous effects, had, since the
+Famine, well-nigh disappeared; but the new landlord had largely replaced
+the middleman; absenteeism remained what it had been; and though absentee
+estates, as a rule, were under good agents, there was too much of that
+'absenteeism of the heart,' condemned by Tocqueville as a grave social
+danger. The purchasers under the Encumbered Estates Acts, with some
+honourable exceptions, no doubt, were too often oppressive landlords; the
+old landlords, as a class, had, certainly, done much for their estates,
+but they had lost their political and largely their social influence;
+partly owing to apprehensions as regards tenant right, partly to the
+assurances of statesmen that their position was safe, they had become
+perhaps more exacting in their dealings with their dependents; in the
+existing situation, they more and more resembled a weak caste, controlled
+by the central Government, and isolated amidst a community, to a great
+extent, not friendly. All this tended to produce a want of stability and
+insecurity in the land system, which was ominous of social strife and
+trouble; but the most active element of disturbance was to be certainly
+found in the contact with the rebellious movement which Ireland had lately
+witnessed. Fenianism had been scotched, but by no means slain; and though
+the peasantry had held aloof from it, Fenian emissaries were going through
+the country, appealing to the passions and the greed of the occupiers of
+the soil, for different reasons not contented with their lot, hostile, in
+a great degree, to the order of things around them, and more alive to
+their grievances than in the past generation; at this very time a cry
+against the payment of rent, and against 'landlordism,' as it was called,
+was being heard in a few counties. It was significant that agrarian
+crimes--some of the worst type--and agrarian disorder were distinctly
+increasing; and it should be added, that, in spite of Cardinal Cullen, the
+younger Catholic priests, in some districts, were beginning to play the
+part of agitators again.
+
+Passing from the general state of landed relations, the conditions of land
+tenure, briefly noticed before, had not improved of late years, and were,
+in some respects, worse. Rents had been rising for a considerable time:
+but except in comparatively few instances, they were not excessive, as
+affairs stood; whatever mendacious calumny has since maintained, Ireland,
+on the whole, was in no sense an over-rented land.[56] But the modes of
+occupation were essentially bad; they were open to the gravest objections;
+their vices had become more than ever apparent. The tenant right, under
+the Ulster custom, had, I have remarked, largely secured the tenant
+farmer, in parts of the province, what was generally known as the 'Three
+F's,' Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure, the power of a Free Sale of the
+holding;[57] though it should be especially borne in mind that the fair
+rent was never adjusted by an external agency, but was settled by what
+Adam Smith would have called 'higgling' between the owner and occupier of
+the soil. The custom, however, had been very powerful; its violation, on
+anything like a great scale, would have certainly caused a fierce war of
+classes; and it gave the Ulster tenant, in tens of thousands of cases, a
+real proprietary right in the land, whatever might be the terms of his
+contract; a right equivalent to more or less joint-ownership, and that
+might be described as a precious _peculium_, subject to conditions that
+long had made it practically secure. But this most important right,
+involving property worth many millions, still remained wholly unprotected
+by law; and though its value had enormously increased, as the wealth of
+Ulster had been developed, of late years, it was being 'nibbled away' on
+not a few estates, and restricted by limitations of many kinds that had
+greatly impaired it. An analogous right, like seed scattered by the
+winds, had partially spread into the southern provinces, as the natural
+result of the equitable claims, the occupiers of farms had repeatedly
+acquired, though this had not been recognised on many estates, and its
+efficacy was not as yet great; but this right, such as it was, like its
+fellow, was not law-worthy, and depended wholly on the will of the lord of
+the soil. In addition to the tenant right in the north and the south, the
+concurrent claims of the tenant farmers, throughout the country, in
+respect of improvements and of sums paid on the transfer of farms, for
+'good-will,' had been greatly increasing of late years, especially as
+prosperity was advancing; and yet tenures had continued to become more
+precarious; leaseholds were being almost everywhere replaced by tenancies
+at will. These claims were never so extensive before; often equivalent to
+joint-ownership, in no doubtful sense, and, in almost all cases, of some
+value, they were, nevertheless, still outside the ægis of the law, a fact
+that must ever be borne in mind; they could be destroyed or greatly
+reduced by the raising of rent, they could be annihilated by a notice to
+quit, if eviction followed. Unquestionably in the great mass of instances,
+these rights, whatever their nature, were not invaded; but they certainly
+had been in a certain number; a single case of invasion created alarm and
+distrust, and had a bad effect on landed relations; throw a stone into a
+pond, and it makes a ripple; it has a disturbing influence far beyond the
+surface it strikes. No wonder, then, that complaints of these modes of
+tenure had become very general, and were loudly expressed, not only by
+those who might suffer from them, but by intelligent minds which had
+mastered the subject. It was an exaggeration to assert, as was said at the
+time, that the peasant in Ireland lived under a sword of Damocles; but he
+lived under a system in which law and right were very plainly opposed.
+
+Only a revolution, which Parliament would not have sanctioned, could have
+effaced the inveterate ills of the Irish land system, running up to the
+conquests and the confiscations of the past, and the divisions of race and
+faith in the Irish land; the remark is as true now as it was thirty years
+ago; and a revolution of the kind, I am firmly convinced, would, even
+under the best conditions, make infinitely worse whatever was already bad.
+But it was possible for legislation to remove or mitigate the essential
+vices in the modes of Irish land tenure; Mr. Gladstone rightly confined
+himself to this object. He brought in his first Irish Land Bill in the
+early spring of 1870; he had to address a House of Commons not much in
+sympathy with a project of the kind. Many of the members were ignorant of
+the subject; many thought English land tenure perfect, and could not
+understand why it would not do for Ireland, a prejudice at least three
+centuries old; some believed Irish tenant right to be a violation of Free
+Trade, then in the ascendant in every phase of commerce. The Minister's
+speech was adapted to those who heard it; it was tentative, moderate, not
+striking; he drew, indeed, very plain distinctions between British and
+Irish land tenure, and showed how the first could be no rule of right for
+the second; but if he enlarged on the just claims of the occupier of the
+Irish soil, he did not venture to maintain, what he probably felt, that
+these were often equivalent to a joint-ownership more or less developed.
+He was, in short, dexterous, but not profound; very inferior to Burke,
+who, a century before, had grasped the essential facts in this province,
+though the question was still in the remote future. The most important
+parts of Mr. Gladstone's speech, and indeed, of those of his leading
+followers, regard being had to events by no means distant, were those in
+which he repudiated, with no doubtful censure, the whole theory of the
+'Three F's,' the extreme demand, at this time, of the tenant class in
+Ireland. 'Fair Rent' he argued, especially if adjusted by the State,
+deprives a landlord of his first proprietary right, and involves his
+expropriation in the long run; 'Fixity of Tenure' means a perpetuity for
+the tenant, to which he has no just claim, and involves confiscation
+hardly disguised; 'Free Sale' was but a corollary to legislation on these
+principles.[58] At the same time, Mr. Gladstone protested, with marked
+emphasis, that the Bill he was introducing was to be absolutely a final
+measure; it was to effect a permanent settlement of the Irish land; Irish
+landlords would have nothing more to apprehend, Irish tenants to expect.
+In this instance, as in that of Home Rule, the orator was to belie
+himself, and to be a curious example of the irony of Fate; within a few
+years he was to legislate on the lines he had denounced as dangerous and
+false; to carry into effect a scheme for dealing with the Irish land,
+infinitely worse than that of the 'Three F's;' to scatter the 'finality,'
+to which he had pledged his word, to the winds.
+
+The Bill thus launched was a comprehensive and wise measure, if not free
+from real, even grave, defects; it remains the only statesmanlike scheme
+for the settlement of Irish landed relations that hitherto has received
+the assent of Parliament.[59] It made the tenant right of Ulster, in its
+various forms, as these existed in different estates, law-worthy, and
+protected to the fullest extent; it gave the same sanction to the inchoate
+tenant right of the southern provinces. This was, in itself, an immense
+reform; but the Bill properly had a far wider sweep; it extended, with the
+exception of certain kinds of lands, such as demesnes, town parks,
+holdings of a residential type, and, in most cases, large pastoral
+holdings, to nearly all the occupiers of the Irish soil; even the excepted
+lands were partially within its scope. The first great object of the
+measure was to secure to the Irish tenant the rights he had acquired to
+improvements he may have made on his farm, a right hitherto not within the
+pale of the law; its provisions, in this respect, were, I think,
+excellent. With a true perception of the unquestionable fact that, though
+the Irish landlords, especially of late years, had expended considerable
+sums on their estates, still, as is inevitable under the small-farm
+system, the Irish tenant, as a general rule, had made the greatest part of
+the additions to the land, Mr. Gladstone provided that, subject to
+limitations by no means severe, in order that the law should not run wild,
+improvements made on farms, in the absence of proof to the contrary,
+should be deemed to be the tenant's property, thus reversing the
+presumption of English law, iniquitous when applied to Irish tenures, that
+what is annexed to the soil belongs to the owner, and not to its occupant.
+The ground being, so to speak, cleared, the Bill declared that, in almost
+all cases, a tenant should have a right, when leaving his farm, even
+though dispossessed for the failure to pay his rent, to claim
+compensation, from his landlord, for his improvements; and facilities were
+offered to landlords to discharge these claims through loans from the
+State. In order, however, reasonably to secure right being done, in a
+complex and very difficult matter, the Bill proceeded to define
+improvements, and to impose restrictions on claims, to which objection
+could fairly be made. Apart from unexhausted tillages and manures, an
+improvement was to be a work 'suitable to a holding, and adding to its
+letting value,' a description as equitable and precise as could well be
+desired. And, speaking generally, claims in respect of improvements were
+not to be preferred were the improvement twenty years old, except in the
+case of buildings and the reclamation of waste land; nor if the
+improvement were prohibited by the landlord, under the conditions laid
+down; nor if it were made under a contract for value; nor if it were
+forbidden by a special contract; nor if, in certain cases, the landlord
+had agreed to make it; nor if the claim was barred by express written
+contract, in the case of improvements made before the Bill became law;
+nor, in the case, with some exceptions, of certain classes of leases; nor
+if the landlord, under certain conditions, permitted a tenant to dispose
+of his interest in his farm.
+
+This measure, therefore, gave the Irish tenant farmer complete property in
+his improvements, within reasonable bounds, and yet did not here invade
+the just rights of the landlord; it was only to be regretted that it had
+not been proposed many years before. It proceeded, however, a great deal
+further, and asserted a principle, for the behoof of the tenant, which has
+since been very generally condemned,[60] though in my judgment, it was
+essentially right, if carried somewhat beyond proper and safe limits.
+Except in the case of leases granted before the Bill, and of a class of
+leases granted when it was to become law, Mr. Gladstone engrafted on the
+great mass of Irish tenancies what really was a new tenant right; he was
+probably convinced, though he did not say so, that this was to be an
+equivalent for the joint-ownership, more or less manifest, which, in
+innumerable instances, the Irish occupier had acquired in the soil. This
+tenant right was given the rather ambiguous name of 'Compensation,' in the
+event of 'Disturbance;' a sum varying in amount from seven to one year's
+rent, according to the size of the holding, but in no case to exceed £250,
+was to be paid to a tenant when dispossessed by a notice to quit, and, in
+some circumstances, by other means; this was to be over and above any sum
+due in respect of improvements; but this, too, as in the case of the
+last-named sum, was to be paid only when the tenant was 'quitting' the
+land. Obviously this was a potential tenant right, if to be realised only
+in one way; it practically gave a quasi-proprietary right in the fee, as,
+when commenting on the Bill, I pointed out at the time; and I certainly
+thought that the compensation was very large, and introduced a principle
+into the Bill which might be abused. Two other provisions of the measure,
+with respect to the position of the Irish tenant, may be briefly noticed.
+No attempt was made to adjust rents, through the agency of the State, Mr.
+Gladstone having expressly denounced the idea; but in the case of petty
+occupiers, subjected to 'exorbitant rents,' compensation for disturbance
+might be adjudged to them, even if evicted for not paying the rent, that
+is, the landlord might be mulcted in very heavy penalties. In nearly all
+instances, too, the tenant was declared to be entitled to 'his away-going
+crops,' another privilege, sometimes of no little value, and analogous to
+that secured by usage in many parts of England. So far the Bill dealt with
+the Irish land on the side of occupation; but it dealt with it, also, on
+the side of ownership. John Bright had urged the expediency, during
+several years, of facilitating the transfer of the fee simple, in his
+holding, to the Irish tenant; this policy had been carried out, to some
+extent, by the Act disestablishing the Anglican Church in Ireland. The
+Bill of 1870 extended the principle; it provided that the State might
+advance moneys to Irish tenants, to enable them to become owners of their
+farms; but--and this should especially be kept in mind--the tenant was to
+supply a third part of the purchase money at least; and the transaction
+was to be effected by free contract, that is, by the voluntary act of the
+landlord disposing of his land. It remains to add, that the administration
+of the measure, was, for the most part--subject to an appeal to the
+Superior Courts--entrusted to the County Courts of Ireland, that is, to
+long-established tribunals of repute.
+
+The Bill passed through both Houses with little change; it has long been
+known as the Irish Land Act of 1870. It was, in the main, I repeat, a
+great reforming measure; it effected a far-reaching improvement in the
+tenure of land in Ireland, and that without any marked infringement of the
+just rights of property. No impartial mind can fairly object to the
+protection given to the tenant right of the north and the south, or to the
+compensation secured for tenants' improvements; if 'Compensation for
+Disturbance' was a bold experiment, still this Parliamentary tenant right,
+as it may be called, was in harmony with fact in nearly all instances.
+Nevertheless, the Act had three marked defects; these largely detracted
+from its practical value. It bristled with such exceptions and limitations
+that it was difficult even for the learned to understand; it seemed to the
+unlettered peasant a dangerous puzzle, involving him, perhaps, in lawsuits
+and costs; it did not strike his imagination as a substantial boon.
+Though, too, it annexed a real tenant right to nearly all farms, and thus
+secured to the Irish tenant, in almost all cases, any joint-ownership he
+may have acquired in the land, still this was intelligible only to
+educated men; 'Compensation for Disturbance' was to be given only when an
+occupier was about to leave his holding; but this was exactly what he
+could not bear to do; he was, therefore, ready to accept almost any terms,
+rather than face consequences he dreaded to think of. Mr. Gladstone,
+again, had, in this measure, shown that he wished to assimilate Irish to
+English land tenure in the long run; he sought to vindicate the just
+claims of the Irish tenant; but he desired ultimately to give him the
+status of his fellow in England, a long-standing, false conception of
+British statesmen. The Land Act, therefore, provided that most of the
+rights it conferred on the tenant might be commuted by the grant of a
+lease for thirty-one years or upwards; and it further enacted that tenants
+of the larger kind might 'contract themselves out' of the privileges it
+gave, by voluntary agreements made with their landlords. The object of
+this was to place the Irish land, by degrees, no doubt, under rather long
+leases, discharged from the tenant right and other claims; but in the
+circumstances of Ireland this was a mistake. This part of the Act was a
+temptation to landlords, to persuade or even to force tenants to accept
+leases under conditions which might be too severe, with respect to rent
+and many other things, and to forego rights they would otherwise have
+enjoyed, by a process which might not be a free contract; it encouraged,
+in a word, unfair evasion of the law. This flaw in the measure was pointed
+out from the first; Mr. Gladstone, however, denied its existence, and
+characteristically shut his ears to other schemes of reform, notably to an
+ingenious proposal of the late Judge Longfield to extend the Ulster tenant
+right to all Irish tenancies by a very simple and self-acting process, and
+to a proposal of Butt to convert tenancies at will into long leaseholds,
+at the rents then current. These projects certainly deserved attention;
+and, whatever their shortcomings, were easy to understand.
+
+The Act of 1870, like the Act dealing with the Protestant Church, was
+followed by a short-lived outbreak of agrarian crime put down only by
+severe coercive measures. This phenomenon has been common in Irish
+history, from the days of Tyrconnell to the present time; disorder has
+been the immediate result of concessions; peccant humours discharge
+themselves if you touch the head of an ulcer. There is some reason, too,
+to believe that in a few instances--and they were very few--wrongheaded
+landlords, alarmed at the prospect before them, began to harass and even
+to dispossess tenants; they aimed at 'clearing' their estates, in order to
+evade the law; conduct of this kind naturally provoked indignation in some
+places.[61] Nevertheless, the Land Act of 1870 was generally well received
+in Ireland, though it fell short of the popular demand, and it was ill
+understood by the tenant classes;[62] many farmers availed themselves of
+its benefits, especially those holding under the Ulster custom. Five or
+six years of prosperity followed, the brightest perhaps ever seen in
+Ireland; agricultural prices were high, harvests extremely good; the
+material progress of the country was decided; the peasantry seemed, as a
+rule, contented; agitation abandoned, as it were, the land, and
+concentrated itself on the Home Rule movement. Mr. Gladstone, always
+optimistic, and proud of his own offspring, boasted, towards the close of
+his first Ministry, that his recent legislation had done wonders; the Land
+Act had reconciled Irish landlords and tenants, and had greatly increased
+the selling price of land; he refused to see how much of all this was due
+to a cause wholly independent of himself, the comparative well-being of
+nearly all Ireland. As had happened in the period from 1854 to 1870, this
+tranquillity was not deeply founded or complete; as then, it was, in a
+great degree, deceptive. The peasantry were living fast in a good time;
+banks and traders had made large advances to them on the security of
+tenure the law had created; their position became such, in some districts,
+that a season of distress might reduce many to sudden poverty, and be
+productive of the necessarily resulting evils. Rents, again, were rising
+as the country grew in wealth, though except in comparatively few cases--a
+fact that should be steadily kept in view--they were still, as a rule, by
+no means excessive; they were far below the rents of thirty years before;
+but this gradual rise was of course not popular. In some instances,
+too--but these were very rare, as was conclusively proved at a subsequent
+time--tenants, under more or less pressure on the part of their landlords,
+had accepted leases excluding them from the advantages of the law, and not
+equitable in some respects, or had wholly 'contracted themselves out' of
+the Act; this naturally caused alarm and distrust in many peasant
+dwellings. But the principal reasons that content was really less than it
+seemed to be in landed relations were altogether of a different nature.
+Like too many even excellent reforms in Ireland, the Land Act of 1870
+became law too late; twenty years before it would have been hailed as an
+extraordinary boon; it was now regarded as almost a half measure, in view
+of the socialistic ideas about the land afloat. At the same time,
+Fenianism continued to make its influence felt; Irish-Americans continued
+to flit through the country denouncing British rule and Irish landlords,
+and calling upon the peasantry, as in 1798, to rise. Even in these years
+of prosperity, though rents were well paid, there was a secret movement
+against rent beneath the surface of things, so well concealed that it was
+absolutely unknown by the Government.
+
+Meanwhile, in the midst of apparent peace, the elements of trouble in
+Ireland still quiescent were to come to a head and to give rise to a
+movement. The most formidable to British rule though skilfully masked,
+which had been seen since the rebellion of 1798. Revolutionary schemes in
+Ireland have always fastened on the land as the chief source from which
+they could derive strength; the United Irish movement as I have pointed
+out, was connected with a peasant movement against the payment of rent.
+This idea had been brought into marked prominence by John Finton Lalor,
+one of the rebels of 1848, a comparatively unknown but a sagacious man;
+'You must associate' he wrote, 'the cause of Irish liberty, for which the
+people really care little with a cause for which they care a great deal;
+an inert mass must be yoked to a powerful engine; the Irish landlord must
+be driven from the land and the peasant masses be made its owners; and the
+fall of English power will follow that of its landlord garrison.' These
+words fell for the moment on unheeding ears; but the tradition has
+continued from that day to this the destruction of Irish 'landlordism' was
+one of the objects of the Fenian leaders of 1865-67, and they denounced
+the Irish gentry in atrocious language, though they did not know how to
+carry out their policy. This teaching was eagerly adopted by Michael
+Davitt, a Fenian, who had been convicted of a crime against the State;
+during a long imprisonment at Dartmoor, he brooded 'on his country's
+wrongs,' but satisfied himself that if the independence of Ireland was a
+patriot's first object, this could be attained only by uprooting the
+existing land system, by hounding on the occupiers of the soil against its
+owners, and by handing it over as spoil to the peasantry. Davitt was
+released from Dartmoor at the close of 1877; he attended a meeting in
+Dublin at which Parnell was present, and two of the assassins of the
+Phoenix Park tragedy; and he became supreme in the ranks of the Fenian
+societies, known as 'the Irish Republican Brotherhood,' which still
+retained a feeble life in Ireland, and even in England and Scotland. A
+short time afterwards he made his way to the United States, where he found
+the Fenians divided into two parties, known under the general name of the
+Clan na Gael, but having different objects, though with a common purpose.
+Both parties were for liberating Ireland 'from the Saxon yoke;' but the
+most violent and the most active sought to attain this end by expedients
+of desperate force; a 'skirmishing fund' had been established; 'England
+was to be invaded' by small bodies of 'resolute men;' her capital and
+chief towns were to be destroyed by dynamite. The other party, more
+prudent, but with similar aims, had been struck by Parnell's attitude in
+the House of Commons, and by the success of his unscrupulous tactics; its
+leaders began to think that something might be done by 'constitutional
+means;' they gradually came to an agreement with Davitt, that 'the
+overthrow of English domination' was to be their ultimate end; but that
+efforts in this direction were to be linked with energetic efforts to
+subvert 'the landlord system, a disgrace to humanity and to the
+civilisation of the present century;' to banish the Irish landed gentry
+from their country, and to secure their estates for their tenantry. This
+movement, though rebellious in no doubtful sense, was nevertheless to have
+a legal disguise; the wolf was to wear sheep's clothing; the 'formation of
+a peasant proprietary, and the abolition of arbitrary evictions,' were to
+be its proposed objects.[63]
+
+Treason, seeking support from socialistic greed, was thus the origin of
+the Land League conspiracy, for this was its only legitimate name. I have
+glanced at this movement, on its political side, as it was associated with
+the cause of Home Rule; I must here consider it on its agrarian side, the
+most prominent, if not the most dangerous, to the State.[64] The compact
+between Davitt and the moderates of the Clan na Gael was called the 'New
+Departure;' Davitt returned to Ireland to stir up what became known as the
+'Land War;' Fenian emissaries went to Ireland, about the same time, in
+order to collect arms and to drill peasants, with a view to a possible
+rising should the occasion be found. Meanwhile, Davitt had addressed
+himself to what was more immediately at hand; in the spring of 1879 he got
+a meeting together, in his native county, Mayo, at which 'landlordism' and
+all its works were savagely denounced; during the following months other
+meetings of the same sort were held, but as yet only in the western
+province of Connaught. At these gatherings the crusade against the landed
+gentry went on; rebellious utterances were blended with ferocious
+diatribes against[65] landlords sometimes marked out for vengeance by
+name; and the peasantry were called on to keep 'a firm grip on their
+lands;' these would become their own should they only be steadfast. The
+Land League movement was now launched on its course; but it was known to
+be an essentially Fenian movement; it was subsidised from Clan na Gael
+funds; it was supported by a murderous Clan na Gael print; it was
+condemned in the severest language by an aged Catholic prelate, one of the
+few of O'Connell's surviving friends. The movement, however, as yet was
+not of much strength; Davitt had opinions about the 'nationalisation of
+the land,' which, like those of the Fenian leaders of 1865-67, were not to
+the mind of the peasantry; his efforts, hitherto, had not had much
+success. In this position of affairs he addressed himself to Parnell, who
+had had Fenian sympathies and associations for years, and had, we have
+seen, attracted Fenian admiration abroad; what passed between the two men
+has not transpired; but Parnell, if with reluctance, consented at last to
+become the head of the Land League and to direct the movement. The
+measures he adopted were skilfully designed, in harmony with the 'New
+Departure,' and with the double-dealing nature of a true conspirator. A
+Central Land League was established in Dublin; it was to have 'branches'
+extending through the country; it was to make a steady attack on the land
+system. Its professed objects, however, were constitutional, nay, fair; it
+was 'to agitate against rack-rents and unjust evictions,' and to
+'facilitate the ownership of the soil by its occupants.' The ultimate
+purpose of the League, nevertheless, was that of the Fenian chiefs; of its
+seven high officers four were Fenians; it was wholly supported by Fenian
+moneys; its most prominent members made a boast of their Fenian
+sentiments.[66] It was, in a word, a rebellious organisation in a
+constitutional garb; it was the embodiment of what Parnell avowed
+afterwards: 'A true revolutionary movement in Ireland should, in my
+opinion, partake both of a constitutional and an illegal character. It
+should be both an open and a secret organisation, using the Constitution
+for its own purposes, but also taking advantage of its secret
+combination.'[67]
+
+The Land League established, under these auspices, gradually made some
+progress in the western parts of Ireland, always centres of poverty more
+or less developed. It had not, however, as yet, become a power in the
+land; Parnell went to the United States, as I have mentioned before, in
+order to obtain support for the 'New Departure.' He was the grandson of a
+distinguished American; the elections for a President were near; it was
+necessary to bid for the Irish vote; the chief of the League was invited
+to say what his Irish policy was in the Representative House of the
+people; and this he did in moderate and carefully chosen language. His
+real attitude, however, was very different; he associated with well-known
+Fenian leaders, became acquainted with a contributor to the _Irish World_,
+the worst journal of the Clan na Gael press; and more than once gave
+utterance to what was plain treason, notably to the 'last-link' speech
+already referred to. He obtained considerable funds for the League in
+Ireland, and before long founded a similar League in America, which became
+a Fenian organisation of the very worst type. Meanwhile a season of
+distress had visited Ireland; this quickened the elements of disorder
+being already let loose. The harvest of 1878 was not good; that of 1879
+was the worst known since the Great Famine; the prosperity of the country
+suddenly came to an end. There was a universal calling in of demands,
+especially from tenant farmers, who, I have said, had been rather
+extravagant, and had become involved in debt;[68] the whole class suffered
+more or less, though there was very little extreme indigence, and Lord
+Beaconsfield's Government was not slow in providing relief, which private
+charity largely increased. In these circumstances the landed gentry acted
+as any class would naturally act; a considerable number made remissions of
+rent; if a large majority, as certainly was the case, insisted upon their
+legal rights--conduct which must be pronounced unfortunate--it must be
+recollected that an agitation of extreme violence had been directed
+against the whole order; and that Mr. Gladstone had declared that, after
+the Land Act, there were to be no more concessions. The League now
+acquired new power; its branches spread over large parts of the west; its
+directors, from members in the House of Commons, to its avowed agents, and
+to the 'village ruffians,' who carried out its bidding in many places,
+rioted in atrocious threats against landlords whether good or bad; and a
+movement against the payment of rent began. The teaching which had been
+spread abroad during many months, bore the fruits which were to be
+expected from it; there was a sudden outbreak of agrarian crime, and of
+Whiteboyism in its worst aspect; it deserves special notice that this was
+confined to the counties where the League was in real force. The
+landlords, under these conditions, were often driven to enforce their
+claims; attempts were made to show that the evictions that followed were
+the sole causes of this social disorder. But it is absolutely certain that
+this was not the case; it was the Land League which provoked the
+evictions, and was responsible for the incidental crime.[69]
+
+The spring of 1880 had come; Lord Beaconsfield had been driven from
+office, in an evil day for the renown of England; Mr. Gladstone had been
+returned again to power, on the flood of a tide of democratic sympathy.
+Lord Beaconsfield was not an author of any very large Irish reform, but he
+understood Ireland much better than his impetuous rival; he had seen from
+the first the real nature of the Land League movement; in his address to
+the nation, when he dissolved Parliament, he declared that an 'attempt
+scarcely less dangerous than famine and pestilence' was being made to
+separate Ireland from Great Britain, words treated by Mr. Gladstone with
+scornful ridicule, but words of real truth. The incoming Minister had of
+late taken little heed of Irish affairs; he had been engaged in his
+crusade in Midlothian, and in stirring up the multitude on the Eastern
+question; but he had clung to his optimistic Irish faith; he had solemnly
+announced that Ireland was 'contented and happy,' when the country was
+suffering from unquestionable distress; he had even refused to renew a
+measure for the repression of agrarian crime, when agrarian crime was
+formidably on the increase, and the Land League was rapidly growing in
+strength. At last, however, partly opening his eyes to the facts, he
+appointed a Commission charged to report on Irish land tenure; and he
+introduced a Bill slightly to amend the Land Act of 1870, showing thus
+from the outset that he choose to regard a conspiracy against the State on
+its economic side mainly, and not in its far more grave political aspect.
+A word must be said on this measure, which had its origin, to a great
+extent, in sheer and audacious falsehood. By this time Parnell was at the
+head of some sixty adherents in the House of Commons; he had linked the
+Home Rule and the Land League movements; his followers were, in many
+instances, chiefs of the League; they induced Mr. Gladstone to listen to
+them, on representations characteristically untrue. Evictions were on the
+increase in Ireland, owing to the onslaught made by the League on the
+landed gentry; Parnell and his band unscrupulously exaggerated the number,
+perhaps twenty-fold, by confounding ejectment decrees of the Courts with
+evictions actually carried out; Mr. Gladstone appears to have accepted
+this shameful statement. The new 'Compensation for Disturbance' Bill, as
+it was called, provided that in the case of certain classes of tenants,
+although they had failed to pay their rents, compensation, withheld, we
+have seen, under the Act of 1870, might be afforded them, under rather
+strict conditions; this was certainly an innovation of a startling kind,
+but something was to be said for it, in the existing position of affairs.
+The House of Commons, however, disliked a measure nicknamed 'payment by
+reason of non-payment,' and limited its application in many ways; and the
+House of Lords, unfortunately, I think, threw it out.
+
+This Bill, closely circumscribed as it was, would not have extended,
+perhaps, to many tenants; it was condemned by Parnell and his satellites
+as a sham. Its rejection, however, gave an opportunity to the League; its
+leaders proclaimed at meetings, never so frequent before, that Ireland
+had nothing to expect from a foreign Parliament; the attack on
+'landlordism' became more intense; treasonable and predatory harangues
+increased in vehemence. The influence of the conspiracy spread beyond
+Connaught, over nearly all Munster, and parts of Leinster; wherever it was
+felt it was attended with agrarian crime; 'crime,' as Mr. Gladstone
+exclaimed, 'always dogged its footsteps.' Offences of this kind
+portentously multiplied; they had been eight hundred and sixty-three at
+the close of 1879; they were two thousand five hundred and eighty-nine at
+the close of 1880;[70] and these included a number of barbarous murders,
+and of other atrocious deeds of outrage and blood, especially of the
+mutilation of the cattle of those opposed to the League. A kind of servile
+war springing from the land had set in; and during this whole period the
+spokesmen of the League, whether in the highest or the lowest grades,
+continued to denounce the landed gentry, though they knew that their
+utterances were the direct incentive to far-spreading crime. Parnell,
+however, infinitely the ablest of the conspirators, perceived that this
+brutal disorder would incense Parliament, and, besides, could not have
+decisive results; the cool, calculating schemer laid down a plan of
+operations for the League, which he hoped would be less openly detestable,
+and much more effective. Orders were issued that tenants should, in every
+part of Ireland, repudiate the rents they had agreed to pay, and should
+pay only such sums as had been assessed on land by a valuation made by the
+State for rates, a standard long acknowledged to be much too low; every
+landlord who should reject these terms was to incur the vengeance of the
+League. By these means Parnell expected, and not without reason, that a
+great combination for the forcible reduction of rent would be formed, and
+that numbers of farmers would flock in to the League, but he knew that
+his proposal was simply a defiance of the law, and that it would be
+resisted by many of the landed gentry; he hit on an expedient through
+which he believed he would attain his end. Should any landlord refuse to
+accept the sum offered instead of the proper rent, and should proceed to
+dispossess the defaulting tenant--and practically he could have no other
+remedy--the evicted farm was to be left derelict; it was to be smitten, as
+it were, by the interdict of the League; and any wretch who should dare to
+take it was to be banned by the whole neighbourhood; he and his, and those
+who dealt with him, 'were to be shunned as lepers,' and 'treated as
+traitors to the cause.'[71] In this way, the crime of 'boycotting,' as it
+has ever since been called--its origin may be traced to the great Tithe
+War in Ireland--was made part of 'the unwritten law' of the League; and
+Parnell professed, whether sincerely or not, that through this device the
+League would baffle the law, and the landlords, as a class, as unhappily
+it did, in too many instances. Having thus armed the conspiracy with
+increased power, he cynically began to deprecate crimes of violence: the
+device of 'boycotting' was a more excellent way; it would before long
+'bring landlords to their knees,' and would ultimately 'plant the tenant
+in his farm to be held at a nominal rent,' should he only be true to the
+League. At the same time the astute plotter found other means to extend
+his authority and that of the conspiracy he ruled. He appealed to the
+elective Local Boards in each county, composed for the most part of tenant
+farmers, to join the League, and to carry out his policy; and continuously
+but steadily he brought the force of the League to bear upon the
+administration of the law, by the intimidation of juries, magistrates, and
+even judicial persons.
+
+The teaching of Parnell was disseminated by the League and its agencies,
+especially at gatherings of peasant mobs; it was largely followed wherever
+the League prevailed. In hundreds of instances tenant farmers were
+compelled or induced to tender sums, 'at Griffith's valuation,' as it was
+called, in lieu of the rents they were bound to pay; and on the rejection
+of the offer, refused to pay anything. A widespread combination against
+rent was thus set on foot, sustained by a principle of greed which held it
+together; the League was more completely organised than it had been
+before; it made its way into ten or eleven counties, the only centres in
+which it was formidably strong. In these circumstances the landed gentry
+acted, as an order of men so assailed would act; not a few accepted the
+terms imposed on them, and took their rents at the reduced scale, the
+majority resisted the mandates of the League, and appealed to the law to
+enforce their rights. The terrors of the League were at once directed
+against those who had dared to defy it; in a certain number of instances
+landlords and agents were brutally murdered, for popular passions had been
+let loose for years; in many more 'boycotting' was carried out with such
+fatal effect that scores of families were driven out of Ireland, banned,
+persecuted, deprived even of the necessaries of life; in many others the
+demesnes of gentlemen were ravaged by 'Land League hunts,' overrun and
+half destroyed by savage mob gatherings. Evictions of course increased as
+the law was being trampled under foot; it is hardly necessary to say that
+Parnell's doctrine was here ruthlessly applied; evicted farms were left
+deserted and waste over thousands of acres; the fears caused by
+'boycotting' had become so intense, that no 'land-grabber,' as the name
+was, would dare to take them; the success of the League was in this
+respect remarkable. The vengeance of the conspiracy, too, was extended
+universally to another class of persons. Tenants in numbers of instances
+paid their rents, either from an honest motive, or through dread of
+eviction; the payment was often made at night, and under a pledge of
+secrecy; but wherever they were discovered the League marked 'the
+traitor's doom;' they were sometimes 'boycotted' almost to death;
+sometimes murdered, often visited by gangs of ruffians--significantly
+known as Parnell's police; the victims were shot in the legs, or the hair
+of their women was cut off, or their cattle were cruelly mutilated and
+maimed. It deserves special notice that, as was to be expected, Parnell's
+warning against open crime was but little heeded; 'boycotting,' as Mr.
+Gladstone said, truly 'was but a passive thing;' it 'required
+assassination as its sanction;' the peasantry had been stirred up, in
+places, to frenzy; although Parnell made few violent speeches at the time,
+his satellites still gave a free rein to their wicked licence. Agrarian
+crime increased to an appalling extent; it had reached in 1881 a total of
+four thousand four hundred and thirty-nine cases, nearly two thousand more
+than those of the preceding year.[72]
+
+In the spring and summer of 1881, the power of the League was at its
+height; in its organisation and working it bore a strong resemblance to
+the Jacobin societies of the Revolution in France. It was directed by a
+council from a central office in Dublin; its orders were sent thence to
+the bodies connected with it; these, scattered over many parts of the
+country, enforced its decrees through 'boycotting' crime, and terror.
+'Obnoxious' persons, landlords, agents, 'land-grabbers,' and tenants who
+had paid their rents, were denounced and exposed to the League's
+vengeance; officers of the law and of justice were especially banned; even
+those thought to be 'luke-warm' in the cause were declared 'suspected.' In
+some districts the regular government was practically superseded by the
+government of the league, described by Mr. Gladstone as 'a scheme of
+anarchic oppression;' in these a Reign of Terror was really supreme. It
+will never be known to what extent the League made use of Whiteboyism and
+its secret conclaves in order to carry out its purposes; the central body,
+controlled by Parnell, probably did not, but the affiliated bodies
+certainly did; it is impossible to account otherwise for the enormous
+increase of agrarian crime; the branches of the League, it is generally
+supposed, overshadowed, so to speak, the Whiteboy societies; these were
+active agents in the atrocious deeds that were done. It is scarcely
+necessary to refer to what the condition of social life was wherever the
+influence of the League was great; despair settled on the hearts of
+thousands, who felt themselves exposed to unseen perils, and existed, as
+it were, in an atmosphere of crime; and it must be borne in mind that for
+one member of the better class, fifty probably of the humbler, who had
+transgressed the law of the League, were kept in a state of moral dread
+and torture. By this time the Fenian League in the United States, formed
+by Parnell, but ruled by the Clan na Gael, had completely joined hands
+with the League at home; its emissaries were found in many parts of
+Ireland; its organ, the _Irish World_, 'spread what it called the light,'
+the teaching of treason, murder, and dynamite; and it supplied the parent
+League with, probably, nine-tenths of its funds, for it is a significant
+fact, deserving special notice, that the contributions of the peasantry to
+the League were, from first to last, small. Large parts of Ireland were
+thus in a deplorable state; but it is a complete mistake to suppose, as
+has been asserted, that the authority of the League was general throughout
+the whole island. Protestant Ulster, with a true instinct of what the
+conspiracy was, a movement against British rule in Ireland, kept aloof
+from the League, in angry contempt; and though its influence was more
+widely diffused, it was confined, I have said, to comparatively few
+counties if regarded as a dangerous and formidable power. It is also
+absolutely untrue that the movement was the uprising of an injured
+peasantry against oppressive landlords. There was little distress in 1880
+and 1881, when the League was rapidly growing in strength, for the
+harvests of those years were above the average; and the Commission lately
+appointed by Mr. Gladstone had reported that over-renting in Ireland was
+not common, though instances of over-renting were of course to be
+found.[73]
+
+The centre of disturbance formed by the Land League was, I have said,
+comparatively small; and it was, for the most part, limited to backward
+and poor districts; its wicked and sordid teaching did not command the
+sympathies of the more intelligent and better parts of Ireland. Its
+influence, however, spread, in different degrees of strength, over nearly
+the whole of Catholic Ireland, and it was more or less supported by the
+Catholic priesthood, in many instances yielding to the pressure of their
+flocks. Within the bounds where it did not create a Reign of Terror, it
+was joined by thousands who thought it a constitutional movement,
+especially by peasants only seeking an improved tenure; and it is not
+pretended that even a majority of those who took part in it had
+treasonable or rebellious objects in view. But it was not the less a
+conspiracy hatched abroad, and aiming at the subversion of British power
+in Ireland; this was the policy its leaders avowed; and a conspiracy must
+be judged by the acts and words of those who direct it. The state of
+anarchy in Ireland had become such, in the spring of 1881, that the
+Government was compelled to try to put it down; a prosecution against
+Parnell and his chief lieutenants had failed; a Bill, resisted by
+obstruction, more persistent than had been ever known before, passed
+through Parliament with the object of repressing the Land League. The
+measure, however, was not well designed; minor agents of the League,
+'village ruffians,' 'Parnell's police,' and the like, were imprisoned in
+large numbers, no real punishment; but the chiefs of the conspiracy were
+not brought within the law; the funds of the League were removed to Paris;
+the movement went on in its destructive course. 'Coercion,' nevertheless,
+was beginning to produce its effects, as it has always done in Irish
+disorders, when Mr. Gladstone made a sudden change in his policy, never
+made before by a Minister at the head of the State. He had denounced the
+conspiracy in passionate language; he had partly at least seen what its
+objects were; 'it aimed at dismemberment through rapine;' but always a man
+of phrases and not of action, he had shrunk in every passage of his career
+from facing difficulties where popular feelings were involved; and while
+Ireland was still in a terrible state, he resolved to make a great
+concession to the League, and to effect a complete revolution in the Irish
+land. It was a surrender akin to that of Majuba, made with little
+information, and without mature reflection; whether its author believed,
+as I have remarked, that the conspiracy was most dangerous on its agrarian
+side, or was willing to propitiate Parnell, at the expense of the Irish
+landed gentry, he inaugurated the legislation, ever since pursued, which
+has resulted in destroying the property of the Irish landlord, without
+gaining the sympathy of the occupier of the Irish soil, has reduced the
+land system of Ireland to a ruinous chaos, and has, in essential respects,
+been an absolute failure.
+
+Mr. Gladstone's position was difficult when he introduced his new Irish
+Land Bill; his speech in the House of Commons, lucid as regards details,
+was apologetic, ambiguous, often beside the subject. He went out of his
+way to praise Irish landlords, 'acquitted,' he declared, by the late
+Commission; he deeply regretted a new experiment on the Irish land. He
+retained his admiration for the Act of 1870, but insinuated that it had
+been injured in the House of Lords; had this not been the case, it would
+have settled the Irish land question. He passed over his solemn pledges,
+on the faith of which millions had been lent on Irish estates, that the
+legislation of eleven years before was final; here he took refuge in
+appeals to 'Divine Justice,' in the 'light of which' a statesman must
+walk, as if Divine Justice was an excuse for a gross breach of faith. He
+then unfolded his plan of reform; he endeavoured, with an ingenuity all
+his own, to distinguish it from the schemes he had emphatically condemned
+in 1870; but in this respect mystification was at fault; the measure was a
+clumsy imitation of the 'Three F's,' and where it differed, it differed
+greatly for the worse. Anticipating objections certain to be made, the
+orator dismissed 'political economy to Saturn' with a confident gesture;
+for some untold reason the philosophy of Adam Smith could not possibly
+apply to the order of things in Ireland. But by many degrees the most
+important part of the speech, in view of events which have since happened,
+was that in which Mr. Gladstone announced that should the measure really
+injure the Irish landlord, the State was bound to provide an indemnity. He
+denied, indeed, that the Bill could have any such effect; it would be a
+boon, he gravely said, to the Irish landed gentry; but should the contrary
+be the case, 'compensation' would be clearly their right. 'I do not
+hesitate to say'--these were his very words spoken after the Bill had made
+much progress--'that if it can be shown, on clear and definite experience,
+at the present time, that there is a probability, or if after experience
+shall prove that, in fact, ruin and heavy loss has been brought on any
+class in Ireland by the direct effect of this legislation, that is a
+question which we ought to look very directly in the face.' The same
+meaning was even more clearly expressed: 'I should certainly be very slow
+to deny that where confiscation could be proved, compensation ought to
+follow,' and several of Mr. Gladstone's lieutenants spoke in the same
+sense.[74]
+
+The Bill, I have said, applied the principle of the 'Three F's' to the
+relation of landlord and tenant in by far the greatest part of Ireland. As
+in the case of the Land Act of 1870, it excluded certain classes of lands
+from its scope, demesnes, residential holdings, town parks, and large
+pastoral farms; it extended also only to tenants at will, that is, subject
+to a notice to quit; it left tenants under leases outside its purview. It
+was confined, too, to 'present tenants in occupation,' at or near the
+existing time; it had no reference to 'future tenants,' that is, to
+tenants holding by contracts made after the Bill should pass, or a few
+months afterwards. Subject, however, to these exceptions, on the whole not
+large, the measure placed tenancies in Ireland under the 'Three F's,' but
+with conditions of tenure peculiar to itself, and hitherto unknown in
+Ireland, or in any part of Europe. 'Fair Rent,' which, under the Ulster
+Custom, was settled by a bargain between landlord and tenant, was to be
+adjusted through the intervention of the State, legislation akin to the
+mediæval statutes regulating the price of bread, and the wages of labour.
+'Fixity of Tenure' was not to be a perpetuity in name; Mr. Gladstone
+feared that the speeches would be thrown in his teeth, in which he had
+declaimed against the idea; it was to be a lease for fifteen years, but
+capable of being renewed for ever, as a rule, through a periodical and
+costly lawsuit. 'Free Sale' was to be conceded under somewhat strict
+conditions; and the landlord was to be afforded a right of pre-emption in
+the case of such sales, in accordance with the analogy of the Ulster
+Custom. An estate virtually perpetual, at a State-settled rent, was thus
+to be carved out of the landlord's fee, and given to tenants actually in
+possession of the land; it was created in absolute derogation from the
+landlord's rights; it was a large if partial expropriation, in no doubtful
+sense. As to the interest of landlords in what was left of their property,
+they were to retain what are usually known as 'royalties'--timber,
+minerals, mines, and privileges of sport; they were to have the ordinary
+remedies for enforcing payment of rent; and the statutory leases were to
+be subject to certain conditions, taken, for the most part, from the
+Ulster Custom, the violation of which might lead to their forfeiture. A
+tribunal, called the Land Commission, was to be set up to carry the law
+into effect, that is, to 'fix fair rents,' and to make tenures 'fixed;' it
+was to be assisted by dependent agencies, known as Sub-Commissions, which,
+Mr. Gladstone intimated, were to be quite subordinate, and from which
+appeals to the Land Commission were to run; but a sinister feature of an
+untried revolutionary scheme--the decision of the Land Commission as
+respects 'fair rent'--was to be final. Subject to an appeal to the Land
+Commission, the Irish County Courts were empowered to administer the law;
+but it was foreseen that they would not do much in this province. The new
+modes of tenure might be applied to lands, by agreements between landlords
+and tenants carefully guarded; and Mr. Gladstone believed that this would
+be the ordinary course of dealing. The Bill, he thought, would not cause
+litigation to any great extent; it would operate as a self-acting force to
+lead to friendly contracts.[75]
+
+So much for the scope of the Bill and the classes of tenants to which its
+benefits were to extend. A most important change was made in the measure,
+which contained, originally, nothing of the kind; this has been attended
+with far-reaching results. As we have seen, tenants were to be compensated
+for their improvements, under the Act of 1870; but the compensation was
+to be paid only when they were leaving the land; Mr. Healy, one of the
+ablest of Parnell's lieutenants, induced Parliament to accept a provision
+exempting tenants' improvements from rent, when the adjustment of 'fair
+rent' was to be made. However equitable in principle this might appear to
+be, it was, in the peculiar state of Irish land tenure, unjust in the
+extreme to landlords, as I shall endeavour to point out afterwards; and it
+has been a source of litigation, as mischievous and demoralising as can
+well be conceived. The Bill, like the Act of 1870, prohibited the
+subdivision and subletting of farms--an inveterate evil practice of the
+Irish peasant--under conditions possibly rather too strict; and it made
+changes, in that statute, which require attention. It added weight, so to
+speak, to the law, in the tenant's interest; it increased the amount of
+compensation in respect of disturbance; it limited the power of
+'contracting out,' to a smaller class of tenants than had been the case
+before, in fact, to large capitalist farmers; and it provided that
+tenants, who had accepted leases excluding them from the benefits of the
+Act of 1870, through illegitimate conduct on the part of their landlords,
+should be exonerated from such unfair contracts. It thus greatly amended
+the original Land Act; but it left many of its defects untouched; it is
+only right here to add that despite the lying clamour raised by the
+subsidised Press of Parnell--lying has ever since been part of its
+stock-in-trade--the instances were exceedingly few in which 'forced
+leases,' as they were called, were set aside by the Courts. A remarkable
+feature of the Bill has yet to be noticed: Mr. Gladstone, as was the case
+eleven years before, had still the wish, so characteristic of British
+statesmen, to assimilate Irish to English land tenure; for this reason, as
+I said, he deprived 'future tenants' of the advantages of the Bill; these
+were to hold their farms on the footing of pure contract. This was a
+shortsighted and bad arrangement; it tempted directly ill-conditioned
+landlords to dispossess tenants, whenever a chance offered, and to create
+'future' tenants so as to discharge their estates from a burden; it
+revealed marked ignorance of the affairs of Ireland. The Bill dealt, also,
+with the land on the side of ownership; it gave additional facilities to
+tenants to purchase their holdings; the State was empowered to advance
+three-fourths of the moneys; but the tenants were to find the remaining
+fourth; the transaction was to be still a purchase, and not in the nature
+of a gift.[76]
+
+The Bill became law, with very little change; the House of Lords, though
+fully alive to its evils, did not amend it in any important respect; the
+Peers had in mind, perhaps too much, what had followed the rejection of
+the Bill of the year before. Mr. Gladstone and his followers maintained at
+the time, and the statement has been ever since repeated, that the Land
+Act of 1881, its popular title, was but a natural development of the
+original Act of 1870; but this assertion is not only untrue, but
+absolutely contrary to the truth. The Act of 1870, no doubt, considered as
+a whole, annexed a large tenant right to the estate of the landlord, and
+to that extent placed a burden on it; but it preserved for the landlord
+the ownership of the land; it did not interfere with his rent, his first
+proprietary right; above all, it was, in the main, in accord with fact,
+and just. The Act of 1881 was almost the exact opposite; it deprived the
+landlord of the ownership of his land, and nearly converted him into a
+mere rent-charger; it created against him a perpetuity at a State-settled
+rent; it really all but made the tenant the owner of the land; it was, in
+short, inconsistent with fact, and essentially unjust. The Act of 1881,
+too, established a principle, never heard of before in civilised
+countries, that tribunals of the State were to fix the rate of rent; this
+not only annihilated the most important of landed contracts, entirely to
+the landlord's detriment, it inevitably tended to cut down rents
+wholesale, as Judge Longfield had predicted would be the case. 'It is
+probable,' wrote that great authority, 'that the value of land, as fixed
+by any tenant-right measure, would be less than half the rent, which a
+solvent tenant would be willing to pay;'[77] the prediction has been too
+well verified. The Act of 1870, in a word, was a remedial law, fairly
+adjusting the rights of landlord and tenant; the Act of 1881 was a
+socialistic law, despoiling the landlord of his property wholesale, and
+handing it over to a dependent who had no claim to it; it was sheer
+confiscation hardly disguised; and it should be added that the exemption
+of tenants' improvements from rent, as affairs stood in Ireland, was a
+grave wrong to the landlord. The Act of 1881, to speak plainly,
+transformed the Irish land system iniquitously for the benefit of a single
+class; and it directly promoted litigation of the very worst kind, on an
+enormous scale, embittering, and still further dividing, the classes
+connected with the land. The evils of this legislation, a monument of
+reckless unwisdom, were at once manifest to well-informed persons; the
+Duke of Argyll and Lord Lansdowne resigned office rather than take part in
+a measure of the kind; Lord Ashbourne, the present holder of the Great
+Seal in Ireland, caustically remarked that Parliament would do much better
+should it deprive Irish landlords of a fourth part of their rents on the
+spot. The verdict of enlightened and impartial opinion in Ireland was very
+much the same.
+
+I shall comment on the administration of this law in another chapter;
+enough to say here that what was bad was made, by many degrees, worse. The
+conduct of Parnell, as regards the measure, was characteristic; he assumed
+an attitude of moderation, and proposed to make 'a trial of the Act by
+test cases;' he wrote to his Fenian friends in the Far West that the Act
+was a mockery; he allowed the Land League to riot in lawlessness as
+before. Mr. Gladstone, always incensed when his will was crossed, shut him
+up in prison under the recent statute, with several prominent leaders of
+the League; the reply was a manifesto against the payment of any rent,
+unhappily obeyed in some districts, though every symptom of exceptional
+distress had passed away. A brief but violent struggle was the result; the
+peasantry refused to pay a shilling in several counties; and as the
+principal agents of the League were within four walls, flights of
+viragoes, like those of the French Revolution, were let loose to preach,
+far and near, the evangel of 'no rent.' This conflict, however, was not
+lasting; agrarian crime and disorder, indeed, still continued frequent;
+but the Government was too strong for the 'Ladies' Land League;' by the
+spring of 1882 its triumph appeared to be certain. But Mr. Gladstone,
+'unstable as water' in view of what he deemed popular movements, would not
+steadily persist in vindicating the law; the imprisonment of the chiefs of
+the conspiracy and their subordinates, in large numbers, seems to have
+made him feel sore if unworthy misgivings; he surrendered to the enemies
+of the State, for the second time, and entered with Parnell into the
+famous 'Kilmainham Treaty,' as shameful as the Glamorgan Treaty which cost
+Charles I. his head. The 'Suspects,' as they were called, were set free in
+scores; the Lord-Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary indignantly left their
+posts; a new Government for Ireland was formed, charged to carry
+'conciliation,' as the phrase was, out, that is, to make fresh concessions
+to Parnell and his creatures. But the auspicious prospect was suddenly
+darkened by the frightful assassinations of the Phoenix Park; these
+cannot be justly laid to the charge of the League, indeed were against
+Parnell's interest, for it was generally expected he would obtain high
+office; but two agents of the League were implicated in the crime; and the
+Press of the League began soon to plead for the murderers. The mind of
+England was now thoroughly roused; Mr. Gladstone, bowing at once to
+England's will, carried through Parliament the severest repressive measure
+that has ever, perhaps, been applied to Ireland. The battle with the
+League was soon brought to a close; the conspiracy indeed resisted for a
+time, and crime, as always, was attendant on it; and the Clan na Gael gave
+it all the assistance it could, in large subsidies which had never ceased,
+in the dissemination in Ireland of its incendiary journals, and especially
+by 'carrying the war into England,' and fulfilling its threats to attack
+her chief towns by fire and dynamite, outrages, however, that really came
+to nothing. But 'coercion,' as has been invariably the case in Ireland,
+produced its effects; agrarian crimes, which, in 1882, if less than those
+of the year before, were, nevertheless, three thousand four hundred and
+thirty-two in number, had fallen to eight hundred and seventy in 1883.[78]
+
+The Land League was paralysed, if not destroyed; its organisation was, in
+name, suppressed by its framers. It reappeared, however, at once, in a new
+form; the skill of Parnell in masking a conspiracy was never more fully
+displayed. He felt that the Land League could not cope with the law; that
+the crimes of violence and blood, which attended its course, gave the
+Government opportunities to put it down; that its openly avowed purposes
+were a danger to it. He set up, therefore, the 'National League' in its
+stead; the professed object of the association was to promote 'Home Rule,'
+while it upheld the rights of the occupiers of the Irish soil, and kept
+the Irish land, so to speak, in view; it was thus apparently a mere centre
+of a constitutional movement. Through these means, and under these
+pretences, the astute and able plotter swept into his net thousands who
+had held aloof from the Land League; many of the middle classes joined the
+National League, notably hundreds of the clergy of the Catholic Church in
+Ireland; the peasantry gave it increased support; its influence spread
+beyond its predecessor's limits. The National League, however, was only
+the Land League under another name;[79] its leaders and officials were the
+same men; its 'branches' were those of the League it replaced; its real
+objects were exactly the same, the overthrow of British rule in Ireland,
+and the annihilation of the Irish landed gentry. But the methods it
+employed to work out its ends were, to a great extent, different; open
+agitation was kept down; public meetings, likely to be violent, were not
+held; the perpetration of agrarian crime was not encouraged. The movement,
+in a word, was comparatively secret and below the surface; but it was
+essentially the successor of the Land League in its aims; we may say of
+it, with a slight change, in the words of the poet--
+
+          'Facies non una sororum,
+  Nec diversa tamen.'
+
+'Boycotting' was now made the chief weapon of the reformed conspiracy;
+'National League Courts' were held regularly in many districts, at which
+this barbarous interdict was systematically pronounced on persons
+violating 'the unwritten law' of the old League; the persecution against
+landlords, agents, 'land-grabbing' peasants who were 'disloyal and
+traitors,' and traders suspected of dealing with 'rotten sheep,' was
+carried on with a pertinacity and ingenuity hardly known before; the
+number of derelict farms augmented; and the Government found it far from
+easy to deal with these crimes. At the same time, 'the Nationalist Press,'
+as it had been named, fully revealed the purpose of the conspirators;
+trusting to impunity, under the law of libel, which depended upon the will
+of juries, it was even more treasonable and seditious than before; and it
+gave infamous license to defamation of personages in high places, worthy
+of the abominations of the Père Duchesne.[80] Ireland, however, remained
+in comparative peace while the recent measure of repression continued in
+force; but this was injudiciously allowed to expire in 1885--a strange act
+on the part of a Conservative Ministry; and in a short time agrarian
+disorder broke out afresh. Crimes of this class had fallen, in 1884, to
+seven hundred and sixty-two in number; they were one thousand and
+fifty-six in 1886; and 'boycotting' had increased fourfold.[81]
+
+The National League remained quiescent, while Mr. Gladstone was making
+another surrender, and endeavouring to carry Home Rule through Parliament.
+Upon the rejection of the measure of 1886, its activity was renewed; and
+it found considerable support from the American Fenians, who, from first
+to last, had been its chief paymasters. I have referred to the Convention
+at Chicago graced by Parnell's envoys, and to the wild boast that the
+English 'government of Ireland was to be made impossible;' the treasonable
+aspect of the conspiracy became at once manifest. The League was assisted
+by another season of distress, from 1886 to 1888; the number of its
+adherents greatly increased; it began, like its predecessor, to defy the
+authority of the State. I have already dealt with this movement on its
+political side; I shall not repeat what I have already written: how the
+League endeavoured to stir up disorder in Ireland; how it declared open
+war against the Castle; how it tried to terrorise the ministers of the
+law; how it made 'boycotting' more effective than it had ever been; how,
+if responsible for many grave deeds of blood, it mainly relied on this
+malign influence, which tortured hundreds of victims in many districts,
+and was fitly compared to 'the pestilence that walks in darkness;' how Mr.
+Gladstone and the Opposition, to the disgrace of both, gave the conspiracy
+their support and excused its crimes; and how it was ere long put down by
+Mr. Balfour strongly seconded by Rome. But I must say a word on the
+agrarian side of the movement; for this illustrated the increased
+ingenuity of the League. Some of its leaders issued a mandate against the
+payment of rent, except upon reductions to an enormous extent; should the
+landlords refuse, the tenants, on every estate, were to lodge their rents
+into what was called the 'War chest,' a common fund to be held in trust;
+the object of this being to prevent the secret payment of rent, which had
+repeatedly, we have seen, taken place, and to put a stop to 'defection
+from the cause.' The 'Plan of Campaign' as was its name, was thus ushered
+on; it was a criminal plot of the very basest kind; but though it proved
+successful in some instances, and it caused much agrarian disorder and
+crime, it was, on the whole, a comparative failure. The peasantry,
+close-fisted and shrewd, distrusted the so-called 'trustees of the War
+chest;' they generally declined to put their money in it; the 'Plan' was
+only carried out on few estates, though it compelled many landlords to
+make reductions of rent; it is remarkable that Parnell did not approve of
+the swindle. Long, however, before the defeat of the League, there had
+been a thousand instances of agrarian crime: five thousand miserable
+beings had been 'boycotted,' in many cases with frightful results; a
+thousand had been placed under the protection of the police. As had
+happened during the _régime_ of the Land League, these victims were nearly
+all of the humble classes.
+
+In 1887 another change was made in the Irish land system, essentially a
+development of the Land Act of 1881. That measure, I have said, applied to
+tenants at will only, that is, liable to be dispossessed by a notice to
+quit; it did not apply to tenants under leasehold tenures. A sharp
+distinction, therefore, was drawn between the two classes; a farmer, with
+land on one side of a ditch, could secure the advantages of the 'Three
+F's;' his neighbour, on the other side, could not; the distinction was so
+palpably harsh, that many landlords in Ireland saw its injustice, and
+enabled leasehold tenants to obtain the benefits of the law. An Act,
+prepared by Lord Salisbury's Government, brought ordinary Irish
+leaseholders within the Land Act of 1881; these were given a right to have
+'fair rents' fixed, and 'fixity of tenure' and 'free sale' under certain
+conditions. The Act of 1887, also, empowered the Courts to set aside
+perpetual leases unfairly obtained; and it relaxed the restrictions of the
+Act of 1881 with respect to subletting and subdivision, and the exclusion
+of 'town parks.' It improved, moreover, the law of ejectment,
+facilitating the vindication of the rights of the landlord; and--a strange
+provision--it enabled a middleman, in certain events, to creep out of his
+contract, and to free himself from the rent due to his superior landlord.
+In consequence of the fall of prices that had lately occurred, and the
+depression of agriculture that had been the result, the Act, too, reduced,
+for a short period of time, 'fair rents' that had been already fixed; and
+it contained other enactments wholly in the interest of the occupier of
+the Irish soil. Regarded as a whole, something was to be said for the
+measure, on the principles of the legislation of 1881; but the liberation
+of the middleman from the payment of a debt has been attended with grave
+wrong, and was an ominous precedent leading to others of the kind. The new
+law was, of course, another inroad on the rights of the Irish landlord,
+another innovation made against his interests; it has certainly
+strengthened his claim to compensation for the loss of his property,
+acknowledged by Mr. Gladstone to be unquestionable, should it be
+reasonably made out. For the rest, the National League made a boast that
+the Act had been wrung by its efforts from a foreign Parliament; the Act
+certainly, like that of 1881, was a concession, derogating from the rights
+of a powerless class, in the hope of weakening a conspiracy against the
+State, by detaching from it large classes supported by it, and handing
+over to these what had belonged to the Irish landed gentry.[82]
+
+The Land Act of 1887, it has been alleged, was the principal cause that
+disorder in Ireland was suppressed, and that comparative peace was
+restored. The measure may have had effects in this direction; but these
+assuredly were not great; the number of leaseholders was not large; the
+reductions made in 'fair rents' were temporary and small. In truth, as
+agrarian war, stirred up by the Land League, did not diminish when the Act
+of 1881 was passed, but was brought to an end by what is called coercion,
+the agrarian war, stirred up by the National League, was quelled, not by
+the Act of 1887, but by resolute government, assisted by a repressive
+measure infinitely less stringent than that of 1882, and, in some degree,
+I have said, by Rome. It is worse than unwise to ignore plain facts; grave
+outbreaks of disorder and crime in Ireland can only be put down by severe
+means, and invariably have been put down by these; that 'force is no
+remedy' is mere false sentiment. The violence, nay, the power, of the
+National League decreased rapidly and greatly after about 1889; the
+conspiracy seemed well-nigh to have dwindled away. This was partly because
+Parnell, negotiating with Mr. Gladstone, in the hope of obtaining Home
+Rule, discouraged agitation of every kind in Ireland, and in order to
+hoodwink the English people, and to bring about the 'Union of Hearts,'
+represented, with his followers, that Ireland was at perfect peace, and
+only awaited 'self-government' to be completely happy. But infinitely the
+most potent reason was that the fall of Parnell almost broke up the
+League; his creatures split into angry factions, exasperated against each
+other by furious discord; as the result the organisation of the League was
+shattered; the peasantry and the Catholic priesthood fell away from it. At
+the same time the Fenians in the United States, much its best supporters,
+withdrew the subsidies they had hitherto lavished; the League became
+penniless and almost powerless. By 1895 the conspiracy showed scarcely a
+sign of life; agrarian crime had sunk to a very low ebb; there was no sign
+of a movement against the payment of rent; order prevailed, it may be
+said, throughout the community. The conspiracy, nevertheless, was not
+dead; its leaders, if quiescent, had not disappeared; well-informed
+observers knew that the end had not come. I have described in another
+chapter, by what means, and through what conditions, it revived gradually
+under Lord Salisbury's third Government, and acquired strength that may be
+on the increase; it is not yet formidable, in any real sense, and its
+leaders are not to be named with Parnell; it is not receiving funds as yet
+from America; but the United Irish League is its true successor; and this
+commands eighty votes in the House of Commons. Time only can show if a
+period of agrarian strife and crime may not be about to open again for
+Ireland; it is foolish optimism to assert that this is impossible, or to
+contend that the agrarian legislation of the last twenty years, as regards
+the Irish land, will necessarily, or even probably, produce this fortunate
+result.
+
+In 1891 another change was effected in Irish landed relations, as usual in
+the interest of the tenant, and against his landlord. Middleman tenures
+had well-nigh been extinguished; but some hundreds, probably, were still
+to be found; and as a middleman, through the legislation of 1887, was
+enabled to repudiate his contract, in certain cases, and to escape the
+payment of rent to his superior landlord, he was now to obtain an
+advantage in other instances. The large majority of this class of
+intermediate owners, originally created in the eighteenth century, held,
+at least, in present times, by perpetual leases, which had long ago, as a
+rule, been converted into estates in fee farm, that is, estates in fee,
+subject to a perpetual rent; Parliament passed an Act in 1891, enlarged
+and amended five years afterwards, declaring that, in cases in which
+tenants of this kind were 'in _bonâ fide_ occupation' of lands, under
+rents which, in the judgment of the Land Commission, should be 'a full
+agricultural rent,' they might either agree with their landlords to redeem
+the rent at a price to be determined by that tribunal, or, should the
+landlords refuse their consent, might have 'fair rents' fixed as in the
+instance of common farming tenants.[83] The application of this law could
+not extend far, for tenants of this description were very few; but it
+asserted a strange, and, I think, a most vicious principle. The Act
+practically forced a superior landlord, often a poor man, either to accept
+a price assessed by a Court over which he had no control, in lieu of a
+rent, in all probability reasonably well secured, or, as an alternative,
+to submit to have a 'fair rent' fixed on the land, the rent to be
+discharged from improvements made by the tenant. If, therefore, a tenant
+of this kind had built, say, a valuable house, on his holding, which would
+thus largely add to the security for the rent, this--at least, so it is
+generally believed--was not to be taken into account in fixing 'the fair
+rent;' and this principle, it may confidently be predicted, will be
+extended further. Should a tenant, at a 'fair rent,' in this predicament,
+be evicted for the failure to pay the rent, a law, in all human
+probability, will be made, to obtain for him compensation, under the Act
+of 1870, from the benefits of which he would be, as affairs stand,
+excluded. The result might be that if, as would often happen, the
+improvements he had made were of great value--his interest, in the land,
+being a perpetual interest--the sum the landlord would be adjudged to pay,
+might swallow up the whole value of the rent, and practically confiscate
+his whole property.[84]
+
+In 1896 another inroad was made on the rights of Irish landlords, and
+another dole given to the tenant class in Ireland; the descent to Avernus
+had proved easy; a Conservative Government had followed it since 1887.
+This fresh legislation was mainly in the interest of the Presbyterian
+farmers of Ulster, who had supported the Union almost to a man, and
+possessed no little political weight; but who, always separated more or
+less from their landlords, had shown dissatisfaction with the fixing of
+'fair rents,' and had begun to cry out for what is called 'the compulsory
+purchase' of the estates of their landlords, a policy on which I shall
+comment afterwards. The Bill contained just and well-devised provisions;
+it improved the procedure for fixing 'fair rents,' if not nearly as
+thoroughly as it ought to have done; it protected the leases creating
+'fixity,' under the new tenure--Mr. Gladstone, flying in the face of the
+ablest lawyers, had passionately declared that these were sacrosanct--in
+instances in which these might have been annulled; it proposed, what I had
+always considered right, that old arrears of rent ought not to be allowed
+to hang over the heads of tenants, and that rent could not be recovered on
+eviction, if due for upward of two years.[85] But the Bill abounded in
+principles dangerous and false; it was, taken as a whole, a mischievous
+measure; it was another mine sprung upon the Irish landed gentry. Lands
+hitherto excluded from the benefits of the 'Three F's,' under the Acts of
+1881 and 1887--that is, demesnes, town parks, residential, and pastoral
+holdings--were largely brought within the scope of the Bill, that is, they
+were made subject to 'fair rents,' and, if held by tenants, were
+practically taken away from the landlords; the provisions of the Bill, as
+to demesnes, were especially harsh; many a mansion and demesne, which
+might happen to be let, would really become the property of the tenant,
+the owner being put off with a rent-charge. The worst proposals of this
+measure, however, were those relating to improvements made by tenants,
+exempted from rent, we have seen, by the Act of 1881. The Courts of
+Justice in Ireland had rightly declared with one voice, that improvements
+of this kind were not to be discharged from rent, unless they were the
+improvements treated by the Act of 1870, that is, rents might be charged
+on tenants' improvements, if these did not fall within the definition laid
+down by that law, or if they were outside the limitations it had imposed,
+in order to shut out obsolete and unjust claims, which might harass and do
+grievous wrong to landlords. All this was completely changed by the new
+measure; the definition of improvements was wholly altered, in order to
+secure their being exempted from rent; the restrictions in point of time,
+and many other matters, as regards claims for improvements, were largely
+swept away, and the power of 'contracting out' of such claims was still
+further abridged. The whole law, in a word, as to tenants' improvements,
+as these were to create exemption from rent, was placed on altogether a
+new basis; this was detrimental in every respect to the landlord, and gave
+advantages to the tenant, in my judgment, utterly unjust.[86]
+
+The Bill contained other provisions, all in the same direction, that is,
+for the advantage of the Irish tenant, and to his landlord's loss,
+especially one relaxing the law as to the subdivision and subletting of
+farms, an inveterate and very pernicious practice. It introduced, also, a
+new principle, on which I shall say some words afterwards, with respect to
+another experiment on the Irish land, that is, what is called Land
+Purchase, under conditions, not thought of before, until they were laid
+down by a Conservative Government. The measure was hustled through the
+House of Commons with such indecorous haste, that Sir Edward Carson, now a
+law-officer of the Crown, walked out of that Assembly to express his
+disgust; it narrowly escaped defeat in the House of Lords, loyal as the
+Peers to Lord Salisbury are; indeed, though hardly debated, its vices were
+soon made manifest. It is unnecessary to point out what the general
+character of the Act is; it enlarged very considerably the sphere of the
+'Three F's,' greatly increasing the wrong done to the Irish landlord, by
+doing away with the restrictions, placed by Mr. Gladstone, in 1870, on
+illegitimate claims in respect of improvements; its direct tendency was to
+reduce rents wholesale, and to promote more litigation between landlord
+and tenant; and if it encouraged tenants to make improvements on their
+farms, its plain effect, I will not say its purpose, was to 'improve the
+Irish landlords out of their estates,' the contemptuous phrase of a great
+master of Equity. Its mischief, however, went a great deal further;
+tenants making improvements are only exempted from rent, in respect of
+these, by this Act; they are not within the protection of the Act of 1870,
+if improvements of any kind are excluded by it; if a tenant, therefore,
+makes an improvement on his farm, which is not 'suitable' to it in a real
+sense, say, builds a mansion upon a petty holding, he will not be entitled
+to compensation, should he quit it, even though dispossessed for
+non-payment of his rent. But tenants, in these circumstances, like those I
+have referred to before, would assuredly proclaim that they had here a
+great and real grievance; and they would be relieved from it, doubtless,
+by another law, giving them compensation, perhaps, to their landlord's
+ruin. A dangerous principle is thus hidden within the Act; this will
+probably be asserted against the owners of ground rents, not only in
+Ireland, but in England and Scotland; and the law, taken as a whole, has
+strengthened the claim of the Irish landed gentry to be indemnified, as
+was solemnly promised, for what they have suffered from the legislation
+begun in 1881.
+
+While the Irish land system was thus being dealt with, on the side of
+occupation, during many years, experiments were made on it, likewise on
+the side of ownership. Resenting the legislation that had produced the
+'Three F's,' Conservative politicians took it into their heads that Mr.
+Gladstone had 'created' 'dual ownership,' as they gave it the name, in
+Ireland; they insisted that this was simply an intolerable thing.
+Unfortunately Mr. Gladstone had no more 'created dual ownership' than he
+had created the mountains and lakes of Ireland; he had only developed the
+joint ownership, which the Irish tenant possessed in his holding, in
+thousands of instances, if he had developed it under the very worst
+conditions. This theory, however, at which Burke would have laughed with
+contempt, and which revealed the incapacity to understand Irish land
+tenure, ingrained, it would appear, in the English mind, was eagerly taken
+up and found much support; it was resolved to extend the process of
+converting tenants in Ireland into owners of their farms, by a method
+hitherto untried, and unknown in any part of Europe. Under the Church
+Disestablishment Act, and the Land Acts of 1870 and 1881, the State had
+advanced money to the occupier of the Irish soil, in order to enable him
+to acquire his farm; but it had made it incumbent on him to contribute
+part of the price; the transaction, therefore, was, in a real sense, a
+purchase. This, the only security for honesty and thrift, was taken away
+in 1885; Parliament passed an Act enabling the Irish tenant to become
+owner of his holding without paying down a shilling; the State was to
+advance the whole price; and the State was to be repaid by a terminable
+annuity, charged on the land, and extinguished at the end of less than
+half a century. This terminable annuity was to be much less than a true
+rent, or even than a 'fair rent' adjusted by the State; the transaction,
+therefore, was not a purchase, but a gift, akin to a bribe, another
+largess bestowed on the tenant class in Ireland, and another injury, as I
+shall prove, inflicted on the Irish landed gentry. This 'Land Purchase,'
+as it was falsely called, was to be voluntary on the part of landlord and
+tenant; it was to be conducted on the footing of free contract, as had
+been the case under the preceding statutes; the State was to obtain a
+guarantee from the landlord; and Parliament voted £5,000,000 to carry out
+this policy.
+
+Exactly as had happened in the case of the Encumbered Estates Act, this
+scheme of 'Land Purchase' was pronounced successful; some scores of
+landlords sold land, some hundreds of tenants bought it; the real nature
+of the proceeding and its inevitable results were ignored; it was even
+boasted that 'dual ownership' would be got rid of, nay, that the Irish
+Land Question was being finally 'settled.' But when the first sum of
+£5,000,000 had been expended, and Parliament was asked to vote a second
+sum, it began to hesitate as to this dealing with the Irish land; the
+British taxpayer demurred and growled; with a true instinct he disliked
+the security; it was found very difficult to procure the funds required,
+large as the majority was of Lord Salisbury's Government. His Ministry,
+however, adhered to the new policy; and Parliament enacted a measure in
+1891, which I have always thought unconstitutional in the highest degree,
+not to speak of the evils it was certain to produce. By this Act a sum of
+about £30,000,000 was made forthcoming to facilitate 'Land Purchase,' to
+abolish 'dual ownership,' and to change Irish tenants into owners of land;
+this sum was to be secured by the methods before referred to, that is, by
+terminable annuities less than any equitable rent, and by guarantees on
+the part of selling landlords; but, furthermore, a whole series of funds,
+devoted to Ireland, for Irish purposes, and absolutely essential to her
+most important needs, were appropriated to make good any default on the
+part of 'purchasing' tenants, in the payment of annuities charged on their
+farms; and even the Irish counties were rendered liable in the last
+resort. Should, therefore, tenants in Ireland, who had acquired the
+ownership of their farms, refuse to pay those annuities on any pretence,
+say, through an appeal made by a Land League conspiracy--the manifesto
+against all rent cannot be forgotten--this extraordinary spectacle would
+then be seen: the State would have a right to seize upon the grants made
+for National schools and lunatic asylums throughout Ireland; these
+institutions would be shut up; children and madmen would be let loose
+through the country; and the owner of an Irish estate would have to pay
+for the dishonesty perhaps of his former tenants. The late Lord Randolph
+Churchill severely condemned this scheme; I agree with him it was utterly
+unjust, and but too characteristic of the contempt of the rights of
+Ireland, unhappily often displayed by British statesmen.
+
+Only a sum, it will be observed, of about £40,000,000, that is, two of
+£5,000,000, and some £30,000,000 more, has thus been made available for
+'Land Purchase;' this obviously could not transfer even a fourth part of
+the Irish land, valued, we have seen, by Mr. Gladstone at £300,000,000--in
+a remarkable speech in reply to Lord George Hamilton--and almost certainly
+worth from £150,000,000 to £200,000,000. The process of doing away with
+'dual ownership' and making tenants in Ireland owners of their farms,
+having been pronounced by its authors slow, the Act of 1896, referred to
+before, enabled the landlord's guarantee to be dispensed with, and
+provided that, in the case of hopelessly embarrassed landlords, whose
+estates were being offered for sale in the Courts, the tenants should
+virtually have a right of pre-emption, thus asserting a principle, on
+which I shall dwell afterwards, and known as the 'Compulsory Purchase' of
+the Irish land. I shall point out, in another chapter, the present and the
+inevitable future results of this policy of so-styled 'Land Purchase;'
+suffice it to say here, that, in my judgment, it betrays utter ignorance
+of the Irish land system, and of the customs and inclinations of the Irish
+peasant; that it proceeds on an essentially immoral principle, the bribery
+of a class to promote its welfare; that, from the very nature of the case,
+it cannot abolish 'dual ownership;' that, human creatures being what they
+are, it cannot, as is being already proved, establish a thriving body of
+occupying owners on the Irish soil; that it must create sharp and unjust
+distinctions in Irish land tenure, iniquitous to the landlord and to every
+tenant, who may be excluded from its benefits; that it must directly tend,
+as it is even now tending, to arouse a cry for a wholesale confiscation of
+Irish estates, the most shameful and wrongful Ireland has yet witnessed;
+and that so far from settling the Irish Land Question, it must necessarily
+unsettle it from top to bottom. As respects the legislation I have briefly
+described, on the side of the occupation of the Irish land--by many
+degrees the most important--I shall also comment upon its results in a
+subsequent chapter, after examining its administration by the tribunal it
+has set up. But a word may be said, in this place, on its essential
+character: from 1881 to the present time, it is absolutely without a
+precedent in civilised lands; it has trampled on economic science and the
+truths it teaches, as, indeed, its chief author made his boast; it has
+created a mode of land tenure in Ireland not in accord with fact, which
+has virtually deprived the Irish landlord of real ownership in his estate,
+has turned him into a kind of annuitant, and has virtually changed the
+Irish tenant into a kind of owner, but under conditions absolutely bad;
+its inevitable tendency was to cut down rents wholesale, without regard to
+the simplest justice; it established a system of mischievous litigation
+between landlord and tenant, demoralising and increasing the division of
+classes; it exhibited, on an enormous scale, characteristic contempt of
+Irish rights of property; and finally, if Parliamentary pledges are to be
+fulfilled, and gross wrong is not to be consecrated by law, it has given
+the Irish landlord a great and legitimate claim to compensation from the
+State. As we survey this unwise and destructive medley of law, we are
+forcibly reminded of the words of Burke:--'I am unalterably persuaded that
+the attempt to oppress, degrade, impoverish, confiscate, and extinguish
+the original gentlemen, and landed property of a whole nation, cannot be
+justified under any form it may assume.'[87]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (_continued_)--THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE
+IRISH LAND ACTS
+
+    The administration of the Land Act of 1870 in the main
+    good--Difficulty about claims for tenants' improvements--The
+    administration of the Land Act of 1881, and of its supplements--The
+    Land Commission and its Sub-Commissions--Allowances to be made for
+    these tribunals--Principles which the Land Commission should have
+    adopted in fixing 'fair rents'--The procedure and practice it ought to
+    have established--It made mistakes as to both--The nature of the
+    Sub-Commission Courts--This was objectionable in the highest
+    degree--These Courts have, however unconsciously, done grave wrong to
+    Irish landlords--Causes of this--Characteristics of their
+    proceedings--They disregarded the principles they ought to have
+    followed, and adopted faulty and erroneous methods--Different
+    illustrations of these grave mistakes--The Land Commission and appeals
+    as to 'fair rent'--Importance of this subject--Faulty procedure of the
+    Land Commission in appeals--Valuers--The second Land Commission--Its
+    procedure worse than that of the first--Theory of occupation
+    right--This another wrong done to landlords--The Fry Commission and
+    its report--Confiscation of the property of Irish landlords--The
+    proofs of this--Apologies made for the Land Commission--The
+    administration of the Land Purchase Acts.
+
+
+I turn to the administration of the new Irish Land Code, of which I have
+described the distinctive features. The County Courts of Ireland, I have
+said, were entrusted with the task of carrying out the Land Act of 1870;
+the principal duty of the judges was to determine rights, under the Ulster
+and analogous Customs in the south, and to declare the sums to be paid to
+tenants, when leaving their holdings, for compensation for improvements,
+and in respect of disturbance. As evictions were by no means frequent, in
+the period between 1870 and 1879, the litigation before these tribunals,
+under these different heads, though by no means trivial, was not
+excessive; the applications on the part of tenants were not very numerous;
+there was ample time to consider the law, whether in the subordinate or
+the appellate Courts; and though there was much difference of opinion as
+to the amount of compensation to be given to suitors, the administration
+of the Act was not seriously impugned,[88] and, on the whole, was
+reasonable and just. The most remarkable circumstance in the inquiries
+held before the Courts was, certainly, the extravagance of the claims put
+forward, on account of tenants' improvements, circumscribed as these were
+by the limitations of the law; everything in the nature of an agricultural
+work was called an improvement, from repairing an old fence to cleaning an
+old drain; hours and days were lost in endeavours to disentangle the
+truth, and to arrive at sound and legal conclusions. I could fill scores
+of pages with descriptions of demands of this kind, usually pressed with
+reckless and hard swearing; they ought to have been a warning, as
+unhappily they were not, not to break down the restrictions contained in
+the Act of 1870, and not to extend legislation, in this direction, against
+the rights of the landlord. I confine myself to a single example: I tried
+a case, in 1895, in which a tenant's claims, under the Act of 1870, were
+£1130; I cut these down to £164; after deducting £155 found due to the
+landlord, I adjudged to the tenant a sum of less than £10; and there was
+no appeal from the decision I pronounced.[89]
+
+The Land Act of 1870 has been well-nigh superseded by the great measure
+of 1881, and by the legislation which has been its supplement. The
+administration of this part of the new Land Code, by many degrees the most
+important, was given, as I have pointed out before, to a wholly new
+tribunal, the Land Commission, and to Sub-Commissions dependent on it; a
+concurrent jurisdiction was given to the Irish County Courts; but they
+have had very little to do in this province. The principal work of the
+Land Commission has been to fix 'fair rents,' and to make statutory
+leases, 'fixity of tenure,' in a word, in a kind of disguise, and thus to
+give effect to the policy adopted by Mr. Gladstone in 1881. The three
+original members of the Land Commission, in all respects its directors,
+were the late Mr. Justice O'Hagan, the late Mr. E. F. Litton, and the late
+Mr. John E. Vernon; Lord Salisbury denounced these appointments in
+emphatic language, as being against the just rights of Irish
+landlords;[90] the charge was not without plausible grounds at least, for
+Mr. Justice O'Hagan had been one of the 'Young Ireland' party, and Mr.
+Litton had been a strong tenant-right advocate. These two gentlemen,
+nevertheless, were most honourable men, and capable, if not very
+distinguished, lawyers; Mr. Vernon was an excellent and experienced
+country gentleman, if, in politics, of the Liberal faith; and as all three
+have long ago passed away, it would be unjust to make charges of
+illegitimate conduct, even if they may not have been wholly free from
+unconscious bias. Great allowance ought to be made, in common justice, for
+the Commissioners in the situation that had been made for them, and regard
+being had to their most arduous duties. To fix 'fair rent,' even
+approximately, was difficult in the extreme; as Judge Longfield predicted
+many years before, and every well-informed Irishman knew, the adjustment
+of rent, through the agency of the State, would inevitably cause a general
+lowering of rents. Again, the Commissioners were, from the outset,
+harassed by a rush of applications to fix 'fair rents;' these came in,
+within a few weeks, in thousands; they were tempted, therefore, to set
+about their work at once, without taking the careful precautions, or
+entering into all the considerations, the nature of their duty required.
+Two circumstances, also, no doubt, had effect on their minds; the Land
+League was creating a Reign of Terror, and destroying the property of the
+Irish landlords; the Commissioners probably hoped that they would weaken
+the power of the League, by, so to speak, bidding against it, and cutting
+rents down. Above all, the Land Commission, like the Encumbered Estates
+Commission, was a tribunal set up to carry out a policy, that is, in word,
+to abate rents; and all experience, Irish experience notably, proves that
+such a body of men usually fulfils its mission.
+
+Mr. Gladstone, we have seen, had expressed a belief that 'fair rents,' as
+a rule, would be fixed by contract; that the Act of 1881 would produce
+this result; and that this part of the work of the Land Commission,
+accordingly, would not be very great. Unquestionably, too, with his
+leading followers, he was convinced that rents in Ireland would not be
+largely reduced;[91] it is important to bear this distinctly in mind,
+regard being had to subsequent events. These anticipations were to prove
+vain; but the Land Commissioners possibly may have shared his views, and
+may have resolved to act upon them, before they first addressed themselves
+to the task of 'fixing fair rents.' After experience, it is easy to be
+wise; but we can now clearly discern what they ought to have done,
+considering the heavy work they were soon to find imposed on them. Their
+first duty should have been to establish some standard, which would make a
+reasonable criterion of rent; the means to accomplish this end were not
+wanting. Mr. Law, the Irish Attorney-General of Mr. Gladstone, one of the
+most distinguished lawyers of his day, and afterwards a holder of the
+Great Seal of Ireland, had made a definition of 'fair rent' in the House
+of Commons; 'a fair rent was to be a competition rent minus the yearly
+value of the tenant's interest in the holding; that was what was intended,
+and anything else would be monstrously unjust.'[92] For some reason that
+has not transpired, this definition did not find a place in the Act; but
+the authority of its framer was great; it must have been known to the Land
+Commissioners; had they adopted it, and based their decisions upon it,
+things would have been very different from what they are at the present
+time. But there were other tests to indicate a standard of rent, to be
+regarded at least, if not conclusive. The valuation of the lands of
+Ireland made for the assessment of rates, Griffith's valuation, as it was
+commonly called, which Parnell had made a measure of 'fair rent,' would
+certainly have been of real use, though it varied greatly in different
+counties; and the Commission appointed by Mr. Gladstone, only a few months
+before, had, I have said, reported, that Ireland, as a whole, was in no
+sense an over-rented land. There was another consideration, as regards
+Irish rents, which the Land Commissioners ought to have borne in mind. The
+rents on the estates of the great landlords, and of the gentry of old
+descent, were, as a rule, low; the rents of the purchasers under the
+Encumbered Estates Acts were high, nay, excessive, in not a few instances.
+
+Other circumstances, moreover, of great importance, ought to have been
+taken into account, with respect to this subject. The rental of Ireland
+was not as high as it had been before the Great Famine; where rents,
+therefore, had not been increased, and had been regularly paid for a long
+series of years, there was the strongest possible presumption that these
+would be 'fair.' Again, the material progress of Ireland had been great
+during the forty preceding years: the wages of labour had, indeed, risen;
+but owing to the introduction of good farm machinery, the cost of
+production, in agriculture, had diminished; the extension of the railway
+system had opened new markets, and had brought even Connaught within a few
+hours of Great Britain; steam navigation had multiplied and improved; the
+modes of husbandry and the breeds of stock of all kinds had become
+infinitely better than they had been; and prices of late had been very
+high. These were all elements to be regarded in the determination of 'fair
+rent;' they ought to have been examined with care; and inquiries on these
+matters should have extended over a long space of time. Moreover, as the
+Land Act of 1881 discharged improvements made by tenants from rent, as
+these were defined and limited by the Act of 1870, the greatest pains
+ought to have been taken that claims for exemption should be strictly
+dealt with, and not permitted to run riot, especially as it was notorious
+that demands of this kind, made under the law already in force, were
+usually excessive, supported by untrue statements, and by no means easy to
+resist and disprove. Another fact, also, of the gravest moment, ought to
+have been thoroughly considered, as regards this question. As improvements
+made by tenants were not to be charged with rent, it was but equitable
+that the lands they might hold should be valued as if in their normal
+state; that if these had been deteriorated, either through wilful
+misconduct, or gross neglect, their occupiers were not to make profit of
+their own wrong; that deterioration, in a word, was not to be allowed to
+work rent down, and was to be taken into account, in adjudicating upon
+'fair rent.' This was the more necessary because it was well known that
+numbers of farms in Ireland had been more or less run out; and especially
+because, as in the case of the ryot of Bengal, under the Permanent
+Settlement of Lord Cornwallis, an Irish tenant would be strongly tempted
+to injure his lands, if he believed that, when 'a fair rent' should be
+fixed on them, he would be permitted to take advantage of his own default.
+It should be added that, in the fixing of 'fair rents,' the large sums
+which, in many instances, Irish landlords had laid out in improving their
+estates, notably since the years that succeeded the Famine, ought, as a
+matter of course, to have been kept in mind.
+
+These were the general principles which should have guided the Land
+Commission in approaching the question of fixing 'fair rent.' There was
+nothing in the Act of 1881 to prevent the Land Commissioners, as a Court
+of first instance, adjudicating directly in cases of this kind, or to
+compel them to refer these to their Sub-Commissions; indeed the plain
+intention of the law was in a contrary sense. Had the Land Commissioners
+adopted this course--and this, I venture to say, was their obvious
+duty--they would, no doubt, have considered the questions before them at
+length, and with close attention; have made their inquiries go back many
+years, and have laid down, in elaborate judgments, the maxims and rules to
+be applied in the fixing of 'fair rent.' The evidence that would have
+come before them would have been of two kinds: that which depended upon
+the statements of valuers, on the side of landlords and tenants alike;
+this, of course, would be of great importance; but it should have been
+borne in mind that it would be biassed evidence; and that, in the existing
+state of Ireland, and of Irish opinion, the statements of tenants' valuers
+would require to be strictly watched. The other head of evidence was of a
+much more trustworthy kind; it was indicated by the circumstances of the
+cases being heard, and was necessarily suggested by the inquiries
+themselves. This class of evidence would be desired from a consideration
+of the rate of rent in the neighbourhood or even of adjoining lands, in a
+word, of what may be called the market price of rent; from an examination
+of what a reasonable rent would be, payable by a solvent tenant to a
+fair-minded landlord; and even from a review of rent fixed by the
+competition of bidders for land, these circumstances, in every given case,
+being, of course, controlled by a due regard being had, in the words of
+the law, for the 'tenant's interest.' There was another and very important
+test; the sums paid in Ulster and elsewhere on the transfer of farms were
+usually large, sometimes not less than a third or even a half of the value
+of the fee simple; and as these sums were always subject to the existing
+rents, the first charges on the lands being sold, this would afford a
+strong presumption that such rents would be 'fair.' No doubt the Act of
+1881 declared that such payments were not to be taken into account, _per
+se_, and apart from other considerations in the actual fixing of rent, so
+far as regards a given farm; but the law certainly allowed--and it has
+always been so held--that payments of this kind might be kept in view in
+forming, generally, an estimate of what a 'fair rent' should be.[93]
+
+The Land Commissioners, but from a different point of view, might have
+learned something from Parnell in this matter. They were, no doubt,
+harassed by the prospect of the task before them; but had they taken a
+certain number of 'test cases,' and investigated them as a Court of first
+instance, they would have laid down principles to be followed in the
+fixing of 'fair rent;' have explained these in well-considered judgments,
+going over the whole field of inquiry; and, so far as in them lay, have
+tried to do justice. Even if they had not adopted this course, one of
+their members, as the Act of 1881 provided, might have taken part for some
+time with their subordinates in the adjustment of rent; this would have
+been in accord with Mr. Gladstone's assertions that the Land Commission
+was to be the real arbiter of rent. Unfortunately the Commissioners acted
+quite otherwise; their conduct, palliate as you may, was an abdication of
+a plain duty, on the plea that they were overwhelmed by the work before
+them. Not one of them ever sat in a Court of first instance to fix 'fair
+rents;' they delegated this the most important of all their functions to
+their Sub-Commissions, to which they thus committed the charge of
+adjusting rent throughout the whole of Ireland. These Sub-Commissions
+formed Courts, each composed of three members, one a legal Commissioner
+and two laymen; the Sub-Commissioners were nominees of the Government,
+whether appointed on the recommendation of the Land Commission or not is
+not certain; the only qualifications for the legal Commissioners were that
+they should be barristers or solicitors of six years' standing, and for
+the lay Commissioners that they should have some knowledge of land. These
+were strange tribunals to deal with property worth hundreds of millions;
+but this was only a part of what must be called a scandal most
+discreditable to those responsible for it. The Sub-Commissioners, one and
+all, were much underpaid; their salaries were inadequate to secure fitting
+men; and, one and all, they were at the sufferance of the men at the
+Castle, liable to be dismissed at a moment's notice, and without the
+independence which is the best guarantee of justice. Some of the
+Sub-Commissioners, indeed, were only paid for the job, by the day; they
+had, therefore, a direct personal interest to reduce rents, in order to
+make work for themselves and to retain their places. Even in Ireland such
+tribunals were never set on foot, since Cromwell assembled his Courts of
+Claims to give their sanction to his huge forfeitures; that they were ever
+thought of is one of the many proofs of the disregard shown to property in
+land in Ireland. No wonder that it was significantly remarked: 'The whole
+spirit of our judicial institutions suggests that officers with such
+extensive powers should be selected with the greatest care and with
+reference to their possession of high qualifications, and that they should
+be placed in a position of independence, and should, so far as possible,
+be lifted above the suspicions that surround them.'[94]
+
+Sixty or seventy officials of this type--the number was afterwards largely
+increased--were thus, in the significant words of one, 'let loose over
+Ireland' to deal with estates; it is very remarkable that they have never
+received instructions from the Land Commission how to perform their
+duties. The procedure of the Courts of the Sub-Commissions was, under
+existing conditions, as well devised as could be fairly expected. The
+three Commissioners, who formed a Court, nearly always sate together, and
+heard the evidence brought before them as to what were 'fair rents;' the
+legal Commissioner decided questions of law; and, this evidence having
+been taken, the two lay Commissioners inspected the farms, the subjects of
+the previous inquiries, and having conferred with their legal colleague,
+determined with him what should be their 'fair rents.' This was the
+ordinary if not the universal practice; if some deviations have been made
+from it, these cannot be deemed of very great importance. Grave complaints
+have been made, in not a few instances, of the lay Commissioners, when
+engaged in examining lands; it has been said that they often neglected and
+'scamped' their work; but these charges have been hardly, if at all,
+sustained; my own experience--and it is tolerably large--is that the
+Commissioners performed their functions with diligence and care, and
+sometimes gave proof of real knowledge of husbandry.[95] But it was
+utterly impossible that tribunals of this kind, not composed of experts of
+a high order, dependent upon the breath of the Castle, without regulations
+to direct their conduct, and acting, without concert, in many districts,
+could adjust rent in a satisfactory way, and in conformity with true
+methods, especially as the work they had to do was excessive; indeed, they
+sometimes fixed 'fair rents' by dozens in a day. It was equally impossible
+that the Sub-Commissions--and to do their members justice they never made
+the attempt--could take into account all the manifold and far-reaching
+elements which enter into the question of 'fair rent,' and could set
+forth, in exhaustive judgments, the principles applicable to a most
+intricate problem. On the contrary, as a rule, and no doubt wisely, they
+avoided topics which might have tasked the highest judicial powers; they
+decided the cases before them summarily, and with little reflection,
+certainly without the protracted examination required to establish settled
+rules and doctrines. And the result has been that they disregarded, and
+even set at nought, a whole series of considerations, of supreme
+importance, with reference to the fixing of 'fair rent;' and, however
+unconsciously and innocently, they have been the authors, in the first
+instance at least, of the gravest injustice, and of wrong, done wholesale,
+to the landed gentry of Ireland.
+
+To make this plain, let us glance back at the principles which assuredly
+ought to have been kept in view, in coming to sound conclusions on the
+subject of 'fair rent.' It will be seen that the Sub-Commissioners either
+gave little or no attention to these, or directly violated them in,
+perhaps, tens of thousands of cases. They have never attempted to
+establish some kind of standard, which would form a general measure of
+'fair rent;' they have completely ignored the definition of Mr. Law,
+precise and most valuable as it was; they have treated 'Griffith's
+valuation' as though it did not exist; they have regarded the Report of
+Mr. Gladstone's Commission, declaring that Ireland was not excessively
+rented, as mere waste paper; they have apparently taken hardly any account
+of the well-known distinction between the low rentals of the great and old
+landlords, and the rack-rents too often exacted by purchasers under the
+Encumbered Estates Acts. So, too, it would seem, they have refused to
+consider the strong presumption that rents would be 'fair' if not raised
+during a long series of years, and if reasonably well paid, within that
+period; and they certainly have given no real weight, as an element in
+adjusting rent, to the agricultural progress made by Ireland since the
+Great Famine. Innumerable complaints have been made against their
+decisions as to the exemption of tenants' improvements from rent; but my
+belief is that they gave great attention to this subject; the wrong that
+has been done was owing to the difficulty of the law, and of its
+application to given cases; and the law, besides, was not, I think, just.
+On the correlative and most important question of the deterioration of
+farms through the default of tenants, they have hardly ever inquired into
+this; they have repeatedly done the landlords wrong; they have made grave
+and palpable mistakes; and in many instances they have made no allowances
+for the expenditure of landlords upon their estates. Having thus refused
+to follow the principles which ought to have been their guide, they have
+widely deviated in the actual fixing of 'fair rents' from rules and
+methods they should have observed and made effective. They have given too
+much weight to the class of evidence that was least important and most
+open to question; they have attached little and sometimes no value to the
+class of evidence by far the most trustworthy, and that ought to possess
+the greatest influence. This has especially been the case, as we shall
+see, with respect to the sums paid on the transfer of farms, the strongest
+possible indication that their rents must be 'fair,' on the ordinary
+principles of human nature, and giving the purchasers credit for the
+simplest common sense.
+
+These are grave charges against quasi-judicial bodies; let us see if they
+are not completely justified. The Sub-Commissioners, I have said, have
+taken no heed of Mr. Law's definition of 'fair rent;' but they have acted
+as though they set it at defiance; they have ignored the principle of
+competition in fixing 'fair' rents. Unquestionably, as Mr. Law pointed
+out, a deduction should be made from a competition rent, regard being had
+to 'the tenant's interest,' that is, to his rights in respect of
+improvements, and perhaps to his rights on account of his tenure, a lease
+renewable every fifteen years, when a 'fair rent' is being fixed on his
+farm; but why the very idea of competition, that is, of market value, was
+to be excluded as an element in estimating 'fair rent,' is what men of
+common sense have never understood. This, in fact, was a portentous
+mistake, with consequences of a far-reaching kind; you might as well argue
+that because two partners had an interest in a fee simple estate, or two
+peasants had each a share in a cow, the price of the land or the cow was
+not to depend on what would be given for it at an auction mart or a county
+fair. Yet this was a position the Sub-Commissions have always taken; they
+have always insisted that competition had nothing to do with 'fair rent.'
+The evidence on this subject is conclusive; I can only take a few samples
+from the statements of a cloud of witnesses, who really seem to make a
+boast of their faith. Colonel Bayley, a Sub-Commissioner of large
+experience, has laid it down that the 'difference between a competition
+rent and the fair rent would be more than 20 per cent.; it would, I
+think, be more than that; there would be between 30 and 75 per cent.
+difference between the fair rent and the competition rent.'[96] Mr.
+Roberts, another Sub-Commissioner, has deposed to much the same effect:
+'Decidedly, I believe that if the land was put in the market it would
+bring 25 per cent. more than the rent I put on.'[97] So, too, Mr. Bailey,
+a legal Sub-Commissioner, very much respected, has alleged: 'It would be
+most misleading to take the evidence of letting value in the
+neighbourhood, thus bringing in competition value, which we rigorously
+exclude in fair-rent cases.'[98] Mr. Bomford, a well-known
+Sub-Commissioner, has said, in much the same sense: 'We do not take the
+competition rent, and cannot take it into consideration, when fixing what
+the fair rent should be. Then you utterly exclude, when you come to the
+fixing of the fair rent, the element of competition?--Yes, except in one
+matter, when we have town parks.'[99]
+
+Let us now see what distinctions, in fixing 'fair rents,' the
+Sub-Commissioners have drawn between landlords whose rentals were low and
+landlords whose rentals were really high; and how they have dealt with
+rents, paid for a long space of time, without having been raised; this is
+a fair index of the equity of their proceedings. It should be remarked, at
+the outset, that it soon appeared that rents had only been increased in
+comparatively few instances, going back over a series of years; yet, as a
+rule, nearly all rents were indiscriminately reduced. No attempt has been
+made, by any official of the Land Commission, to answer this damaging
+charge made, in 1897, at a judicial inquiry held upon the subject: 'The
+result of that calculation, the accuracy of which cannot be challenged,
+shows that, as the result of all the cases that were heard, in only 8 per
+cent. of them was any increase of rent for many years prior to 1881
+proved. But whether the Sub-Commissioners are dealing with an estate on
+which for centuries the rents had remained unchanged, and on which the
+tenants had been fairly treated, or whether they were dealing with estates
+that had come into the hands of speculators by purchase in the Landed
+Estates Court, in all cases the average result was the same. They deducted
+something between 15 and 20 per cent. from the existing rent, no matter
+how long it had existed, and no matter upon what estate it was being
+paid.'[100] This significant evidence, too, points to the same conclusion:
+'There is nothing to justify the reductions that have been made in the
+rents of good landlords, who did not raise their rents in the good years.
+In fact, the landlords who did raise their rents got off a great deal
+better, at the hands of the Sub-Commissioners, than the good landlords who
+did not raise them.'[101] And Mr. Lecky, a calm-minded observer, if there
+ever was one, has added these striking and pregnant remarks: 'The
+landlords who have suffered least have probably been those who simplified
+their properties by the wholesale evictions, the harsh clearances, that
+too often followed the Famine. Next in the scale come those who exacted
+extreme rack-rents from their tenants. These rents had been received for
+many years, and though they were ultimately reduced more than rents which
+had been always low, they still, in innumerable instances, remained higher
+than the others. The large class who regarded land simply as a source of
+revenue, and, without doing anything harsh, or extortionate, or unjust,
+took no part in its management, have suffered very moderately. It is the
+improving landlord, who took a real interest in his estate, who sank large
+sums in draining and other purposes of improvement, who exercised a
+constant and beneficent influence over his tenants, who has suffered most
+from the legislation that reduced him to a mere powerless rent-charger,
+and, in most cases, rendered the sums he had expended an absolute
+loss.'[102]
+
+The Sub-Commissions dealt with the subject of the exemption of tenants'
+improvements from rent, on the whole, as fairly, I think, as could be
+expected; and on the different questions of law that arose, appeals ran
+from them to the Land Commission, which usually investigated these cases
+at length. But this part of the law, really an excrescence on the Act of
+1881, was unfair to the landlords, in the circumstances in which they were
+placed; they were confronted by innumerable and often obsolete and
+worthless claims, which they had only seldom the means of refuting; and if
+the demoralisation and false swearing under the Act of 1870 was bad, they
+were infinitely worse under the Act of 1881. A witty Irishman, indeed,
+once said that he could wish no severer punishment for Mr. Gladstone than
+to see him in a Sub-Commission Court listening to those wrongful
+statements; the mischief has, of course, been aggravated since the Act of
+1896 has made the basis for the exemption larger and more ill-defined. The
+Sub-Commissions, I have said, were gravely in error, almost, as a rule,
+with respect to the deterioration of land, as an element to be considered
+in fixing rent; in this respect gross injustice has been done to
+landlords. There is scarcely any proof that, even in a single instance,
+the Sub-Commissioners valued land 'for fair rent,' as in its normal state;
+and yet, assuredly, this was what ought to have been done, if a premium
+was not to be put on misconduct, and because farms had been injured and
+exhausted in hundreds, throughout Ireland. The deterioration was usually
+of two kinds--wilful waste committed in order to work down rent, and
+passive waste caused by negligence and bad farming. Out of many
+instances, under the first head, I shall refer to one; the
+Sub-Commissioners usually gave little or no attention to wrongs of this
+kind; in this instance they enabled the tenant to make money by his own
+misdeeds; they reduced the rent nearly 30 per cent.: 'The dykes were full
+of stuff and choked, and the sluice-gate, which we had repaired at our own
+expense, was all choked up, and the water had been left on the land as
+long as it could stay on it. I complained and remonstrated with the
+tenant. I sent for Madden, and in Mr. Lyle's presence I stated this to
+him. His answer to me was that he was not such a damned fool as to have
+his land looking well when the Commissioners came to look at it.
+
+'SIR E. FRY: Did that case come before the Sub-commissioner Court?--It
+did.
+
+'Did you give evidence of what the tenant said?--Yes, sir....
+
+'MR. CAMPBELL: I will tell you, sir, what they did.
+
+'How much did they reduce the first judicial rent?--They reduced the first
+judicial rent; they cut it down from £70 10_s._ to £51.'[103]
+
+As for passive waste, that is, the bad cultivation of farms, the proof is
+conclusive that it has been seldom, if ever, considered by the
+Sub-Commissions in fixing 'fair rents.' If we bear in mind that many
+thousands of acres in Ireland have been well-nigh destroyed by the burning
+done by tenants, and that hundreds of thousands have been run out by
+slovenly farming, the injury thus done to landlords has been enormous,
+especially as tenants' improvements have been exempted from rent against
+them; the 'candle,' it has been justly said, 'has been melted down at
+both ends.' I cite two instances, out of hundreds, of the injustice thus
+done; it has been proved over and over again that, in the case of two
+adjoining farms, in all respects of the same natural quality, the rent on
+that which was deteriorated was fixed at a much lower rate than the rent
+on that which was in good heart; in other words, the landlord was
+despoiled of the difference, and the tenant had the benefit of his bad
+husbandry. I take, almost at random, a case in Ulster: 'The Commissioners
+always value the land as they see it. I have two cases on my property in
+one townland. One tenant was an industrious, hard-working man, who had his
+farm in very good order. The second tenant, his wife had died, he was in
+poverty, with a lot of young children, and he himself was not quite "all
+there." These two holdings came at the same time before the
+Sub-Commissioners, and the rents were cut down in each case. When the
+thing was over, I said to Quinn, who was one of the tenants, "Are you
+satisfied with your reduction?" "How can I be satisfied," he said, "when
+my rent is at the same rate as Hurson's rent?" I looked at the return and
+saw he was quite right.... The deteriorated farm was cut down considerably
+more than the cultivated farm.' Another remarkable case occurred in the
+west: 'I had a case, I think decided this year; a farm that was divided
+between two sons fifteen or twenty years ago; the father divided the land
+before I came into the management of the property.
+
+'Did they get an equal portion? was it divided into halves?--Into halves,
+and paid an equal rent.
+
+'Before the Act of 1881?--Before the Act of 1881.
+
+'And was the land of uniform quality?--Yes.
+
+'Had one of these men, before he went into Court, greatly deteriorated the
+land?--Yes.
+
+'Had the other attended to it?--He had attended to it; he looked after the
+land very well indeed.
+
+'What reduction did the man who had deteriorated his half get?--The man
+who had deteriorated his half got 17-1/2 per cent, reduction.
+
+'What did the other get?--The other got 7-1/2 per cent.
+
+'The industrious tenant got 7-1/2?--He got 7-1/2.'[104]
+
+This was obviously gross and crying injustice; but two apologies have been
+made for acts of this kind. It is said that were a deteriorated farm
+rented as if it were in a normal state, the tenant could not afford to pay
+the 'fair rent,' in other words, the landlord is to be despoiled for the
+tenant's neglect. It is said again that the Sub-Commissioners are bound to
+value the land as they find it, and cannot estimate it at its intrinsic
+worth, that is, they are under no obligation to ascertain the truth, and
+do their duty. Yet this sophistry has been gravely put forward as a
+justification for palpable wrong, through which the property of landlords
+has been filched away wholesale: 'The land to this day has suffered a very
+serious deterioration in value; but we did not deal with that as against
+the present tenant ...'[105] 'Have you frequently asked the
+Sub-Commissioners why they do not attach sufficient importance to
+deterioration?--No, but I heard them saying one reason was that if they
+put the rent of the farm as if it had been fairly treated, the tenant
+would not be able to pay that rent now in the deteriorated state.'[106]
+The general result of these proceedings as regards exhausted farms has
+been thus described: 'My view with reference to deterioration is this. Bad
+tenants, who had ill-treated and worn out their land, undoubtedly, in my
+opinion, have obtained larger reductions than they would have got had they
+farmed well. Probably the reason is that were the Land Commissioners to
+put a rent on the land according to its natural capacity, before a
+deterioration, it would be an impossible rent for a broken-down bad
+tenant to pay. This stereotypes the rent in such cases at a figure
+unfairly low to the landlord; tends to lower the standard of fair rent
+generally; is a premium on bad farming; and places tenants under a serious
+temptation to ill-treat their land, so as to secure a larger reduction
+from the Land Court than otherwise could be obtainable.'[107]
+
+The Sub-Commissions appear to have disregarded the just rights of
+landlords in another important respect. Unquestionably, in the great mass
+of instances, as is inevitable when the land is held in small farms, the
+Irish tenant had made the improvements on his holding; but the landed
+gentry, as I have pointed out, had done a good deal since the Great
+Famine. There is nevertheless cogent evidence that, in 'fixing fair
+rents,' the Sub-Commissions took hardly any account of the expenditure of
+landlords under this head. In the case of the estate of the late Mr.
+Talbot Crosbie, one of the best breeders of prize stock in the Three
+Kingdoms, and a country gentleman of parts and intelligence, these
+significant facts were conclusively proved: 'Table E gives the cases of
+eight holdings upon which there was an expenditure by the landlord of
+£1936?--Yes.
+
+'The old rent was £688?--Yes.
+
+'That was reduced by the Sub-Commissioners to £493?--Yes. A reduction of
+about 30 per cent.
+
+'Notwithstanding the outlay by the landlord in the interval of nearly
+£2000?--Yes, that is it.
+
+'Table F is a list of eleven farms, on which there was practically no
+expenditure by the landlord?--Quite so, no recent expenditure. That is,
+between 1863 and 1887?--There was a good deal done in the famine time, but
+I did not take account of that.
+
+'You had no evidence in these eleven cases of expenditure for many years
+prior to the fixing of the rent?--No. In these cases the old rents tot up
+to £361?--Yes. And the reductions only brought them to £280?--A reduction
+of 18 per cent.
+
+'In other words, on the unimproved farms the reductions only average 18,
+while on the improved farms they went as high as 30 per cent.?--Quite so.
+
+'SIR E. FRY: Were these two sets of farms different classes of
+farms?--They were practically of the same class.'[108] In the same way, in
+the case of the estate of Lord Leconfield, a great and excellent landlord
+in the County Clare, the Sub-Commission made no real allowance for a sum
+of £20,500 expended on twenty-seven farms. 'Am I right in saying that from
+1852 to 1881 there was spent by Lord Leconfield £20,500 in these
+twenty-seven cases?--The return speaks for itself. That is the result of
+it.' 'No. 4: As an example of the reductions of the Sub-Commissioners were
+the rents put back to what they had been in 1852?--Very nearly. There is a
+difference, I think, of about 1/2 per cent.?--About 1/2 per cent. The rent
+in 1852 was £2524, and the judicial rents on these farms was £2632.'[109]
+
+I pass on to the methods pursued by the Sub-Commissioners in actually
+fixing 'fair rents.' As I have said, they usually heard the cases at
+length in Court; they usually devoted attention to them. I do not think
+they set much store on the reports of valuers, on the part either of
+landlords or tenants; they formed their decisions, as a general rule, on
+the inspections made by the lay Commissioners of the lands they visited.
+This was a much better method, as I shall point out afterwards, than that
+adopted by their superiors; but obviously inspections of this kind made by
+officials without local knowledge of the farms, which they examined and
+valued, could not be a sufficient, or a satisfactory, way to fix 'fair
+rents.' The great error, however, made, in this matter, by the
+Sub-Commissions--and in this respect they had the countenance of the
+higher tribunal--was that they had little or no regard for the evidence
+which in adjusting rent was assuredly of the greatest importance. They
+rejected, we have seen, the principle of competition in adjudicating on
+rent; in fixing the 'fair rents' of holdings before them, they refused to
+consider the rents of the neighbourhood and of adjoining lands, that is,
+to consider the price of the market. Yet this was but a trifling compared
+to their capital mistake, one that, indeed, can hardly be explained: in
+investigating the subject of 'fair rent,' they would not take into account
+sums paid on the transfer of farms, that is, their tenant right, in other
+words, as an indication of what ought to be their 'fair rents.' If we bear
+in mind, as I have said before, that these sums were given subject to the
+existing rents, which always formed the first charge on the lands, it is
+most difficult to understand, as we have seen, how this circumstance did
+not create a very strong presumption that the rents in question must be
+'fair' from the very nature of the case, assuming the Irish tenant to be a
+rational being. The sums paid for this tenant right were sometimes
+enormous, not uncommonly equal to one-third or one-half of the value of
+the fee; I illustrate my meaning from the evidence, taken with reference
+to the estate of Lord Downshire, one of the largest and best managed in
+Ulster: 'What would you say the tenants' interest would be worth on the
+Downshire estate?--Well, judging from the average prices obtained by
+tenants on transfers, my opinion is that the tenants' interest would be
+worth £1,000,000.
+
+'On the Downshire estate alone?--Yes.
+
+'Now, could that value in the tenants, or that interest in the tenants,
+exist, unless the rents at which they were holding were low rents?--No,
+the prices of tenant right are incompatible with high rents. Does it in
+your opinion point to their being lower than the commercial rents?--Yes,
+they are lower.'[110] And will it be believed that on this very estate, in
+the case of thirteen farms, held at the rents fixed by the landlords, the
+tenant right realised £7296, and yet the Sub-Commission reduced the rents
+more than 20 per cent.? In other words, they declared that the old rents
+were not fair, though these lands, when transferred, fetched £7296 paid by
+their purchasers, subject to the rents in question![111]
+
+The Downshire was only one of many scores of estates in which the tenant
+right was exceedingly high, that is, the sums paid, at existing rents, on
+the transfer of farms, were very great, yet in all these instances this
+striking fact was not taken into account. It cannot cause surprise that,
+at a judicial inquiry held afterwards to review the subject, tenants'
+advocates endeavoured to exclude the evidence which, in the judgment of
+plain men of sense, affords almost a decisive indication as to whether
+given rents are 'fair.' It has been argued, however, that the price of
+tenant right, that is, the sums paid by incoming to outgoing tenants, on
+the sale of farms, at the current rents, ought to form no element in the
+fixing of 'fair rent;' it is only just to set forth the reasons. Mr.
+Bailey, the able legal Sub-Commissioner, referred to before, has explained
+them in this passage: 'Do you attend to tenant right in considering the
+fair rent?--No, we do not. The view we take of it is this. The tenant
+right paid for land is paid for something of an altogether different
+character from the rent of the land.... When a tenant sells his interest
+in his holding, he sells two things, first, the improvements on the
+holding, and secondly, his goodwill or share of the gross product of the
+holding.... When you put these two items together, viz. improvements and
+goodwill, it seems to me that the prices paid for tenant right are not at
+all remarkable. Then your view is that the price paid for tenant right
+throws no light on what the fair rent ought to be?--No, no light at all.'
+Mr. Bailey has added these significant words: 'The tenant does not buy at
+the rent which the tenement at present stands at, but he buys with a
+possible increase or reduction of the rent?--Quite so. And in latter years
+with the fall of prices he was buying with the expectation of a very
+considerable reduction?--Undoubtedly.'[112]
+
+The first of these arguments appears to me to be wholly irrelevant to the
+real question. Undoubtedly the tenant right of a farm represents the
+tenant's improvements and his interest in the land, and is completely
+distinct from the rent; and this is acquired on a sale by an incoming
+tenant. But the purchaser buys the tenant right, subject to the first
+charge, the rent; if the rent were excessive, or even high, either he
+would not buy at all, or he would pay a low price; when, therefore, we
+find the tenant right commanding very large sums, the conclusion is
+inevitable, that, taking human nature as it is, the rent must be in the
+nature of a 'fair rent.' The Sub-Commissions rejected a plain inference
+they ought to have drawn; that they refused to give weight to an
+all-important fact cannot be justified in any sense; and the result has
+been that in hundreds of cases they have done grave wrong to landlords. As
+for the second argument, it is very probable that in many instances
+tenants purchased farms in the anticipation of a reduction of rent; they
+speculated--a significant fact--that the Sub-Commissions would 'bear' the
+market; but even, on that supposition, this can hardly explain the huge
+sums paid for tenant right while the existing rents were current. For the
+rest, I refer to part of my own evidence given on this subject at the same
+inquiry; readers of ordinary intelligence may judge for themselves: 'The
+first question I ask the tenant is, "How much will you take for the land,
+£100, £200, £300; ten, fifteen, twenty, or forty years' rent?" But I never
+can get an answer. They say, "Oh, your honour, I am here to look after a
+'fair rent,' and I am not going to tell your honour what I am going to ask
+for the land." However, I have a very shrewd notion.... You take into
+consideration in fixing the fair rent the price paid by the tenants?--Yes,
+the price which an incoming tenant would give, because I am not one of
+those who think that the Irish tenant is a fool; and when I find an
+incoming tenant giving ten, fifteen, twenty, and thirty years' purchase
+for a farm, I have a very shrewd suspicion that the rent is right.'[113]
+
+It was under these conditions, and by proceedings of this kind, that the
+Sub-Commissions, bodies of ill-paid men, dependent upon the will of the
+Government, and constituted to give effect to a policy, were sent
+throughout Ireland to 'fix fair rents.' They had no assistance, we have
+seen, from the Land Commission; they often entertained very different
+views; but their uniform course was in the same direction; they
+indiscriminately abated rents, as they would abate a nuisance. In fact,
+they might have joined in the chorus of the doctors of Molière: 'Et
+saignare, et purgare, et clystériasaire;' they applied the same remedies
+to all their victims, and brought them nearly all into the same weak and
+low condition. But there was a right of appeal from the Sub-Commissions to
+the Land Commission; and this tribunal, certainly designed to have
+absolute power in the determination of rent, ought surely to have been
+expected to redress injustice. I approach a part of the subject on which
+the plain truth must be told, without making personal imputations of any
+kind. Appeals from the Sub-Commissions were numbered by many thousands;
+and, as I have said--an iniquitous provision of the Act of 1881--the
+decisions of the Land Commission on the subject of 'fair rent' was made
+final, at least as regards the rate of rent; there was to be no further
+appeal to a higher tribunal. I quote these significant remarks on this
+restriction: 'In an ordinary case, I need not tell you, sir, who are
+conversant with the procedure of Courts of Justice, a litigant, in a civil
+case, no matter how much the issue may be involved, has the right, if he
+thinks fit, of taking the case from one Court to another, until he reaches
+the highest tribunal of the land, the House of Lords. And as you know,
+there is a well-known case, which the House of Lords had to decide, in
+which the amount involved was one penny, an alleged overcharge on a
+railway ticket; but in these land cases, where there may be, and often is,
+a sum of £200, £300, or £400 a year involved, because in some of the large
+farms in this country there have been reductions of £300 and even of £400
+in the rent, under the Act of Parliament they cannot go beyond the Head
+Land Commission, upon any question of value. That is the Act of Parliament
+whether it be right or wrong. There it is, and I am not here to discuss
+the policy of the Act. But when a rehearing is given by the Act of
+Parliament to the Land Commission, and when the Land Commission are
+constituted the final judges in such large and important matters, it is
+obviously of great importance that the final rehearing should be full, and
+in every respect what the Act of Parliament says it is to be, namely, a
+rehearing.'[114]
+
+The Land Commission sometimes heard these appeals at length, though
+usually their proceedings were summary in the extreme. The Commissioners
+occasionally pronounced well-considered judgments, on the difficult
+questions of law that came before them, especially as regards the
+exemption of tenants' improvements from rent; in several instances the
+results were curious. The lay Commissioner now and then dissented from his
+legal colleagues; his plain common sense rejected theories in tenants'
+interests; his decisions were more than once confirmed, on these points of
+law, by the highest Court of Appeal in Ireland, a circumstance of no
+slight significance. Nineteen-twentieths, however, of these appeals were
+conversant only with the amount of 'fair rent,' as to which the
+conclusions of the Land Commission could not be challenged. The Land
+Commissioners undoubtedly heard these cases, and sometimes had much
+evidence brought before them; in tolerably many instances they varied the
+'fair rents' fixed by the Sub-Commissions, if these variations were seldom
+important. But the Land Commission practically adopted, with scarcely a
+single exception, the errors of principle and the faulty methods which had
+marked the practice and the proceedings of the Sub-Commissions.[115] They
+excluded the element of competition from the subject of 'fair rent;' they
+never attempted to define 'fair rent,' or to establish a standard by which
+to gauge it; they disregarded, to a considerable extent at least, the
+distinction between the rentals of the old and the new landlords; they
+paid little or no attention to the fact that rents had been paid for many
+years without an increase; they hardly ever took deterioration into
+account, or the expenditure made on their estates by landlords. And in the
+actual fixing of 'fair rents' they virtually followed in the wake of their
+inferiors; they rejected, as a rule, the evidence that was most relevant;
+they refused to consider the rents of adjoining or neighbouring lands, in
+a word, the price of the market, in determining rent; above all, they gave
+scarcely any heed to the enormous sums paid for the tenant right of lands,
+as an indication that their rents were 'fair.' On all these particulars,
+in a word, supremely important as they were, they almost said ditto to the
+Sub-Commissions; in these respects the appeals were well-nigh useless. It
+should be added that the animus of the head of the Land Commission was
+significantly exhibited on one striking occasion. When opening the
+proceedings of the Land Commission, Mr. Justice O'Hagan pointedly laid it
+down, that the object of the Act of 1881 was 'to make tenants live and
+thrive;' in other words, as Lord Salisbury indignantly remarked, to compel
+rent to gravitate to the level of the most indolent and worthless Irish
+peasant, and practically to discourage industry.
+
+These considerations indicate, to some extent at least, the nature and
+especially the value of these appeals. But this was not all, or nearly
+all; there was a grave miscarriage of the simplest justice in this
+important province. Appeals, I have said, came in, in thousands; the work
+thrown on the Land Commissioners was immense; as one of their present
+successors remarked, 'If proper consideration' (had been) 'given to all
+the appeals you would' (have) 'wanted ten Appeal Courts to do it;'[116] as
+was said again substantially, 'Appeals would have crushed the Land
+Commissioners, had they not been crushed by them.'[117] In this position
+of affairs, the Land Commissioners, no doubt with no bad or sinister
+purpose, adopted what must be called a device, to enable them quickly to
+dispose of appeals, nay, almost in a summary way. They were empowered,
+under the Act of 1881, to appoint 'independent valuers' to examine lands,
+and to report on the subject of their 'fair rents;' it was never
+contemplated that statements of this kind were to dispense with the duty
+of hearing appeals in detail, and pronouncing solemn judgments upon them;
+but, practically, the Land Commissioners, in the great mass of instances,
+when adjudicating on appeals, as regards 'fair rents,' almost wholly
+relied on the reports of these valuers, who, be it observed, were in no
+sense witnesses, and were not subject to examination on the part of the
+suitors before the Court. In a word, the Land Commissioners did not
+exclude other kinds of evidence; but unquestionably the dicta of the
+valuers, as a rule, determined the decisions they made on 'fair rent.'
+This expedient greatly accelerated appeals; but it reduced the right of
+appeal well-nigh to a sham; and this procedure was by many degrees more
+repugnant to justice than that of the Sub-Commissions. In an inquiry held
+before the House of Lords in 1882, an eminent member of the Irish bar
+remarked, 'It was the most unsatisfactory tribunal that I ever was before.
+What occurred was this: they took up the figures of the old rent, which we
+will say was £100, and the valuation £70, and the new rent £80. Then they
+took up the valuer's report, which was a document concealed from the
+parties. It was entirely for the information of the Court, and they turned
+round to me, as the landlord's counsel, the landlord being the appellant,
+and said, "Can you go on with this appeal in the face of this document?"
+and they would show me the document.'[118] And in the inquiry I have often
+referred to before, another distinguished lawyer has said, 'I have been in
+cases where, in order to overcome the difficulty, I marshalled a perfect
+phalanx of witnesses, for the landlord, but it was all no use. They
+listened to them, I admit,--they suggested that I was wasting time, but I
+am not stating they did not hear them,--but in the end, in the morning,
+the announcement was made that the judicial rent was confirmed.'[119]
+
+As the general result these appeals, as it has been said, 'were
+strangled;' in thousands of instances they were withdrawn, the decisions
+of the Land Commission being final; expedition was attained; but it was
+only attained at the cost of gross wrong done to the landlords, a singular
+exhibition in a Court of Justice. I quote the following--and it should be
+borne in mind that the Land Commissioners have never attempted to explain
+this conduct, though the amplest opportunity was afforded, a few years
+ago: 'The extraordinary and anomalous state of things is that the valuers,
+not being assessors, do not sit with the Commissioners, and do not hear
+the evidence, and yet they are not witnesses in the proper sense of the
+term, because they are neither examined nor cross-examined. Common sense
+and justice revolt at the idea, when it is the duty of the Land
+Commissioners, upon the rehearing of a case, to sit and go through the
+proceedings _de novo_, that they should receive the evidence of valuers,
+which is not laid before the parties, and that those valuers should not be
+examined and cross-examined in the regular way. There is another matter to
+which I would refer. You will find, what is, indeed, what you might
+expect, that when the Commissioners go to Dublin, or Cork, or elsewhere,
+with a list of two or three hundred cases to be heard by them, involving,
+it may be, thousands of pounds a year of rent, that list is gone through
+in two or three days, and why? Because all the parties present know that
+they are taking part in what really is a solemn farce, and that what will
+happen in the morning after the hearing of their case is just this: John
+Brown, landlord, James Fogarty, tenant; judicial rent affirmed; John
+Robinson, landlord, James McNorth, tenant; judicial rent affirmed.'[120]
+
+The first set of Land Commissioners passed away; they were succeeded by a
+second Land Commission, the president of which was Mr. Justice Bewley, an
+accomplished, if not a very eminent, lawyer. This Commission, like the
+other, was composed of honourable men; it is only just to remark that it
+was bound by the bad precedents made by the tribunal which it had
+replaced. The procedure of the Sub-Commissions was, in some degree,
+improved; but the methods of the second Land Commission differed for the
+worse where they differed from the methods of its predecessor. The Land
+Commissioners appear to have not at all regarded the general principles in
+fixing 'fair rent,' which ought to have had effect on their judgments;
+they gave less weight, than Mr. Justice O'Hagan, and his colleagues did,
+to the most important evidence, in this province, to which I have adverted
+before, and laid too much stress on the least important evidence. As has
+been truly remarked, 'We believe that much more attention was paid in the
+early days of the Land Commission to the remaining kinds of popular
+evidence than has been the case of late years; and we are assured by one
+of the head Commissioners that the Act of 1896 has made a great change in
+the fixing of fair rents by placing an emphasis on the technical evidence,
+and throwing the popular evidence into the background.'[121] The
+Commissioners, too, followed the bad example of the first Land Commission,
+in the province of appeals; they practically disregarded almost everything
+but the reports of their valuers, unchecked statements made by men who
+were not even witnesses, were not sworn, and were not examined--a
+procedure worthy of the Council of Ten at Venice; as before, the result
+was that appeals were made all but fruitless, in the Court of which the
+decisions were, in this respect, final.
+
+There was, too, another grave miscarriage of justice caused, perhaps, by a
+mistake made by the head of the second Land Commission. The Act of 1881
+provided that 'fair rent' should be fixed, having due regard to the
+'interest' of the tenant on the land, that is, to his improvements, and
+perhaps to the mode of his tenure. Mr. Justice Bewley seems to have
+decided that another element ought to be taken into account, and should
+effect a reduction of rent; the tenant had 'an occupation right' in his
+favour, over and above the 'interest' the law gave him; by reason of this
+he had a right to have his rent cut down. The only plausible ground
+alleged for this doctrine was that landlords would usually accept a lower
+rent from a 'sitting' tenant in possession than from an incoming tenant;
+in other words, their good nature was turned against them, and was to be
+made a pretext for their being despoiled. It is just to observe that Mr.
+Justice Bewley's colleagues dissented from this curious view of the law;
+and the claim for 'occupation right' has since been blown to the winds in
+the superior Courts of Ireland. But though many faint denials were made,
+some of the Sub-Commissioners acted upon Mr. Justice Bewley's doctrine;
+the evidence is conclusive that this imaginary right was made the means of
+considerably reducing rent. Mr. Justice Bewley candidly admitted: 'From
+the commencement, apparently, a number of the Sub-Commissioners have acted
+on the principle that there is a certain occupation interest, which every
+tenant has, varying according to circumstances, not any fixed amount, but
+varying, and that that is to be taken into account in fixing the fair
+rent.'[122] This statement has been confirmed by a host of witnesses by no
+means willing in not a few instances. 'Would you make a difference between
+the assessment of the fair rent in the case of a sitting tenant, and in
+the case of an incoming tenant--a stranger? Certainly. Can you give us any
+idea what that difference is, expressed in percentage?--I could not very
+well answer that question. It is a mental calculation, and a good deal
+would depend upon the length of the tenure of the tenant.'[123] And again:
+'In your experience of the Land Commission Court, do you find the
+"occupation interest" has been taken into account in fixing the fair
+rent?--Yes, I cannot account for the reductions that have been made,
+except on that supposition.'[124] And again: 'As far as your experience
+goes, do they invariably value the holdings on the principle of giving an
+occupation interest to the sitting tenant?--Yes, the tenants' valuers, as
+a rule, give 40 or 50 per cent. as the interest of the sitting tenant....
+Do you find that the Sub-Commissioners fix the rent on what the valuers
+state?--Well, no; that would be going too much out of the way.'[125] And
+again: 'Have you any doubt that the rents are fixed on the basis of the
+occupation interest in the sitting tenant?--I have none. I do not know how
+else the rents could have been arrived at.'[126] And once more: 'Did the
+Sub-Commissioners invariably take the occupation interest of the sitting
+tenant into account?--I think so.' I conclude with these remarks of Mr.
+Barnes, one of the best and most impartial of Irish valuers: 'When I came
+to give evidence in Court I found that nothing else would be accepted as
+evidence unless based on occupation interest. It was almost the first
+question.... Whenever there was an answer made that the valuation was
+based on what the landlord would get for the land in his own hands, it was
+discounted at once.'[127] No wonder that it has been alleged by the
+highest authority with respect to this claim, since proved to have been
+unfounded, guarded and cautious as the language is: 'There is, however,
+reason to believe that this notion of an occupation interest existed in
+the minds of some of the early valuers, and did, in fact, influence them,
+and it is very possible that some cases in which the reductions there made
+appear startling, may be, in part, attributable to this doctrine.'[128]
+
+What amount of the rental of Ireland was unlawfully cut down owing to the
+theory of 'occupation right,' it is, of course, impossible to ascertain.
+Reductions of rent, too, were probably unjustly made through the
+ignorance of the Land Commission as to agricultural matters. I refer to a
+grotesque instance of this: 'You have marked a passage there in the
+judgment, which, according to you, shows that owing to their ignorance as
+experts they entirely mistook what six-course rotation meant?--Yes. The
+fact is they took it to be the same crop in the whole seventy acres, that
+instead of having so many different crops in this portion of the ground,
+it was to be put into one crop for the year, and that is what they call
+"rotation" in the Court of Rehearing.... It is plain enough, from the
+authorised report of the judgment, that they made that mistake?--It is
+clear as possible, and it was upon that that they threw me out. The tenant
+himself knew that it was all absurdity and mistake.'[129]
+
+A remarkable incident occurred in 1897 which threw a strong, if not a
+complete, light on the proceedings of the Land Commission and its
+Sub-Commissions in the adjustment of rent. In 1896 the time had come for
+renewing the first statutory leases, under the Act of 1881; the
+Commissioners suddenly made such enormous reductions of rent that persons
+who knew Ireland were simply astounded. The Irish landlords naturally were
+indignant; after some hesitation, and with plain reluctance, the
+Government gave its consent to a very imperfect inquiry. A Commission,
+presided over by Sir Edward Fry, a judge of the highest eminence, retired
+from office, and composed of four additional colleagues, two being
+well-known agricultural experts, was appointed to investigate the subject
+on the spot; but the scope of the inquiry was limited in the extreme; it
+was confined, in this respect, to examining the procedure and practice
+adopted in fixing 'fair rents;' it did not extend to the conduct generally
+of the Land Commission and its dependent tribunals. The Commission was
+engaged nearly three months in its task; it held its sittings in different
+parts of Ireland; it had before it 183 witnesses; and restricted as it
+was in this province, it pronounced, in grave and judicial language, a
+marked censure on the methods that had been followed in fixing 'fair
+rents' in Ireland. In fact, Sir Edward Fry and his colleagues confirmed,
+in many respects, the charges which I have made with regard to this whole
+system. No doubt they reported, in very guarded words, 'that they were
+unable to conclude that the machinery of the Land Statutes has been
+uniformly worked with injustice towards landlords;'[130] but as they
+pointedly refused to rehear a single case, in which the Land Commission
+and the Sub-Commissions had fixed a 'fair rent,' this statement, ambiguous
+as it is, is of no real importance. In other particulars the expression of
+these opinions cannot be mistaken; to impartial minds it will appear
+decisive. They evidently thought that such wrong had been done to
+landlords owing to the want of a definition of 'fair rent,' that they
+actually framed a definition of their own, in order to establish some kind
+of standard; this did not widely differ from that of Mr. Law, which, I
+have said, would have made things very different had it been adopted.[131]
+They pointed out that the Land Commissioners should have assisted the
+Sub-Commissions in fixing 'fair rents,' and should not have left them
+'like ships without a rudder or a compass on a stormy sea;' it is 'a
+subject of regret,' they reported, 'that in the early days of the system
+the Land Commissioners were unable to take a part in the tribunals of
+first instance; and that the whole original business was left to
+Sub-Commissions.'[132] They strongly condemned the nature of the
+Sub-Commission Courts, as being composed of members inadequately paid and
+mere tenants at sufferance; and they put forward an elaborate scheme to
+make the administration of justice in these tribunals more above
+suspicion.[133] They evidently believed that the Land Commission and the
+Sub-Commissions did not give due weight to the class of evidence that was
+most important, and gave too much weight to that which was the least; and
+they made significant observations on this subject.[134] On the whole,
+they arrived at the conclusion that the fixing of 'fair rents' 'gives
+opportunity for dissatisfaction, and leaves much more for improvement; ...
+and that the settlement of fair rents has been effected in an
+unsatisfactory manner, with diversity of opinion and practice, sometimes
+with carelessness, and sometimes with that bias towards one side or the
+other which exists in many honest minds.'[135] But their strongest
+animadversion was found in the system, through which, I have said, the
+Land Commission really 'strangled' appeals, though in this province its
+decisions were final: 'An almost universal dissatisfaction is expressed
+with regard to these appeals, a dissatisfaction felt by some at least of
+the Commissioners themselves. No witness, with, perhaps, a single
+exception, spoke in favour of the existing system.'[136]
+
+Mr. Justice Bewley has retired from office, and has been replaced by Mr.
+Justice Meredith, a capable and experienced lawyer. He has done, probably
+as much as in him lay, to alleviate some of the wrong done to Irish
+landlords; and for this he has been subjected to violent abuse, especially
+on the part of an advocate of Ulster farmers, whose tongue is at odds with
+his trade in temperance. But he is bound by the precedents set by those
+who have gone before him; and though the work of the Land Commission is
+now better done than it was before the Report of the Fry Commission
+appeared, and its general procedure has improved, little change has been
+effected in the reduction of rent in Ireland. The Government, as I have
+pointed out in a preceding chapter, has made a few administrative reforms
+in the composition and the arrangement of the Sub-Commissions; but it has
+not taken a single step to give effect to the recommendations made by the
+Fry Commission, so far as these are of real importance; it has refused to
+legislate on the subject, and to bring in the measure that was required;
+it has even refused to set a further inquiry on foot. The general results
+of the labours of the Land Commission and of its subordinate tribunals in
+fixing 'fair rents' may be summed up in a very few sentences. According to
+the Report of the Fry Commission, the tenants of rural holdings in Ireland
+are about 486,000 in number; 328,720 of these have had 'fair rents' fixed,
+between August, 1881, and the end of March, 1900.[137] The tenants, who
+have not had 'fair rents' fixed, are probably either tenants of lands not
+within the Land Acts, or 'future tenants' since 1881-82, or tenants too
+poor to pay law costs; but these, perhaps in nine cases out of ten, have
+indirectly had the benefit of the law, and have had their rents reduced
+like those of the large majority, by voluntary concessions on the part of
+landlords. The great mass of 'fair rents' has been fixed by the Land
+Commission and its dependents, and the proceedings of these tribunals
+have, beyond question, formed a standard for the adjustment of rent;
+whether 'fair rents' have been fixed by the County Courts,[138] or by
+agreements between landlord and tenant, they have, in the main, conformed
+to the measure established by the Courts set up in 1881. The reductions of
+rent made, in every way, in the first statutory leases, were, on an
+average, rather more than 20 per cent. on the old rental;[139] but those
+on the second statutory leases have been 22 per cent. more,[140] that is,
+the fixing of 'fair rents,' so far as it has gone, has reduced rents
+rather more than 42 per cent. It may be asserted, with some confidence,
+that through the operation of the new Irish land code, taking in tenancies
+of all kinds, Irish rents have been cut down nearly 40 per cent.; little
+doubt can exist that they are now lower than they were in the day of
+Wakefield, and in some instances in the day of Arthur Young, when the
+price of Irish agricultural produce was less than half what it is at the
+present time.[141]
+
+The agricultural rental of Ireland, therefore, in all probability, has
+been reduced almost 40 per cent., or will be in a short space of time; and
+as long as the present system of fixing 'fair rent' continues, however it
+may be lowered, it will certainly not be raised. The Act of 1881, I have
+already said, would, by itself, necessarily reduce rents; but the faulty
+administration of it, on which I have dwelt, has reduced them far more
+than ought to have been the case. In fact, disguise it as you may, an
+immense confiscation, gradual, indeed, and veiled, but not the less real,
+has been made of the property of Irish landlords, even on the principles
+of a bad law; the evidence of this is, I believe, conclusive. Rents have
+been cut down indiscriminately in the great mass of instances; for
+example, rents in country districts only opened to good markets of late
+years, have been reduced quite as much as rents around Dublin, which had
+almost a monopoly of the best market until about 1855-60. But the proof of
+this spoliation is made most apparent by taking into account a single
+fact, and drawing the natural inference from it. The value of the
+landlords' interest in the land, before 1881, was from 20 to 25 years'
+purchase; it is now between 15 and 18; at the same time the value of the
+tenants' interest has, in thousands of cases, enormously increased. I
+refer to a few examples out of scores to be found in the evidence given to
+the Fry Commission. I take first an estate in Ulster: 'I only remember one
+case of a holding before 1881 that went up (in a sale of the farm) to
+anything like 20 years' purchase of the rent, and I have several cases
+since then that have gone beyond it. I remember one case that struck me
+very forcibly because of the great amount the man got--20 years' purchase.
+Since then I have known, 29, 35, 36, 34 years' purchase to be given.' I
+turn now to two estates in the south of Ireland: 'Charles Bolster, 112
+acres; rent £79 5_s._; sold for £570 in 1889. Daniel Buckley, 9 acres, at
+rent of £3 3_s._; sold in 1889 for £45. Christopher Crofts, 131 acres; old
+rent, £86; judicial rent fixed in 1893, £80; sold in 1889 for £120.
+Timothy Reefe, 5 acres; rent, 29_s._; sold in 1891 for £47.' I pass on to
+the second estate: 'Next case, 65 acres; old rent, £60; judicial rent, £56
+14_s._, fixed in 1883 by agreement; sold in 1883 for £330. Next, 76
+statute acres; old rent, £115; judicial rent fixed in 1885 at £108; sold
+in December, 1885, for £1600.'[142]
+
+This great fall in the value of the fee simple in the Irish land, and this
+great rise in the value of the tenant right, coinciding with the general
+fixing of 'fair rents,' distinctly point to a plain conclusion: the
+interest of the Irish landlord has been enormously reduced, a result never
+contemplated by the author of the Act of 1881. In truth, there has been
+little or no decline in the market price of land in Ireland; but property
+that ought to belong to the landlord has been improperly taken from him,
+and has been transferred to the tenant who had no right to it. Excuses,
+however, have been made for this wholesale abolition of rent; they are
+worthless, but may be briefly noticed. Ireland, it is said, is suffering,
+like England, from the agricultural depression of late years; and rents
+in Ireland have not been cut down more by the act of the State than they
+have been reduced in England by the voluntary acts of landlords. But
+agricultural depression in Ireland, a land of small holdings, and of
+pasturage, to a considerable extent, is not, by many degrees, as severe as
+in England, a land of large farms and largely of cereal culture; a signal
+proof of this is that, while in England, tenants have, in hundreds of
+instances, thrown up their farms, there has hardly been a case of the kind
+in Ireland, as appears from the Report of the Fry Commission. Besides, if
+agricultural prices have fallen in Ireland, compared to what they were,
+say, twenty-five years ago, they are higher than they were in the years,
+say, 1850-55, not to take into account the progress made by Ireland, in
+the last half-century, in crops, farm machinery, and the breeds of farming
+animals. As to the reduction of rents in England and Ireland, the supposed
+analogy completely fails. The rental of England rose greatly from 1850 to
+1880; there was no corresponding increase in Ireland; there was thus a
+margin for reduction, in the greater island, which in the lesser did not
+exist. Again, no comparison can be made between State-settled Irish rents
+and English rents lowered by the voluntary acts of landlords. 'Fair rents'
+have practically been reduced for all time; the reduction of English rents
+is temporary, and can be at once annulled; this difference makes a
+supposed resemblance a very striking contrast. As to the argument that the
+Courts which have fixed 'fair rents' have been composed of honourable men,
+and that it is extremely invidious to make charges against them, mere
+leather and prunella may be brushed aside. No one disputes the honour of
+the Land and the Sub-Commissioners, but it does not follow that they have
+not done injustice; no one has disputed the honour of the Commission which
+carried out the Encumbered Estates Act, and yet it repeatedly sold
+estates at less than half their value.
+
+The Irish landlords, I repeat, have been iniquitously despoiled; a huge
+confiscation has been made of their property. If the simplest right is to
+be done in this province, their claim to compensation has been rendered
+complete--apart from the utterances of Mr. Gladstone; should this be
+disregarded, Parliament will have been chargeable with a grave breach of
+faith, and a precedent will have been set from trampling on the just
+rights of property in the Three Kingdoms, which will be dangerous in the
+extreme. I pass on to consider the Irish land on the side of ownership,
+and the administration of the system of so-called 'land purchase.' Of the
+total of £40,000,000 alone available, some £20,000,000 appear to have been
+expended; some 50,000 tenants have been made owners of their farms,
+without having paid a shilling of their own, that is, rather more than one
+in ten of the whole tenant class in Ireland. The politicians who declared
+against 'dual ownership,' that bugbear of self-sufficient ignorance, can
+find little consolation in these figures; I shall comment afterwards on
+what this state of things has produced. The Government of Lord Salisbury
+still proposes to seek to accelerate 'land purchase' of this kind; and
+loud complaints have been made of the law's delay in not having made the
+process more speedy. I have had no experience in this matter, and shall,
+therefore, give no opinion on it; but it appears to me that there has been
+some want of care in making advances to these so-styled 'purchasers;' not
+a few were insolvent when they acquired their farms, and many are now on
+the verge of bankruptcy. This, however, was perhaps inseparable from the
+system that has been pursued; it is only an additional proof of its
+essential vices.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (_continued_)--PROPOSED REFORM OF THE IRISH
+LAND SYSTEM
+
+    Retrospect of the present Irish land system--Position of the Irish
+    landlords--Position of the Irish tenant class--This not as
+    advantageous as might be supposed--The effects of the land code on
+    Irish agriculture injurious--The effects on the general Irish
+    community--Confiscation, violation of contracts, shock given to
+    credit, increased alienation of classes, and demoralisation--The land
+    system considered on the side of ownership--'Voluntary
+    purchase'--Mischief of this policy--It sets up a false standard
+    against rent, and creates unjust distinctions between different
+    classes of tenants--The results it has produced already--An instance
+    of the system--The demand for the compulsory purchase of the Irish
+    land caused by 'voluntary purchase'--Compulsory purchase has some hold
+    on opinion, but is an impossible, and would be a disgraceful and
+    ruinous policy--It would ruin Irish landlords as a
+    class--Instances--It would ultimately bring Ireland into the state in
+    which she was before the Great Famine--Proposed plan for the reform of
+    Irish land tenure--Questions as to the means of compensating Irish
+    landlords, a deeply wronged order of men.
+
+
+Having traced the attempts that have been made to reform Irish land
+tenure, in the last thirty years, and noticed the administration of the
+new Irish land code, I must, for the sake of clearness, take a short
+retrospect, and consider the Irish land system as it exists at this day; I
+shall review it on the side of occupation first, that is, in the relations
+of landlord and tenant. The agricultural rental of Ireland, we have seen,
+has been, or is being, reduced about 40 per cent. since 1881, through the
+operation of laws carried out by tribunals of the State; this proceeding,
+unexampled in civilised lands, has been the means, I have proved, of doing
+gross wrong to the Irish landed gentry. But this, if a signal, is only one
+of the many acts of injustice perpetrated on a cruelly injured body of
+men. The fee simple has been wrested from the Irish landlord, where he has
+been subjected to the legislation of late years; he has been deprived of
+the ownership which had been his birthright. An estate, nominally for
+fifteen years, but really capable of being renewed for ever, has been
+created against him by an unjust law; and this has been vested in his
+former tenants, subject to the mode of land tenure known as the 'Three
+F's,' the chief of these being 'fair,' that is, State-settled rents, in
+the adjustment of which he has no voice. He may, no doubt, retain
+fragments of his old proprietary rights; parts of his estate may be
+excluded from the provisions of the law; he may be the lord of 'future
+tenants;' he is left 'royalties,' such as minerals, mines, and timber; he
+possesses most of his former legal remedies; and should the holders of the
+lands, which had been his own, who have obtained the benefits of the
+'Three F's,' infringe the statutory conditions imposed on them, they may
+be dispossessed, and he may enter upon their farms again. But,
+notwithstanding exceptions and possibilities like these, the Irish
+landlord has, for practical purposes, been well-nigh assimilated to a
+rent-charger, and his tenants have been nearly converted into owners of
+the soil, an utter revolution in the whole land system, in truth, turning
+it upside down. The status, indeed, of the Irish landed gentry now bears a
+strong resemblance to that of the chief landlords of the eighteenth
+century, who, separating themselves altogether from their lands, let them
+in perpetuity at low rents, and, as a necessary consequence, produced the
+middleman, the pest, as he has rightly been called, of Irish land tenure.
+
+The enormous and, as I believe, the unjust benefits secured by recent
+legislation to the Irish tenant, are not, however, so complete as they
+appear to be, and are not without disadvantages attendant on them. Tenants
+of holdings, to which the law does not apply, such as tenants of demesnes
+and large pastoral lands, if rightly excluded, nevertheless complain; and
+'future tenants,' and petty occupants, who cannot afford to seek 'fair
+rents' from the Courts, have, from their point of view, solid grounds of
+complaint. The scope of the new land code is, therefore, to some extent,
+restricted; and if the law has actually caused a general reduction of
+rents, it has not secured the 'Three F's' for a considerable body of
+farmers, not improbably a fourth or fifth part of the class as a whole.
+And even the occupiers of the Irish soil, who have obtained the advantages
+of the new mode of tenure, have not obtained these without a certain kind
+of drawback. Completely separated as they now are from their former
+landlords, they cannot expect indulgences from a class which considers
+itself to have been shamefully wronged; the allowances, which, whatever
+may be said, had been made to them, in thousands of cases, have, as a
+rule, been altogether withdrawn; they get no help in making improvements;
+they are usually obliged regularly to pay their 'fair rents;' above all,
+landlords, of a strict or harsh nature, are sometimes on the look-out to
+see if they do not violate the statutory conditions to which they are
+subject, in order to convert them into 'future tenants,' outside of the
+protection of the law, and even to reacquire their lands. These
+circumstances are not without adverse effects; though unquestionably they
+are far more than countervailed by the change which has been wrought in
+Irish land tenure, and has given the Irish tenant the benefits already
+described. Yet, even from this point of view, the law does not operate as
+unreservedly in his favour as might be supposed. He has his 'fair rent,'
+probably much too low; his 'fixity of tenure,' a perpetuity in all but
+name; his right to 'free sale,' sometimes worth thousands of pounds. But,
+as a rule, he can only gain these advantages at the cost of a lawsuit
+recurring at short intervals of time, with the vexation and mischief this
+brings with it, a lawsuit, too, of which the results may be more or less
+doubtful. If, too, he is a saving and thrifty man he will hardly be able
+to acquire lands for himself, as, in consequence of the right of 'free
+sale,' the tenant right of these will have become immensely high; he will
+be confined, in most instances, to the farm he holds. On the other hand,
+if he be dishonest or imprudent, he will be tempted to run out and even to
+injure his land, in order to effect a reduction of rent, or to sublet or
+mortgage it should an opportunity be found.
+
+The new Irish land code has thus had this special feature: it has done
+infinite harm to the despoiled landlord, but the tenant has not gained the
+expected benefits. Let us now see what effect it has had on the great
+industry on which the Irish landed classes depend, the main source of the
+wealth of their country. Unquestionably, as I have remarked, over and over
+again, the tenant in Ireland makes, for the most part, the plant of his
+farm a necessary incident of the small-farm system; but the Irish landed
+gentry, in the last half century, have done a great deal in the work of
+improvement. Whatever interested calumny may falsely assert, they have
+expended millions, as unerring statistics show, in planting, enclosure,
+and, especially, in arterial drainage, this last beyond the reach of the
+common peasant; they have, in thousands of instances, made the breeds of
+stock better; they have made large allowances as regards farm buildings.
+All this is now a thing of the past; the sometime landowner, in a real
+sense, has been divorced from his former estate; law has prohibited him
+from doing anything for it; his only interest is to collect the
+rent-charge called, in mockery, 'fair rent.' On the other hand, tenants in
+Ireland have, in a great many cases--I have briefly glanced at the
+conclusive evidence--positively wasted or neglected their holdings, for
+the express purpose of working rent down; this shameful expedient has been
+hardly checked; the deterioration of a large area of land has been thus
+accomplished. And, at the same time, as 'fair rent' is much lower than the
+rent of the market, a considerable minority of this class have sublet or
+mortgaged their lands, in order to get advances of which they stand in
+need; this, no doubt, is a violation of the law; but it is a violation
+difficult to prove, and they run the risk. In this way, as I have shown,
+in a preceding chapter, the husbandry of Ireland has declined of late
+years; woodland has been cut down recklessly to a great extent; main
+drainage has been largely neglected, a ruinous thing in a wet climate; in
+thousands of cases the farming of tenants at 'fair rents' is wretched. The
+face of the country reveals these facts: Ireland is worse cultivated than
+it was twenty years ago; indeed, the best farming, in the island, by many
+degrees, is that conducted by a small number of men of substance, who
+still hold on the footing of free contract, having settled with their
+landlords, and taken out leases, a significant commentary on Irish
+legislation since 1881.
+
+This subject, however, must be considered from a broader point of view,
+and with reference to the community of Ireland, as a whole. A great
+confiscation, I have said, has been wrought in the Irish land; the immense
+fall in the value of the landlord's estate, and the immense rise in the
+value of the tenant right, prove that property belonging to one class has
+been transferred, wholesale, by law, to another, a result never
+contemplated by responsible statesmen. And confiscation has produced its
+inevitable effects; free dealing in land has been prevented; except to his
+former tenants an Irish country gentleman cannot sell what remains to him
+of his former estate, and that through the system of 'land purchase;'
+capital shuns the Irish soil as if it were a quicksand; trustees and
+mortgagees will not invest in it; in a word, as respects the class which
+had been its owners, the Irish land has been bound in a kind of pernicious
+mortmain. It is unnecessary to dwell on the resulting evils; one of the
+sources of the wealth of Ireland has been made barren; a paralysis has
+fallen on a member of Irish industry; what is, perhaps, even worse, a
+sense of insecurity, of instability, of fear of unknown change, so widely
+prevails in Irish landed relations, that they have become completely
+unsettled, and are a mere chaos. And as vicious legislation has cut the
+old landlord off from his estate, has assimilated him to the chief lord of
+the eighteenth century, and is evolving, by degrees, the middleman, so the
+effects of confiscation, by keeping land out of commerce, have unnaturally
+limited and restricted its nominal ownership; in fact, many of the
+features of the detestable penal laws of Ireland are reappearing in the
+Irish land system, and are being reproduced by the modern Irish land code.
+Another mischievous effect of this code, in another direction, requires
+attention. The value of tenant right, we have seen, has enormously
+increased; the sums paid by incoming to outgoing tenants, on the transfer
+of farms, have, accordingly, become enormous; these purchasers, therefore,
+are being subjected to heavy outlays, practically in the nature of
+rack-rents, which hamper their industry, starve their capital, and most
+injuriously affect good husbandry. One class of the community is thus
+wronged for the behoof of another; and agriculture must, more or less,
+suffer.
+
+Not the least, however, of the manifold evils caused by this legislation
+have to be yet noticed. The ancient divisions of race and faith in the
+Irish land system still continue; what was most harsh and oppressive in
+them has been effaced; but they have become wider and more marked in the
+last twenty years; and this is largely to be ascribed to the present land
+code. A mode of land tenure, which produces harassing litigation at short
+intervals of time, and makes landed relations cockpits for legal
+conflicts, necessarily sets the landed classes against each other; it has
+aggravated the old differences deep-rooted in the Irish soil. The
+Protestant gentleman and the Catholic peasant are more estranged from each
+other, in the southern provinces, than they have been, I believe, within
+living memory; the same remark, too, applies to Presbyterian Ulster, where
+the gentry belong, for the most part, to the late Established Church, and
+the tenant classes are of the faith of John Knox; the lines of distinction
+between these orders of men have deepened; and this alienation, concurring
+with another cause, has contributed to the cry for the confiscation of the
+Irish land, which is now being very generally raised, and to which I shall
+refer afterwards. Another mischief of this legislation, at which I have
+already glanced, is the widespread demoralisation it has caused, from the
+nature of the case. The litigation in the Courts where 'fair rents' are
+being fixed, is often a miserable spectacle of hard and mendacious
+swearing productive of the worst effects on the human character. Peasants,
+as a rule, do not scruple to pledge their oaths that their rents ought to
+be at most a fourth of the rents they had paid for perhaps half a century;
+the witnesses they call as valuers usually repeat these statements. The
+claims, too, for exemption from rent, on account of improvements, are
+often ridiculous, often shameful; I have seen sums paid for manures twenty
+years old, gravely put forward as creating a claim for exemption; and the
+subject of the deterioration of farms is another fruitful source of
+falsehood. It is hardly necessary to comment on the results, as regards
+self-respect and the moral sense of men, which must follow proceedings of
+this kind, carried on, over whole counties, in thousands of cases; they
+are, inevitably, in a very high degree, unfortunate; but, when law
+encourages dishonesty, they were to be only expected.
+
+Such have been the fruits of the new Irish land code, on the side of the
+occupation of the Irish land. Legislation, essentially faulty and unwise,
+in conflict with economic science and the facts of the case, has taken
+from the Irish landlords their chief proprietary rights, and forcibly
+transferred these to their tenants; it has not conferred the benefits it
+intended on an unfairly favoured class; it has wrought a revolution in the
+Irish land system, in contravention to plain justice, and given it an
+unnatural and evil aspect; it has caused iniquitous confiscation on a vast
+scale and demoralisation profound and widespread, with the far-reaching
+inherent mischiefs; and bad administration has made bad laws worse.
+Political economy, spite of Mr. Gladstone, has not fled from this world at
+his bidding; she looks on, so to speak, at the ruins in Ireland produced
+by the violation of her most certain principles; I will add, she affirms
+the claim to compensation of the Irish landlord, if the simplest equity is
+not to be set at nought. As to the general situation evolved by the
+present Irish land code, I may refer to these pregnant words of Mr. Lecky:
+'It cannot be denied that this legislation has redressed some hard cases
+and benefited a large number of tenants; and as few men look beyond
+immediate consequences, or rightly estimate those which are indirect and
+remote, this fact is accepted by many as its justification. For my own
+part, I believe that it will one day be found that the evils resulting
+from this policy have greatly outweighed its benefits, and that they will
+fall far more heavily on another class than on the small class which was
+directly injured. In a poor country, where increased capital, improved
+credit, and secure industry are the greatest needs, it has shaken to the
+very basis the idea of the sanctity and obligation of contract; made it
+almost impossible to borrow any considerable sum on Irish land;
+effectually stopped the influx of English gold; paralysed or prevented
+nearly all industrial undertakings stretching into a distant future. It
+has reacted powerfully upon trade, and thus contributed to impoverish the
+Irish towns, while it has withdrawn the whole rental of Ireland from the
+improvement of the soil, as the landlord can have no further inducement or
+obligation to spend money on his estate. In combination, also, with the
+Home Rule movement, it has driven much capital out of the land.'[143]
+
+I pass on to the legislation of late years, with respect to the Irish
+land, on the side of ownership. I have briefly described what that
+legislation is: a Conservative Ministry, impressed with the wrong idea
+that Mr. Gladstone had 'created dual ownership,' by the ill-conceived
+measure of 1881, resolved to abolish this evil thing if they could, though
+it is the natural mould of Irish land tenure; and Parliament has allotted
+£40,000,000 to attain this object, through the operation of what is
+falsely called 'land purchase.' The mode of proceeding has been explained:
+an Irish landlord, who desires to sell his estate to his tenants, can
+obtain an advance for this purpose from the State, through the agency of
+the Land Commission; the tenants are then made owners of their farms,
+without contributing any moneys of their own, and hold at terminable
+annuities much lower than even 'fair rents.' The transaction, therefore,
+we have seen, is, in no sense, a purchase; it is a gift, in the nature of
+a bribe; it is completely different from the policy of John Bright and the
+sales of land made to tenants before 1885, in which these men paid part of
+the price at least, the only real security for thrift and honesty. Of the
+£40,000,000, nearly half, I have said, has been spent; and out of the
+486,000 agricultural Irish tenants, some 50,000 have acquired their
+holdings, in fee, under these conditions. The law thus applies to a mere
+fraction of the class; it is idle to assert that this can do much to
+extinguish 'dual ownership' in all Ireland; the sum required would be many
+times more than that which alone has been made available; and the
+process, at the present rate of 'purchases,' would not be accomplished
+within a century. We may, therefore, pass away from this part of the
+subject; but let us see how 'land purchase,' effected in this way, bears
+on the position of the Irish landed gentry. The immense majority of this
+order of men still cling to their native country and their homes; they
+hate the idea of parting with the rights they retain in the land, trampled
+down and injured as they have been; this is especially the case with the
+best and most solvent landlords. But as the terminable annuities payable
+on 'land purchase' are not nearly so high as even very low rents, not to
+speak of the other conditions of this mode of tenure, it follows that
+tenants who have thus been made owners are infinitely better off than
+tenants still subject to rent; one class has great advantages, of which
+the other is deprived; as a necessary consequence an artificial standard
+is set up against rent, which does wrong to the landlord, from the nature
+of the case; gives every tenant on his estate a grievance; and not
+improbably may expose him to a determined refusal to pay any rent
+whatever.
+
+'Land purchase,' therefore--the name is a mere untruth--has been a failure
+as regards 'dual ownership;' and it is establishing against the Irish
+landlord a false measure of rent, analogous to a base coinage, a strange
+achievement of a Conservative Government. Let us next consider what has
+been the working of this economic nostrum, with respect to the class, for
+the benefit of which it was first prescribed, and which has reaped the
+advantages it gives. The tenants, who have been made owners of their
+farms, have, as a rule, discharged their obligations to the State very
+well, though I could point to not a few exceptions; and there have been
+strikes against the payment of the terminable annuities in some instances.
+This may be sufficient for official bureaucrats; it is not sufficient for
+those who know Ireland, and can impartially watch the course of events.
+It was fondly expected that 'land purchase,' that is, bribing tenants in
+Ireland to become owners of their farms, would create a powerful body of
+freeholders loyal to the State; but this has already been seen to be a
+mere delusion. As Parnell predicted would be the case, these 'purchasers'
+are 'patriotic' in the highest degree; they fill the ranks of the United
+Irish League, that is, of a conspiracy against our rule in Ireland, and
+are numbered among its most efficient agents; human nature being what it
+actually is, this is precisely what was to be expected. It was confidently
+foretold, again, that these 'purchasers' would form a thriving class of
+model farmers; and that their lands would be patterns of admirable and
+improved peasant husbandry, but this forecast is being, in a great degree,
+falsified. These men, 'rocked and dandled into their possessions,' in the
+words of Burke, without a single guarantee for common prudence, and
+especially without an effort of their own, have, in hundreds of instances,
+turned out sorry failures; and it has been the almost universal practice
+of the whole class to cut down every tree that grows on their lands, an
+act of ruinous waste in a rain-drenched climate. Besides, as freehold
+ownership is not an Irish idea--indeed, is opposed to Irish ideas--these
+'purchasers' have, in many cases, following the example of tenants 'at
+fair rents,' subdivided, sublet, or mortgaged their holdings; instead of
+remaining owners in a true sense, they are becoming middlemen lording it
+over rack-rented serfs. The agriculture, too, of hundreds of these farms
+is slovenly in the extreme, for bribery does not promote industry; what is
+'easy got, easy goes' is a true proverb; and, in addition, a number of
+these men were really insolvent when they were made 'purchasers.' That
+Ireland will blossom like a rose, under these conditions, is seen even now
+to be a chimera; and there is much reason to believe that many of these
+'purchasers' have become the prey of the race of local usurers, a
+consummation that might have been predicted. 'I shall sell my estate,' a
+witty Irishman once remarked, 'but I will keep two loan offices and four
+public-houses; and in two generations my "purchasing" tenants will be too
+happy to resell their lands to my grandsons.'
+
+A singular instance of 'land purchase,' and, indeed, of the working of
+another part of the land code, has come under my notice of late; I can
+answer for the accuracy of what I write; scores of similar cases could be,
+probably, found. In 1852, an industrious Scottish tradesman invested the
+savings of years of his life in buying a chief rent under the Encumbered
+Estates Act; he gave £5000 for a perpetual rent-charge of £192, that is,
+not quite 4 per cent. on his capital. The tenant of the lands subject to
+the rent was a middleman, with an estate of about £3000 a year; he had
+sublet the lands to a tenant in occupation of them, a slovenly,
+ill-conditioned, and indolent farmer. The Land Act of 1887 passed; the
+wealthy middleman, an excellent 'mark' for the chief rent, who, therefore,
+had been obliged to pay the £192 a year, was empowered by the new law to
+evade his contract, and practically to get rid of his interest; the owner
+of the chief rent, therefore, had only the tenant in occupation to look to
+for the discharge of his claim. This person was succeeded by his son, a
+good-for-nothing and drunken man, who soon became head over ears in debt;
+but he was declared 'a purchaser' by the Land Commission, and, subject to
+a terminable annuity, was made owner of the lands. But the advance made
+was not more than £2300; the representative of the hardworking Scotchman,
+who had bought property, as secure, at the time, as Consols, was a loser
+of more than half of his capital; he was simply cheated out of £2700,
+through the operation of an iniquitous law; his indignant protests may
+well be conceived. The subsequent history of this so-styled 'purchase' is
+significant, and not without interest. The worthless owner took possession
+of the lands; his first step was to cut down the woodland, until he was
+stopped by a creditor to whom he owed a mortgage. Since that time he has
+become insolvent in all but name, and cannot pay the annuity due to the
+State; the Land Commission has been trying to sell the lands; but the
+attempt has, hitherto, been a failure; the lands have been 'boycotted,'
+and the market has been closed against a sale. These proceedings do not
+require a word of comment; they strikingly illustrate how the agrarian
+code of Ireland makes havoc of capital, annuls contracts, and confiscates
+property for the behoof of dishonest thriftlessness. Meanwhile the happy
+middleman enjoys his £3000 a year; I dare say he licks his lips as he
+thinks of the Land Act of 1887, which scattered a just liability to the
+winds.
+
+The most remarkable and the worst effect--with a revolutionary tendency in
+no doubtful sense--of this mischievous system has, however, to be still
+noticed. About one out of ten of the agricultural tenants of Ireland have
+'purchased' their farms in the way described; the fund available for 'land
+purchase' cannot include more than one in five; and the process is and
+must be slow, owing to the law's delay. Legislation, therefore, with a
+singular want of insight, has drawn, and is drawing, an unjust distinction
+between 'purchasing' and rent-paying tenants; it is dividing them into a
+small favoured class, and a multitude harshly left out in the cold--fat
+sheep in one fold, lean goats in another; as the inevitable result, the
+rent-paying tenant resents the benefits obtained by 'the purchaser;' and
+the immense majority of the farmers of Ireland are made discontented with
+their lot, from their point of view not without reason. It is idle to say
+to this great body of men that they have already gained advantages from
+the State, on which they never reckoned thirty years ago, and that they
+have the 'Three F's,' and all that the phrase implies; those who have
+secured much are eager to secure more; the unfair distinction arbitrarily
+made against them is unintelligible and exasperating, man being what he
+is. The policy of 'voluntary purchase,' as it is called, has, accordingly,
+from the very nature of the case, provoked and called into being the cry
+for the 'compulsory purchase' of the Irish land, now being heard far and
+wide in Ireland--that is, for the forcible expropriation of all Irish
+landlords, and for placing all their tenants, in their stead, as owners of
+their estates. This demand has as yet been rejected by statesmen, and is,
+I believe, both hopeless and shameful; but it has, nevertheless, some
+logic on its side; it is a corollary from legislation essentially bad;
+and, backed as it is by a large force of Irish opinion, it cannot be
+ignored or treated with contempt. It is simply extraordinary that many
+Irish landlords have been encouraging, and still encourage, 'voluntary
+purchase,' on its existing lines, and will not perceive that it leads to
+'compulsory purchase;' either from a desire to dispose of parts of their
+estates, or from motives not easy to understand, they are promoting a
+revolution, which, if accomplished, would assure their ruin, as I shall
+conclusively prove afterwards. But the well-informed and most thoughtful
+members of their class are not flies lured into a bottle by a bit of
+sugar; they are alive to all that is involved in what is called 'land
+purchase.' Many years ago, when Parliament was voting funds for 'voluntary
+purchase,' on the present system, I indicated what would be the results; I
+only claim credit for some share of common sense: 'Law will have been
+severing the occupiers of the soil by an arbitrary process into a pampered
+caste, marked off from a disfavoured multitude; and, as a necessary
+consequence, the mass of tenants, kept in an inferior position, will be
+filled with discontent--and from their point of view with perfect
+justice--when, as the advances from the State run short, their prospects
+of "land purchase" shall wane and diminish. An "ugly rush" will be made
+throughout the country to force landlords, as a class, to sell, in order
+to get a chance of buying; in Ulster the cry for "compulsory purchase,"
+already heard, will swell high and fierce.'[144]
+
+These, therefore, have been the fruits of the system called 'land
+purchase' with euphemistic falsehood. 'Compulsory purchase,' a demand
+caused by an unwise policy, is a question that must be fairly discussed;
+it is nothing to the purpose that it has as yet made little way in
+Parliament. This claim would have been regarded as sheer insanity thirty
+years ago; it was scouted by John Bright as in the highest degree
+mischievous, though John Bright was the first statesman who proposed
+making tenants in Ireland owners of their farms, but through a real, not a
+sham, mode of purchase. The compulsory purchase of the rented land of
+Ireland is a policy that has advocates even in England and Scotland; and
+it is lamentable to observe how British opinion seems to take little heed
+how a measure of this kind would affect the position of the Irish
+landlord, another of the many instances of its habitual disregard of the
+plainest rights of property in land in Ireland. A set of doctrinaires,
+ignorant of Irish nature and of the Irish land, imagine that 'the creation
+of a peasant proprietary,' in all parts of Ireland, as the cant phrase is,
+would, in any case, make the Union secure, and would promote tranquillity,
+industry, and content. Some politicians still cherish the fond belief,
+that thrusting Irish tenants, wholesale, into the place of their
+landlords, by an act of violence without a parallel, would make Irish
+government and administration more easy; and shut their eyes to the nature
+of this policy. English and Scottish capitalists, who have made advances
+on Irish estates, see in compulsory purchase the best probable means of
+realising securities now in danger; a few great absentee landlords, eager
+to part with their possessions in Ireland, at almost any price, are
+possibly not opposed to this scheme; and so maybe a few bankrupt Irish
+landlords, hoping to get a trifle out of a general shipwreck. The demand,
+however, for compulsory purchase has its only real strength in Ireland;
+and unquestionably it is widespread and far-reaching. The conspiracy
+against British rule in Ireland, which has made the annihilation of Irish
+'landlordism' one of its main objects, calls for compulsory purchase, as a
+matter of course; it finds no difficulty in banding together the peasantry
+of the southern provinces in support of a cry which means for this class
+an improvement in their lot, and appeals to deep-rooted sentiments of
+human nature. The Irish Catholic priesthood, too, back the movement to a
+man, and so do the local Nationalist boards; for obvious reasons, both
+these orders of men seek to drive the Irish landed gentry from their
+homes, and to replace them by dependents in sympathy with them. The demand
+has also extended to Ulster, chiefly on account of the harsh distinction
+drawn between 'purchasing' and 'non-purchasing' tenants; it is economic
+rather than social or political; but the cry for compulsory purchase is
+perhaps loudest in parts of the northern province. Its principal champion,
+at present, is an enthusiast, sincere, indeed, if without judgment and
+insight; but he is sustained by bodies of farmers formidable in numbers at
+least.
+
+The sharp and, as I think, the unfair distinction drawn by the present law
+between tenant 'purchasers' and tenants still subject to the payment of
+rent, has created, it cannot be said too often, the demand for the
+compulsory purchase of the Irish land, and for this Lord Salisbury's
+Government is largely responsible. But because an Irish peasant, on one
+side of a fence, cannot obtain the benefits of land tenure, which his
+neighbour, on the other side, has obtained, and may even have a right to
+complain, it does not follow that compulsory purchase is a possible, or
+aught but a disgraceful policy; other interests and considerations must be
+taken into account. Let us first see how compulsory purchase would affect
+the financial position of the Three Kingdoms. Great as the prosperity of
+the Empire is, the strain on its resources is immense; the expenditure of
+the State at home is vast, and on the increase; the war in South Africa,
+and the settlement of that huge region, will cost unknown millions; the
+reform of our military and even of our naval system, necessary to our
+safety, will be a weighty burden for years; every Chancellor of the
+Exchequer has declared that fiscal economy, as far as possible, is his
+first duty. But what does the compulsory purchase of the Irish land
+involve, and what, confessedly, are its essential conditions? Mr.
+Gladstone, I have said, asserted, long ago, that the value of the
+agricultural area of Ireland was £300,000,000; this estimate, I believe,
+is too high; but, in the opinion of competent judges, it cannot be deemed
+less than £150,000,000. But the forcible expropriation of the Irish landed
+gentry on every principle of civilised law, as, indeed, Sir Michael Hicks
+Beach has already insisted, would imply giving them a large additional
+bonus; this probably would not be less than £50,000,000; the sum,
+therefore, required for compulsory purchase, would, it may be assumed, be
+not less than £200,000,000. Now, can any one imagine that the general
+taxpayer, in the financial situation in which we are, and shall be for
+years, will make himself liable for this colossal charge, equal to the
+ransom Germany extorted from France, in order to bribe Irish peasants into
+the ownership of their farms, and to effect an agrarian revolution, in
+which he has no interest? I should like to see the Minister who would go
+to the country on such an insane policy, and who would call on the hardly
+taxed millions of England, Scotland, and Ireland, to burn huge holes in
+their pockets for such an object, for simply robbing Peter to pay Paul,
+and that without a pretence of right, or any conceivable good. And what
+security would the Irish land afford for the payment of this enormous
+impost? The terminable annuities due from the 'purchasing' tenants would,
+it has pleasantly been said, be a sufficient guarantee; but men of common
+sense are not to be caught by chaff; the idea is a vain and worthless
+delusion. The 'No Rent Manifesto' and the 'Plan of Campaign' were
+movements of Irish peasants, so to speak, of yesterday; what if another
+Parnell were to arise and to issue a ukase that 'a foreign and alien
+Government had no right to an unjust tribute;' and how could this be
+collected by a Department of an absentee State?
+
+The general taxpayer, therefore, who, thirteen years ago, grumbled at a
+demand of £5,000,000 only, will assuredly not fling £200,000,000, or half
+that sum, into the Serbonian bog of the Irish land. It is hardly necessary
+to dwell on so small a fact, 'that compulsory purchase would reduce the
+income tax of Ireland about one-half, for nine-tenths of the tenant
+'purchasers' would be below its level;' but even this cannot be left out
+of sight. Conservative statesmen, it should be added, are especially bound
+to reject this scheme; in 1886 they denounced, in emphatic language, Mr.
+Gladstone's far less dangerous plan of making the State liable for
+£50,000,000, to buy out Irish landlords; flagrant inconsistency in
+politics should be eschewed. The probably fixed purpose of the general
+taxpayer not to mulct himself heavily to fling the Irish soil to a mass of
+peasants, is doubtless, and I say it with regret, the best security
+against the destruction of the Irish landlords; this despoiled and
+maltreated body of men just now fill the place in Irish affairs of the
+'Injured Lady' of Swift's satire, gravely told by her lover across the
+Channel that 'I had cost him ten times more than I was worth to maintain
+me, and that it had been much better for him if I had been damned, or
+burnt, or thrown to the bottom of the sea.'[145] Nevertheless, I have
+faith in right-minded Englishmen, however prejudiced or ill-informed about
+an unpopular class, if plain facts and figures are set before them; let us
+see how it would fare with the Irish landlord were he forcibly
+expropriated under compulsory purchase. I will take the case of an Irish
+country gentleman, who, in the period between 1868 and 1878, had an income
+from his estate of £1500 a year, subject to a family charge of £10,000 at
+4 per cent., that is, had a net annual income of £1100. Owing to the
+depression of agriculture since 1879, his rents would have naturally
+fallen about £300 a year; but let us suppose that, through the operation
+of the new Irish land code, they have been cut down to 'fair rents' of
+£900 a year only. His annual income, therefore, would be £900 less by
+£400, that is, he would still have £500 a year he could call his own; how
+would it be with him were he forcibly sold out? Admit that his estate
+would fetch eighteen years' purchase--the present average rate is
+seventeen--that is, would realise £16,200; deducting, say, £200 for law
+costs, this would be a net residue of £16,000. But the family charge would
+absorb £10,000; the surplus would be £6000 only, producing, let us
+calculate, £4 per cent.; this ruined man, therefore, who, little more than
+twenty years ago, possessed an income of £1100 a year, would be left £240
+at the very utmost. I have taken care to understate the case; I challenge
+attention to my figures; I ask honest Englishmen would not this be sheer
+robbery, accomplished, to the disgrace of the State, in its name?
+
+It has been urged, however--and to those who know the facts, the statement
+is cruel and shameful mockery--that the Irish landlord would only lose his
+rented lands, and that 'he could live happily on the demesne land, which
+he would still retain.' This would be simply impossible in the case of
+nineteen-twentieths of the class; they would not have the means to keep
+their demesnes up; they would be compelled to part with them at almost any
+price; and the few, who would have the means, would, all but certainly,
+with their beggared fellows, leave a country in which they had been foully
+betrayed. It is notorious, indeed, that Irish Nationalist leaders, knowing
+what compulsory purchase means, have marked down the demesnes of the Irish
+landed gentry as their prey; associates of American Fenians and of the
+Clan na Gael are to revel in the mansions of the Geraldines, the Butlers,
+the O'Connors, the O'Neills, as Jacobins revelled in the mansions of the
+La Tremouilles and the De Noailles. But man does not live by bread alone;
+the material ruin of the Irish landlord would be bad enough; but the moral
+consequences of his expropriation must not be left out of sight. Few of
+the purchasers under the Encumbered Estates Acts care probably much about
+the lands they have bought; the same remark probably applies to most Irish
+absentees. But an immense majority of the Irish landed gentry are deeply
+attached to their hearths and their homes; they are bound to their lands
+by innumerable ties; they have been brought up with the sentiments which
+property in land creates; in the pathetic words of an old chronicler,
+'They do not wish to pray in foreign churches, or to lie in foreign
+graves;' their hope has been to live and die amidst their ancestral
+surroundings. The State has, in a special manner, encouraged this belief;
+it rooted the Irish landlord in the soil to be its supporter; is it to
+expel him from the position it has made for him, without a thought of the
+shock to his best feelings this must produce? Would not such an act be
+dishonourable, nay, infamous? Let us hear what the deepest of our
+political thinkers, Burke, has written upon a somewhat parallel case:
+'When men are encouraged to go into a certain mode of life by the
+existing laws, and protected in that mode as in a lawful occupation--when
+they have accommodated all their ideas, and all their habits to it, ... I
+am sure it is unjust in legislature, by an arbitrary act, to offer a
+sudden violence to their minds and their feelings; forcibly to degrade
+them from their state and condition, and to stigmatise with shame and
+infamy that character and those customs, which before had been made the
+measure of their happiness and honour. If to this be added an expulsion
+from their habitations, and a confiscation of all their goods, I am not
+sagacious enough to discover how this despotick sport, made of the
+feelings, consciences, prejudices, and properties of men, can be
+discriminated from the rankest tyranny.'[146]
+
+I have referred to an instance, within my knowledge, of the operation of
+the new Irish land code, in the case of a middleman, his under-tenant, and
+a despoiled owner of a rent. I now refer to an instance, also within my
+knowledge, of what compulsory purchase would do in the case of an Irish
+landlord. This person is a scion of one of the princely Irish-Milesian
+houses; his forefathers were lords of a tract extending from the Boyne to
+the Shannon. They belonged to one of the famous 'five bloods of Ireland,'
+acknowledged to be half-royal by Henry of Anjou; they intermarried with
+the great Norman-Irish _noblesse_; one of their matronage was half-sister
+of Surrey's fair Geraldine; the ruins of the abbeys they founded are still
+to be seen. Their domains were torn from them in the reign of Mary Tudor;
+but they fought stubbornly with their tribe in the great Desmond war; they
+retained, though proscribed, the rank of princes, until the close of the
+sixteenth century; leaders of the house then carried their swords into
+foreign armies, and have given a field marshal to Austria and grandees to
+Spain. The direct line of the chiefs, however, remained in Ireland; it
+vegetated in obscurity until the Irish rising of 1689-90; one of its
+members then appeared in the Parliament of James II. in Dublin, and
+perished, at the head of his regiment, it is said, at Aughrim. The
+fortunes of his descendants are not without interest; one is believed to
+have been a companion-in-arms of Villars at Malplaquet and Dénain; two of
+his remote offspring, the tradition exists, perished in the ranks of
+Napoleon's armies. But the heir of the family bowed under the yoke of the
+Irish penal laws, and became a Protestant, at least in name; his near
+kindred gave Ireland Anthony Malone, one of the most illustrious Irishmen
+of the eighteenth century, and gave England the best commentator on her
+most immortal poet. One of his representatives, the person of whom I
+write, still possesses a fragment of the immense possessions his fathers
+ruled; of more than thirty of their castles he has the wreck of one; a
+scroll on the roof of his house bears the touching legend that he has
+sprung from the loins of the old Milesian princes. He is not wholly
+unknown as an Irish landlord of this day; curiously, too, his rental has
+been hardly reduced by the visitations of the Land and the
+Sub-Commissions. Is this scion of the best and the most ancient _noblesse_
+of Ireland to be banished in his old age from his home, and to be replaced
+in it by ornaments of the Land, the National, and the United Irish
+Leagues, for this would be one result of compulsory purchase?
+
+Let us imagine, however, that, owing to the malign influence which,
+Spenser said, attends England in Irish affairs, the Irish landed gentry
+were removed from the land, and their former tenants were put in their
+place as owners. What would be the consequences, economic, social,
+political, of this sudden agrarian revolution in one of the Three
+Kingdoms? The distribution of the Irish soil between the classes which
+would possess it, would be unfavourable, in the highest degree, to the
+establishment of a 'peasant proprietary,' the common name in use on this
+subject. Of the 486,000 tenant farmers in Ireland, some 132,000 hold
+patches of from less than one to five acres in extent; are these to be
+stereotyped as real land owners? More than 90,000 occupy from fifty to
+five hundred acres and upwards; these include the great graziers of the
+rich tracts of pasturage; do these supply elements of a 'peasant
+proprietary' in any rational sense? The only class which even on
+plausible, _a priori_ grounds could be made occupying owners of the land
+would contain much less than 300,000 families; and probably it occupies
+less than two-thirds of the island as a whole. Are all these bodies of men
+to be lumped, so to speak, together, and universally to receive the
+ownership of the soil; would not compulsory purchase, even on these
+conditions, be the sheerest folly? Furthermore, the configuration of
+Ireland and her climate make it next to impossible that a 'peasant
+proprietary' could generally thrive within her borders; Nature herself
+forbids an attempt to carry out, on a large scale, a settlement of the
+kind. The central area of the island is a low watershed of wide extent,
+from which a succession of streams descends through vast tracts of morass
+and bog; in other parts of the country there are large and deep rivers,
+curving as they approach the sea, and flowing through mountain spaces; the
+lands they traverse are swampy, and require main drainage; a large part of
+Ireland is composed of wild hill ranges only fit for the rearing of young
+and coarse breeds of cattle; she possesses a fine area of the best
+pasturage, confined, however, to a few counties; her true agricultural
+area is comparatively small. Her climate, moreover, is wet to a proverb;
+torrents of rain from the Atlantic fall on her plains for months; above
+all, her inland towns are far from each other, and petty; scarcely one is
+peopled by more than 10,000 souls. Any well-informed and right-judging
+person who knows the conditions under which a 'peasant proprietary' can
+alone flourish, must know that, from the nature of the case, it would be
+a failure, in the circumstances in which it would be necessarily placed,
+were it forcibly established in every part of Ireland. Ireland has little
+in common with Belgium, with Northern Italy, with France; this settlement
+of confiscation would go the way of the Englishry of the Middle Ages and
+the Cromwellian colonists.
+
+The most conclusive argument against compulsory purchase has,
+nevertheless, to be yet put forward. The state of things 'voluntary
+purchase' is evolving would assuredly be aggravated a hundred-fold were
+every tenant in Ireland made the owner of his farm by a revolutionary act
+on the part of the State. It is significant, in the highest degree, that
+from the time of the 'New Departure' to this hour, the conspiracy against
+our rule in Ireland has clamoured for the expropriation of the Irish
+landed gentry by force, and for the conversion of their tenants into
+possessors of these estates; far better informed than British statesmen,
+it has rightly calculated that this violent change would increase the
+'Nationalist' sympathies of the Irish peasant; and this opinion is being
+confirmed, to a great extent, by the results of 'voluntary purchase' being
+now developed. The coarse materialist view that bribery will make a class
+law-abiding and loyal, is opposed to human nature and fact; bribery will
+not efface ideas, feelings, and tendencies, deep-rooted in history and
+ancient tradition; above all, if it is a concession to agitation and a
+rebellious movement, it will only quicken the animosity to the State and
+the greed of the favoured class. Parnell, I have said, had his mind made
+up on this subject; he always insisted that the Irish tenant, wherever his
+holding had been made his own, would be 'more true to the cause than
+ever;' it is curious that the confident prediction of a most able man
+appears to have been persistently ignored. For the rest, the mischief
+'voluntary purchase' is already doing would be enormously aggravated by
+the effects of compulsory purchase. The Irish tenant farmers, made owners
+of the land everywhere, would, like the present 'purchasers,' cut down
+woodland wholesale; the country would be disafforested over an immense
+area; the consequences to agriculture would be as bad as possible.
+Arterial and main drainage too would, as a rule, be neglected; but these
+would, comparatively, be trifling results; the compulsory purchaser would
+deal with the land as their 'voluntary' fellows are now largely dealing,
+but, in all probability, more generally, and in much a greater proportion.
+Holding as they would nine-tenths of the Irish soil at terminable
+annuities much lower than any rent, they would inevitably subdivide,
+sublet, and mortgage their farms in tens of thousands of cases; they would
+become middlemen, over whole counties, the harsh oppressors of a multitude
+ground down by rack-rents; the worst kind of 'landlordism' would be
+reproduced in the worst aspect. The tendency of events is even now
+confirming what I wrote a long time ago on this subject: 'Freehold
+ownership, therefore, would disappear more or less quickly over extensive
+tracts, the "yeomen" would become a diminishing quantity, and these would
+be replaced by a new class of landlords with tenants at competition rents,
+that is, determined by the land hunger of the Celt. The transformation
+would inevitably go on, for its causes would operate with intense force;
+and before many years probably two-thirds of Ireland would have become a
+land of mere peasant landlords placed over a mass of rack-rented
+tenants.'[147] The creation of a universal 'peasant proprietary,' by
+force, would, in fact, bring the Irish land system back by degrees into
+the state in which it was before the Great Famine, when millions of
+serfdom squatted on the soil, disorganising agriculture and preventing
+social progress.
+
+These considerations, however, by no means exhaust the case against the
+compulsory purchase of the rented land of Ireland. Irish landlords have
+been decried, for an evil purpose, during many years; their position is
+difficult and open to attack; but if they are an unpopular class, they
+have been a civilising influence in Ireland of real value, the most
+civilising influence, perhaps, in her three southern provinces. Their
+annihilation, despoiled and impoverished as they are, would still withdraw
+a large fund from Irish rural labour; and it would be most injurious to
+agriculture in many ways, especially as regards main and arterial
+drainage, an absolute necessity for the Irish soil, and scarcely possible
+except under a system of large estates. Their extinction, too, Englishmen
+ought not to forget, would deprive the State of one of its mainstays in
+Ireland; the idea to the contrary growing up is a mere delusion; it was
+not for nothing that Parnell and Davitt described this order of men as
+'the British garrison' and insisted that were it once out of the fortress
+the power of England in Ireland would certainly perish. The conversion of
+Irish farmers universally into landowners would also have a ruinous effect
+on many Irish industries. It would do infinite harm to many branches of
+commerce, especially to trades of the higher type; it would be disastrous
+to such towns as Dublin and Belfast, already beginning to protest against
+it; and, whatever may be said, the prospect of it is dreaded by
+agricultural Irish labourers as a class, which has always been ill-treated
+by their masters, the farmers, though, owing to the influence of priests
+and demagogues, they are unwilling to express the sentiments they really
+feel. Compulsory purchase, in fact, is by no means so generally asked for
+in Ireland as is supposed; her representation demands it by a great
+majority of votes; but this representation, as I have pointed out before,
+is not a true index of Irish opinion. Another consideration, too, should
+be taken into account in coming to a reasonable conclusion on this
+subject. The land system of England and Scotland, from a variety of causes
+sufficiently known, is essentially different from that of Ireland;
+politically, socially, economically, it has little in common with it. But
+were Parliament to declare that the whole tenant class of Ireland were to
+be transformed into fee simple owners, subject only to renders, much less
+than true rents, and payable for a short space of time, I much doubt if
+English and Scottish tenants would acquiesce, and would not agitate for
+legislation of a similar kind, especially as British agriculture is still
+heavily depressed. Leaseholders of large houses in towns, for long terms
+of years, at ground rents, and a whole class of builders, assuredly would
+join in such a demand; the contagion of revolution and socialism is always
+perilous. English and Scottish landlords have usually played the part of
+the Jew to the Samaritan as regards their Irish fellows; but 'proximus
+ardet Ucalegon' might be borne in mind.[148]
+
+The Irish land system, therefore, from every point of view, is simply in a
+deplorable state; it is an economic and social chaos, pregnant with
+mischiefs and dangers of many kinds. Confiscation has wrought its work on
+the Irish landlord; has shaken the structure of Irish society; and has
+produced its inevitable results in banishing capital from the land, and in
+dealing a weighty blow to Irish credit. The legislation of 1881, and of
+subsequent years, has conferred immense advantages on the tenant class in
+Ireland; but these have fallen short of what might be supposed; this class
+declares itself to be dissatisfied with its lot; it is clamouring for the
+wholesale transfer to itself of the rented lands of Ireland, through what
+is known as compulsory purchase, that is, corruption and spoliation
+combined in an act of the State. And these efforts of legislation,
+essentially unwise, in direct conflict with fact and economic science, a
+mere makeshift to stave off agitation and trouble, are, in all
+probability, by no means the worst. Demoralisation has spread throughout
+Irish landed relations, affecting them, unfortunately, in many ways;
+divisions of class have been made worse, as well as the old divisions of
+race and faith; respect for contracts and obligations has been destroyed;
+dishonesty and thriftlessness have been favoured, and industry and honesty
+not encouraged; an evil spirit of discontent and desire for change is
+abroad; agriculture is plainly on the decline; there is nothing secure or
+settled in the land. Vicious as the Irish land system unquestionably was
+before Mr. Gladstone first took it in hand, I believe that, having regard
+to the general interests of the State, it is still more vicious at the
+present time; it has been transformed, but, on the whole, transformed for
+the worse. As I wrote before, when commenting on the position of affairs
+in Ireland, before the Land Act of 1870, a revolution only could have
+removed the deep-rooted ills in all that related to the land; a revolution
+alone could remove them now. But in the one instance, as in the other, the
+evil caused by a revolution would be infinitely greater than the good; a
+new agrarian revolution in Ireland would be a curse to her; it is better,
+as Burke has remarked, to try to repair even ruins than to blot out every
+trace of the edifice. Still, taking it as we find it, can nothing be done
+to amend, in some measure, at least, the existing land system? Much of it,
+I admit, must be left untouched; the principle of settling rent, through
+the agency of the State, false as it is, must continue to work; the
+principle of so-called 'land purchase' must, within reasonable limits, be
+still given free scope. But something in the nature of reform is, I think,
+possible; the discussion of the subject may be of use; I contribute my
+mite to it, if with unfeigned diffidence.
+
+In order to find out the truth, and thoroughly to clear the ground, a
+Commission, I suggest, ought to be appointed, as important as the Devon
+Commission of nearly sixty years ago; it should investigate the Irish Land
+Question in all its branches. Its President should be a great English
+nobleman--the nation would have confidence in the Duke of Bedford, a
+princely and most liberal English landlord; but the judicial element
+should be strong in it; English and Irish judges should be among its
+members; it should include trained agricultural experts: it should have
+representatives of Irish landlords and tenants. It should examine the
+Irish land system as this existed before 1870; should review the whole
+series of Irish Land Acts, from 1870 to the present time, and inquire into
+their results and tendencies; should carefully consider the operation of
+the tribunals selected to carry out the new Irish land code, especially as
+regards the fixing of 'fair rents,' and that not with respect to their
+procedure only, an unjust limit imposed on the Fry Commission, but with
+respect to the principles that have been adopted and the methods pursued;
+it should deal exhaustively with the subject of so-called 'land purchase,'
+and see whether it has not directly led to the demand for compulsory
+purchase; it should take evidence as to 'peasant proprietary' and its
+creation; and it should make a complete and searching report, with a view
+to the legislation it might recommend. And if I am not altogether
+mistaken, such a Commission would state, in emphatic language, that the
+present Irish land code was ill designed, even if it cannot be now much
+changed; that its administration has been attended with grave errors; that
+cruel wrong has been done to Irish landlords, while Irish tenants have not
+obtained what was hoped for; that the economic and social results have
+been deplorable; that if 'land purchase' cannot be stopped, it is a bad
+expedient on its present lines, and that the cry for compulsory purchase
+has been its evident effect; and that extensive, still more universal
+peasant ownership, is an impossible and would be a pernicious policy.
+Finally, if I am not much mistaken again, such a Commission would report
+that a reform of the Irish land system, if very difficult, should be
+attempted; and that, in its main scope and operation at least, it should
+be carried out on the side of land tenure, that is, in the relations of
+landlord and tenant, as has been the opinion of every thinker from Burke
+onwards, who has not been swayed by the exigencies of agitation, or of
+party politics.
+
+I proceed briefly to put my scheme forward, assuming that I have made a
+reasonably correct forecast. I may say it has been a subject of reflection
+during many years, indeed, since the legislation of 1881; Mr. Gladstone,
+in his place in the House of Commons, pointedly approved of a tract in
+which I set forth my views; and so, curiously enough, did Parnell. It is
+impossible, I have said, to transform the existing system of Irish land
+tenure; a wide departure from it cannot be made; but improvement is really
+feasible within certain limits. My object would be to get rid of palpable
+evils, inseparable from the present state of things; to make the positions
+of both Irish landlords and tenants in some degree better than they now
+are; to place the Irish land system on a somewhat less precarious basis.
+In the first place, the law as to the exemption of tenants' improvements
+from rent, an excrescence on the Land Act of 1881, and made extravagant by
+the Land Act of 1896, should be restricted in its application to some
+extent; as it stands, it is a fruitful cause of injustice, of
+demoralisation, and of hard swearing, producing endless litigation to very
+little purpose; claims in respect of improvements ought to be more
+limited, in point of time, than they are; a check should be placed on
+obsolete and illusory claims; this would be advantageous, I think, to all
+interests involved. Again, it would be impracticable to exclude from the
+operation of the present land code lands that have been already brought
+within its scope; but a more precise definition should be made of the
+lands that are intended to be now excluded--demesnes, town parks,
+residential holdings, and large pastoral farms; the decisions of the
+Courts, in this province, are very perplexing; a good definition would
+make litigation very considerably less. These changes, I am convinced,
+would do much appreciable good; but I would go a long way farther in
+attempting to make the status of both landlord and tenant in Ireland less
+insecure and vexatious than it now is. In the first place, leaving lands
+now excluded out, I would make all agricultural and pastoral Irish tenants
+entitled to the tenure of the 'Three F's,' removing the prohibition as to
+'future tenants,' a distinction that never ought to have been made, and,
+as far as possible, securing this mode of tenure to the poorest tenants,
+by means to which I shall advert afterwards. In the next place, I would
+make an earnest effort to lessen the ruinous litigation and the
+instability caused by the statutory leases renewable at short intervals of
+time. The tenant should have 'fixity of tenure' in a real sense; the
+estate created in his favour against the landlord ought not to be one of
+fifteen years only, however indefinitely it may be extended; I would
+prefer to see it an estate for ever; but, as in the present state of
+agriculture, there would be objections to this, on account of the
+uncertainty of the rate of rent, it might be an estate for a limited term.
+But the term ought not to be less than thirty years at least, renewable,
+of course, like the shorter term of fifteen; this would quiet possession
+and get rid of lawsuits for the period of a generation of men. The tenant
+should retain his right of 'free sale;' but I would make the conditions
+less stringent than they are under the existing law.
+
+The position of the Irish tenant would thus be greatly improved; the
+sphere of the 'Three F's' would be largely extended; he would have 'fixity
+of tenure,' for a long time, at least, without the hazard and loss of
+litigation every fifteen years; his right of 'free sale' would be less
+restricted; and he would have distinct advantages, as respects 'fair
+rent,' under the part of my plan I am about to explain. I turn to the
+position of the Irish 'landlord'--I still use this expression and that of
+'tenant,' though both words are hardly applicable to existing facts; this,
+too, in my judgment, would be made much better. The estate that is now
+created against him would still be preserved; I wish it were a perpetual
+estate, but it would be one for thirty years at least; he would,
+therefore, remain assimilated to a rent-charger, as he is at present. But
+like his tenant he would be comparatively free from lawsuits; he would be
+less harassed by claims in respect of improvements; he would have, in many
+particulars, a more stable tenure. He should, of course, retain the
+'royalties' still reserved to him--mines, minerals, timber, and such
+things; and he should have the title to the statutory conditions he now
+has; but as his reversionary rights would be somewhat lessened, he should
+be compensated for these by a small money payment. With one great
+exception he should have the legal remedies to enforce the rights he now
+possesses; and that exception would be of great importance. I have always
+thought the law of ejectment for non-payment of rent harsh; it is an
+innovation on the ancient Common Law; it sometimes causes forfeitures far
+from just; it is not properly applicable to tenancies of long duration. I
+would certainly abolish this mode of procedure; I would instead of it give
+the landlord a power to sell the tenant's lands, by a procedure analogous
+to that of bankruptcy, should default be made in the payment of the rent,
+or rather the rent-charge that might be due. The advantage to both
+landlord and tenant would be great: the first would have a remedy more
+expeditious and just than he has; the second, should the land be sold and
+lost to him, would, as a rule, have a surplus over and above his debts;
+unlike what is sometimes the case in evictions, he would realise for
+himself his whole legitimate interest in the land. This single reform
+would do much to make 'fair rent' a less onerous charge than it now is.
+
+By these means the status of the Irish landlord would be made by many
+degrees more secure; the Irish tenant would acquire an interest in the
+land much more durable and stable than he has now, in fact, nearly
+equivalent to full ownership, subject to a rent-charge; and if his
+interest were made a perpetuity, as I hope would be the case at last, he
+would be assimilated to an owner subject to a perpetual rent, or to an
+English copyholder subject to a similar render. This is the position Burke
+proposed he should have, considerably more than a century ago;[149] it is
+that which has been advocated by John Stuart Mill, and, I am happy to add,
+by Mr. John Morley; it is the only position, compatible with common sense
+and justice, which the new Irish land code has left possible, for I put
+the quackery of compulsory purchase out of sight, and voluntary purchase
+is a bad half-measure. The great subject of fixing rent by the State would
+remain; for, unjustifiable as this expedient is, it is impossible, after
+what has happened, to dispense with it. Without imputing personal motives
+or moral blame to any one, the Land Commission and its Sub-Commissions
+ought, I am convinced, to cease to be the agency to fix 'fair rents;'
+however unconsciously, in my judgment, they have often proceeded on false
+principles, and have done immense, if not wilful wrong; they are decried
+by landlords and tenants alike in Ireland. Besides, there is a
+constitutional objection to their adjusting rent; the Land Commission is
+entrusted with the task of carrying out 'land purchase;' it has a direct
+inducement to whittle rents away, in order to facilitate the sale of land;
+its interest and its duty are thus placed in conflict. Be this as it may,
+my plan for fixing 'fair rents' in Ireland by the State would be
+altogether different. In the first place, a definition of 'fair rent'
+should be made by statute, and should dominate, so to speak, the subject;
+the omission of this criterion has caused grave injustice. This having
+been made, I would adjust Irish rents by a method much better, I believe,
+than that now in existence. A body of competent and well-paid valuers of
+land should be formed--there would be no difficulty about this in
+Ireland; these men should visit, when required, estates; and having heard
+what landlords and tenants had to say on the spot, should declare what
+they consider the 'fair rents' of farms, making a deduction for
+improvements as arranged by a reformed law, and taking waste and
+deterioration into account. The reports made by the valuers should be
+complete and explicit; they would probably satisfy landlords and tenants
+in most instances; but dissatisfied persons should have a right to an
+appeal, which should be a full rehearing of all the facts in issue; but
+the appeal should be at the peril of costs against unsuccessful suitors.
+The tribunals to decide the appeals should, I suggest, be composed of two
+eminent judges, for each of the four provinces, assisted by trained
+agricultural experts; but the authority of the judges should prevail on
+all questions. From these Courts a further appeal should run to the Court
+of Appeal in Ireland, on all matters of law and fact, and ultimately
+should run to the House of Lords; the present restricted appeal to the
+Land Commission has been little better than a sorry mockery of right.
+
+The scheme I propose has obvious defects; it sanctions the vicious
+principle of State-settled rents, a thing unknown in lands outside of
+Ireland, a defiance of the simplest axioms of economic science. But it
+endeavours at least to improve a bad system of tenure dealing with
+accomplished facts now beyond recall; I certainly think it would make the
+relations of Irish landlords and tenants better than they are, and would
+tend to place both classes in the positions which, as affairs now stand,
+they will probably, in the long run, occupy. As regards 'alternative
+policies,' as they have been called, I have set forth the reasons that the
+compulsory purchase of the Irish land would be, I believe, impossible,
+and, were it possible, would be a confiscation of the foullest kind,
+ruinous to Great Britain and Ireland alike. I have also shown how the
+present system of so-styled 'voluntary purchase' is, in my judgment,
+essentially immoral, and pregnant with dangers; and I have indicated the
+results being already produced. That system, however, must go on; for the
+present it cannot be arrested; a Conservative Government still pins its
+faith on it, as a Whig Government, half a century ago, pinned its faith on
+the Encumbered Estates Act; but a 'peasant proprietary' rooted in
+corruption will hardly succeed, and 'voluntary purchase' draws the worst
+kind of distinctions in Irish land tenure. The acceleration, indeed, of
+this 'remedy' has been deemed advisable; and as long as the sum voted by
+Parliament is not expended, the system evidently must continue in force.
+Some of its evils, however, would be lessened were the State to reserve to
+itself the woodland, which tenant 'purchasers,' as a rule, cut down and
+sell; and if tenants proved to be solvent were compelled to advance part
+of the money required to transfer their lands to themselves. It is
+revolting to my mind to see a wealthy Irish farmer bribed into the
+ownership of his farm by an Act of the State, without having paid a
+shilling of the price. I commend this spectacle to the hard-pressed
+general taxpayer.
+
+I need hardly say that, under the scheme I propose, existing interests of
+tenants should remain intact, and statutory leases should be allowed to
+come to an end, before a change should be made by law in the position they
+hold. The question of compensating the Irish landlords would remain; a
+very few words on this will suffice. I must remind the reader, as I have
+already shown, that the Land Act of 1881 was passed on the condition that,
+should experience prove that real injury had been done to this order of
+men, their right to indemnity would be plain; Mr. Gladstone's language was
+unequivocal; the House of Commons approved. Nor can any reasonable doubt
+exist that the course of legislation from 1881 to 1896 has confiscated the
+property of the class to an immense extent; the simple fact that the
+value in Ireland of the fee simple in land has been reduced by a third at
+least, and that the value of the tenant right has been increased in about
+the same proportion, points to a conclusion evident to impartial minds. I
+am satisfied as to what would be the report on this subject of the
+Commission I should wish to see appointed; it could not avoid drawing an
+inference that cannot be resisted. The question, therefore, will have to
+be faced; the good faith of Parliament is virtually at stake; and if a
+pledge made in the name of the State is not to be broken, the right of the
+Irish landlords to compensation is complete. Independently, too, of
+considerations of this kind, it is a recognised principle that should a
+policy have caused loss to a class, the State is morally bound to make the
+loss up; a violation of this principle is unjust and dangerous alike. I
+quote from John Stuart Mill on this very question: 'The principle of
+property gives the landowners no right to the land, but only a right to
+compensation for whatever portion of their interest in the land it may be
+the policy of the State to deprive them of. To that their claim is
+indefeasible. It is due to landowners and to owners of any property
+whatever, recognised as such by the State, that they should not be
+dispossessed of it without receiving its pecuniary value, or an annual
+income equal to what they have derived from it. If the land was bought
+with the produce of the labour of themselves or their ancestors,
+compensation is due to them on that ground; even if otherwise, it is still
+due on the ground of prescription. Nor can it ever be necessary for
+accomplishing an object by which the community altogether will gain, that
+a particular portion of the community should be immolated. When the
+property is of a kind to which peculiar affections attach themselves, the
+compensation ought to exceed a bare pecuniary equivalent.... The
+legislature, which, if it pleased, might convert the whole body of
+landlords into fundholders or pensioners, might, _à fortiori_, commute
+the average receipts of Irish landowners into a fixed rent-charge, and
+raise the tenants into proprietors; supposing always that the full market
+value of the land was tendered to the landlords, in case they preferred
+that to accepting the conditions proposed.'[150]
+
+Assuming, then, the case for compensating the Irish landlords to have been
+made out, compensation can be afforded without the loss of a shilling to
+the State. The _bonâ fide_ encumbrances on their estates, that is, those
+which represent advances in cash, are now at an interest of from 4 to 5
+per cent.; the State could pay off those which were perfectly secure at an
+interest of 2-1/4 per cent., and could make the landlords chargeable with
+interest at 3 per cent., in order to provide against possible loss. As for
+encumbrances that were not perfectly secure, the State should only pay off
+what was well charged; but it should do this on the same conditions; and
+it should declare hopeless encumbrances extinct. This would be a
+considerable and just boon to the Irish landlords; the securities taken
+by the State should be in the form of debentures, which would pass from
+hand to hand in the market; and many owners of encumbrances would no doubt
+accept sums less than their full demands, for these, they well know, are
+at present in danger. I would go, however, farther in relieving the Irish
+landlords; their estates are subject to a mass of family charges created
+under a different order of things; if the State has arbitrarily cut down
+the fund set apart for these, by a wholesale reduction of rents, I cannot
+understand how it is not the simplest justice to cut the charges down in
+some fair proportion. At all events, I make these suggestions for what
+they may be worth; if right is to be done to the Irish landed gentry, and
+a gross breach of public faith is not to be made, some relief of this kind
+should be extended to them. Very possibly this will not be afforded; but I
+venture to remind politicians that even an unpopular class cannot be
+cruelly wronged and sacrificed, without doing injury to all classes, and
+shaking to their foundations the clear rights of property. And I openly
+avow that, in my judgment, it would be in the highest degree against the
+national interest to annihilate this body of men, as must probably happen,
+should things in Ireland be left as they are. What if they are the heirs
+of conquest and confiscation in the past? Is that a reason for destroying
+them after the lapse of centuries, and when England planted them in the
+land to be her mainstay? What if, in instances, comparatively few in the
+extreme, they have abused the social trust imposed on them? Was not this
+because the opportunity was given by law, and was not the law the work of
+successive Parliaments? Is it not a fact that British ministers, so to
+speak, of yesterday, declared that they were secure in their proprietary
+rights; and that Mr. Gladstone solemnly acquitted them of what had been
+laid to their charge? On the other hand, have they not been for ages the
+staunchest friends of England in Irish affairs, especially in troubled
+and perilous times? Is it for nothing that they have been called the
+British garrison by her foes, the strongest obstacle to rebellion and
+treason? And is a class, which has, on the whole, been a civilising
+influence, for many years, in Ireland, and which has given the State far
+more than a due proportion of worthies--warriors, orators, statesmen,
+thinkers, men of eminence in all the arts of life--to be sacrificed at the
+bidding of a conspiracy bent on subverting British rule in Ireland, or in
+deference to false and perilous theories?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE QUESTION OF THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
+
+    The subject briefly considered--Financial position of Ireland before
+    1782, and under Grattan's Parliament--Her taxation and debt small
+    before 1798--Ireland financially a distinct country--At the Union,
+    Pitt wished to 'assimilate her in finance' with Great Britain, but
+    this impossible, and why--Ireland's contribution after the Union--This
+    was unjust, but it left her financially a distinct country--Ireland
+    made nearly bankrupt--The compromise of 1816--The Irish Exchequer
+    closed, and the Irish and British debts consolidated--The object of
+    the compromise was rather to relieve Ireland from her burdens than to
+    assimilate her in finance with Great Britain--She still remained for
+    many years financially distinct from Great Britain, and is so still to
+    some extent--The conduct of Peel a striking proof of this--Mr.
+    Gladstone imposes the income tax on Ireland, and her spirit duties are
+    largely raised--Injustice of this policy--The Committee of
+    1863-64--Ireland does not obtain financial justice--The Report of the
+    Childers Commission made upon a reference by Mr. Gladstone following
+    Mr. Goschen--The Commission declares that Ireland has been greatly
+    overtaxed for many years--Evidence on which it has founded this
+    conclusion--Examination of arguments to the contrary--Another
+    Commission promised, but the promise not fulfilled--Importance of
+    settling this question.
+
+
+The financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland have been a
+subject, at intervals of time, no doubt, of strong controversy during a
+whole century. I shall not harp on the saying of Johnson to an Irish
+friend, 'Avoid a Union with England, she will only rob you;' but, in the
+opinion of well-informed Irishmen, the fiscal treatment of Ireland, since
+1800-01, strikingly illustrates the significant remark of Burke, 'When any
+community is subordinately connected with another, the great danger of the
+connection is, the extreme pride and self-complacency of the superior,
+which, in all matters of controversy, will probably decide in its own
+favour.' There is no reason to impeach the good faith of Pitt and
+Castlereagh; but the financial arrangements they made for Ireland, when
+the Union became law, were denounced by the most distinguished Irishmen of
+the day; these imposed on Ireland an overwhelming burden, and, in fact,
+reduced her to the very edge of bankruptcy. A compromise was effected in
+1816-17; this has been described as a generous boon to Ireland; but it was
+at best a slight relief from injustice; and it weakened securities she had
+against fiscal exaction, while it involved her in liabilities which, if
+remote, were not the less possible. It is a most significant fact that
+Peel, who, as Chief Secretary from 1812 to 1818, was familiar with the
+economic state of Ireland, refused, though under the strongest
+inducements, to apply to Ireland the fiscal charges extended to her by one
+of his brilliant successors; the most sagacious financier of the
+nineteenth century played, in this matter, a very different part from the
+most impulsive and not the least unscrupulous. In 1853, and from thence in
+other years, Mr. Gladstone, in order to carry out a policy distinctly
+opposed to many Irish interests, subjected Ireland to a sudden and heavy
+load of taxation, exactly at the time when, for the plainest reasons, she
+ought to have been exempted from it; from that day to this, Irishmen, who
+understand the question, are agreed that this was gross, nay, cruel,
+injustice. The whole subject of British and Irish financial relations was
+sent by Mr. Gladstone to a Commission in 1893, here following the example
+of Mr. Goschen; a careful inquiry was held during many months; the Report
+of the Commission was startling and important in the extreme. This
+tribunal, mainly composed of eminent English experts, announced, and that
+almost with one voice, that Ireland was being enormously overtaxed, and
+had been for upwards of forty years; and it plainly intimated that a
+remedy for this wrong should be found. No real answer has been made to
+this remarkable judgment; the attempts at answers that have been made are
+nearly all mere trifling; Lord Salisbury's Government evidently believes
+that an answer is not possible; it promised to appoint another Commission
+to investigate certain parts of the subject; years have passed, and it has
+not performed its promise. Meanwhile, even amidst the hurly-burly of Irish
+politics, Irishmen of all parties have united in a demand for redress; and
+if the demand is not pressed with extreme vehemence, it is sustained by
+all that is best in Irish opinion. It is obviously unwise, and it may
+become dangerous, to continue to ignore such a claim; in any event the
+financial relations of the Three Kingdoms are not the least important of
+'Present Irish Questions;' I shall briefly examine it in this chapter.
+
+It is unnecessary to dwell on the financial relations of Great Britain and
+Ireland before 1782 and the Union. England held the position of an
+absolutely dominant State before 1782, Ireland that of a conquered and
+despised colony; Ireland was under the control of the British Parliament,
+and was governed by English officials supreme at the Castle. Ireland was
+excluded from the foreign and colonial trade of Great Britain; her
+agriculture and manufactures were half destroyed by the selfish jealousy
+and greed of her imperious neighbour. She contributed, on the other hand,
+nothing to the treasury of the ruling power; she had little or no part in
+British wars, or in building up the edifice of the Empire, except through
+her soldiers in the British army; she was free from British debt and from
+British taxation. In these circumstances, grievous as was the incubus of
+Protestant ascendency upon the land, it is remarkable what material
+progress she made; her Parliament, though little more than a local vestry,
+unquestionably promoted her material welfare; she was very lightly taxed,
+and was free from debt for many years. She was still so completely
+distinct from Great Britain, that it was not until 1769 that her
+Parliament agreed that 15,000 men, of whom 12,000 were to remain in
+Ireland, should be enrolled for the defence of the State; before that
+time, she was only obliged to maintain a small British force within her
+borders. After a partial relaxation of the restraints on her commerce
+caused by the stress of the American War, and by the famous volunteer
+movement, Ireland obtained legislative independence in 1782; she ceased to
+be subject to the British Parliament, and to fill the position of a
+degraded colony; she became, in theory at least, an independent State in
+many respects. Her Parliament was all but sovereign in name; Ireland was
+now united to Great Britain only by the link of the Crown; by an executive
+always despatched from Downing Street; and, it must be added, by the
+corruption of her Houses of Lords and Commons. She was thus more than ever
+a distinct country; in fact, most British statesmen had soon perceived
+that the celebrated settlement of 1782 greatly weakened her old connection
+with England. She advanced, however, markedly in prosperity for many
+years, until the French Revolution arrested this; her debt was little more
+than £2,000,000 for a long time, her taxation only about £1,000,000. But
+by the close of the eighteenth century these figures had been disastrously
+changed; her debt had risen to upwards of £28,000,000, her taxation to
+about £2,500,000. This great increase had been partly caused by the costly
+expenditure of her transformed Parliament, which had spent considerable
+sums on public works, and on economic experiments of different kinds; but
+five-sixths of it was probably caused by the enormous charge incurred by
+the Rebellion of 1798--one of the most woeful tragedies of Irish
+history--and by the suppression of that ill-starred movement.[151]
+
+The Rebellion led at once to the Union; it precipitated what had perhaps
+become a necessity of State. The great measure of Pitt was badly designed,
+and was, moreover, tainted by a grave breach of faith; it was only what
+was called a 'Protestant Union,' that is, it rested upon false and narrow
+foundations; it deceived Catholic Ireland, and did her gross wrong; above
+all, it did not effect its main object, and incorporate the lesser with
+the more powerful country. It left Ireland, hitherto completely distinct,
+still, to a very considerable extent, a distinct State; she retained a
+separate Government and Administration, separate Courts of Justice, a
+separate Exchequer for many years; this shadow of separation, as Foster,
+one of her ablest worthies, foretold, would give a demand for separation
+substance.[152] The financial arrangements between Great Britain and
+Ireland were practically altogether the work of Pitt. A disciple of Adam
+Smith, the minister's wish was to 'assimilate the two countries in
+finance;' to place both under the same fiscal system, to make taxation in
+both uniform. But in 1800, the National Debt of Great Britain was more
+than £446,000,000, and her taxation was about £3 a head; the National
+Debt of Ireland, we have seen, was some £28,000,000, and her taxation by
+the head not more than 10_s._; this immense inequality made 'assimilation
+in finance' impossible. Besides, Pitt, as a matter of course, knew that
+Great Britain was a very rich country, and Ireland perhaps the poorest in
+Europe; he was too great a financier to accept the false and shallow
+theory that, as between two communities wholly unequal in wealth, equal
+taxes were really equal burdens, and could be just; he had emphatically
+remarked in 1785, when his celebrated 'Commercial Propositions' were
+opposed by the selfish monopolies of British commerce, 'If one country
+exceeded another in wealth, population, and established commerce in a
+proportion of two to one, he was nearly convinced that that country would
+be able to bear near ten times the burden that the other would be equal
+to.'[153] It had become necessary, therefore, at the time of the Union, to
+place the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland on a basis
+that had nothing in common with uniformity of taxation, and a common
+fiscal system; 'assimilation in finance' was for the present to be
+indefinitely postponed.
+
+The financial settlement made at the Union distinctly embodied these
+principles, and was carried by Castlereagh through the Irish Parliament,
+by what methods history records with shame. Like Pitt, the Chief Secretary
+looked forward to a time when Great Britain and Ireland might be under the
+same fiscal system; but at this juncture, this consummation was, he
+acknowledged, hopeless. Ireland was, financially, to remain a separate
+country; she was to have a separate exchequer and separate taxes; her
+National Debt was to be kept distinct from that of Great Britain. She was
+to furnish only a contribution to the State; and Castlereagh declared,
+over and over again, that this contribution was to be only in proportion
+to her means, and that in no event was she to be unduly taxed. 'The great
+point to be ascertained is the best criterion that can be found of the
+relative means of the two countries, in order to fix the relative
+proportions of their contributions.... As to the future, it is expected
+that the two countries will move forward together, and unite with regard
+to their expenses in the measure of their relative abilities.' By a
+comparison made between British and Irish imports and exports, and between
+the values of certain commodities, Castlereagh came to the conclusion that
+the contributions which Great Britain and Ireland ought to be expected to
+make for the general support and administration of the State, should be,
+respectively, fifteen- and two-seventeenths, that is, Great Britain was to
+pay about 88 per cent., and Ireland about 12 per cent. of the sum total.
+This proportion was to be made liable to revision at the end of twenty
+years; for this provision, Castlereagh remarked, gave 'Ireland the utmost
+possible security that she cannot be taxed beyond the measure of her
+comparative ability, and that the ratio of her contributions must ever
+correspond with her relative wealth and prosperity;' and then followed
+arrangements which undoubtedly had the 'assimilation of Great Britain and
+Ireland in finance' remotely in view; but subject to limitations that
+would preserve for Ireland her fiscal rights, and would secure her from
+taxation beyond her means, and unjust. It was proposed that if, at some
+future time, the debts of both countries should be discharged, or if their
+debts and their contributions were in the same proportion, Great Britain
+and Ireland might be 'assimilated in finance,' and placed under the same
+fiscal system; but this was to be on two express conditions, that the
+circumstances of the two countries should admit of this change, and that,
+in any case, should the change be made, Ireland--as was the case of
+Scotland when her Union took place-should have the benefit of such
+'exemptions and abatements' of taxation as might be deemed proper, and
+the circumstances of the situation might allow. The meaning of the
+technical words, 'exemptions and abatements,' interpreted of late years in
+a pettifogging sense, was fully recognised at the time, and for a long
+subsequent period, indeed, has been recognised to this day by most of our
+leading statesmen, namely, that Ireland was not to be taxed unfairly or
+beyond her resources, as Castlereagh had repeatedly promised.[154]
+
+The Opposition in the Irish Parliament had many able lawyers--the names of
+Saurin, of Plunket, of Bushe are still known to fame; it is to be
+regretted, perhaps, that these powerful minds did not examine with more
+jealousy the conditions under which Great Britain and Ireland might be
+'assimilated in finance,' distant as the contingency appeared to be; did
+not criticise more sharply words that might be wrested from their accepted
+sense; and trusted too much to Castlereagh's phrases. But the attention of
+the Opposition was rather directed to the Union in its political than in
+its financial aspect; it rather denounced the attempt to destroy the
+settlement of 1782 than scrutinised the terms of the fiscal system to be
+imposed on Ireland, at least, as these were concerned with the future. The
+arrangements, nevertheless, by which Ireland was to make the contribution
+of the two-seventeenths were fiercely assailed in both the Houses in
+College Green; Foster described the calculations of Pitt and Castlereagh
+as utterly false, and declared that the charge to be borne by Ireland was
+much too large; Grattan echoed this opinion in characteristic language:
+'Though I do not think the means of this country are unequal to any
+necessary expense, yet I do think they are inadequate to that contributory
+expense which the Union stipulates.... The attempt will exhaust the
+country, at the same time that it enslaves her. Colour it as you please,
+Ireland will pay more than she is able. Considering these the terms of the
+Union so far as they relate to revenue, they amount to a continuation of
+the double establishment, an increase of the separate establishment, and a
+military government, with a prospect of soon succeeding to the full taxes
+of England.'[155] The Opposition, too, in the Irish House of Commons
+loudly protested: 'Your Majesty's faithful Commons are satisfied that this
+calculation is extremely erroneous; and that on a just and fair inquiry
+into the comparative means of each country, the Kingdom ought not, and is
+not able to contribute anything like that proportion.'[156] And twenty
+Irish peers placed this emphatic protest on record; I have space for a few
+sentences only: 'Under such circumstances, it appears to us that if this
+Kingdom should take upon herself irrevocably the payment of
+two-seventeenths of these expenses, she will not have means to perform her
+engagements unless by charging her landed property with 12_s._ or 13_s._
+in the pound; it must end in the draining from her her last guinea, in
+totally annihilating her trade for want of capital, in rendering the taxes
+unproductive, and consequently in finally putting her in a state of
+bankruptcy. We think ourselves called upon to protest against a measure so
+ruinous to our country, and to place the responsibility of its
+consequences upon such persons as have brought it forward and supported
+it.'[157]
+
+The Treaty of Union left Ireland, financially, still a separate country,
+paying a fixed contribution for the uses of the State. The great war with
+France soon broke out again; England was involved with Napoleon in a
+life-and-death struggle; her fiscal resources were strained to the utmost;
+her expenditure became prodigious for a series of years. In these
+circumstances, the debt of Ireland rose from £28,000,000 to upwards of
+£112,000,000; and her taxation from about £2,500,000 to about £4,500,000;
+while the debt of Great Britain advanced from some £446,000,000 to some
+£737,000,000, and her taxation from some £24,000,000 to £54,000,000; the
+taxation of Ireland being by the head about £1 in 1816, that of Great
+Britain being about £5, the figures sixteen years before being 10_s._ and
+£3. The immense increase in the debt of Ireland, much greater in
+proportion than that of Great Britain, was certainly due to a large extent
+to the fact--and this was frankly admitted by Grattan--that the poorer
+country could not keep pace with the richer in the gigantic charges of the
+war; the case, it has justly been remarked, may be compared to a case of
+this kind: 'If one man, A, who has been living at the rate of £100 per
+annum, arranges to keep house with another man, B, who has for some time
+been living at the rate of £700 per annum, and to spend £1 for every £7
+which B spends, then so long as B continues to live at the same rate as
+before, the expenses of A will not be increased. But if B begins to live
+at the rate of £2100 a year, A will have to spend £300 a year, and if his
+means are not sufficient for this, he must become bankrupt.'[158]
+Allowing, nevertheless, for all this, it is not the less certain that the
+calculations of Pitt and Castlereagh were utterly falsified by the event,
+and that the warnings of Foster, Grattan, and other well-informed
+Irishmen, besides the protests made in the Irish Parliament, were verified
+to the fullest extent; as has been remarked by a distinguished English
+expert, 'The calculations of Mr. Pitt and Lord Castlereagh, the ministers
+who promoted the Union, and who declared that Ireland would be able to
+pay, and ought to pay, two-seventeenths of the joint expenses of the
+United Kingdom, turned out to be mistaken, and the opinions of Mr.
+Grattan, Mr. Foster, and other Irish members, who denied that she would be
+able to contribute so large a proportion, are proved by the event to have
+been well founded.'[159]
+
+This contrast, it is hardly necessary to say, to persons acquainted with
+Irish history, is only one of the innumerable proofs of the ignorance of
+Ireland too common to British statesmen, and of their too common disregard
+of the best Irish opinion. In 1815-16, at the close of the war, Ireland
+was financially in a bankrupt condition; she could not pay the interest on
+her debt; she could not bear the weight of further taxation; she was
+exhausted and sucked dry by fiscal injustice. Her social state, too, had
+become very alarming; her population had rapidly increased, and, mainly
+depending on the frail potato, was already becoming an incubus on the
+land; the collapse of the high war prices had caused a sudden fall in
+rents and the wages of labour; there was general distress in several
+counties, and Whiteboy and agrarian disorder widely prevailed. The
+financial position of Ireland was necessarily taken up by Parliament; a
+Committee of the House of Commons was selected to report upon it. By this
+time one of the contingencies had taken place for the possible
+'assimilation in finance' with Great Britain of the much weaker country;
+the contribution of Ireland, compared with her debt, was even in less
+proportion than the contribution of Great Britain to her own; she had been
+left far behind in the effort to pay her way. In this position of affairs
+the Committee made its report, after a long and careful examination of the
+case; the House of Commons passed these resolutions in May, 1816: 'That it
+is the opinion of this Committee that the values of the respective debts
+of Great Britain and Ireland, estimated according to the provisions of the
+Acts of Union, have been, at a period subsequent to these Acts, in the
+same proportion to each other (within one-hundredth part of the said
+value), with the respective contributions of each country respectively,
+towards the annual expenditure of the United Kingdom; and that the
+respective circumstances of the two countries will henceforth admit of
+their contributing indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed upon the same
+articles upon each, to the future expenditure of the United Kingdom;
+subject only to such particular exemptions and abatements in Ireland and
+in Scotland as circumstances may appear from time to time to demand; and
+that it is no longer necessary to regulate the contribution of the two
+countries according to any specific proportion, or according to the rules
+prescribed by the Acts of Union, with respect to such proportions. That it
+is the opinion of this Committee, that it is expedient that all expenses
+henceforth to be incurred, together with the interest and charges of all
+debts hitherto contracted, shall be so defrayed indiscriminately by equal
+taxes to be imposed on the same articles in each country; and that from
+time to time, as circumstances may require, such taxes should be imposed
+and applied accordingly, subject only to such exemptions and abatements in
+Ireland and Scotland as circumstances may appear to demand. That it is
+the opinion of this Committee that such legislative measures should be
+adopted as may be necessary to carry into further effect the purposes of
+the said Acts of Union, by consolidating the public revenues of Great
+Britain and Ireland into one fund, and applying the same to the general
+services of the United Kingdom.'[160]
+
+These resolutions were partly embodied in an Act which received the Royal
+assent in June, 1816. By this law the separate exchequer of Ireland was
+shut up; there was to be but one exchequer for the Three Kingdoms; all the
+revenues of Great Britain and Ireland were thrown into a general fund to
+be applied to the requirements of the State; the separate debt of Ireland
+was fused into that of Great Britain, the two making a common National
+Debt. By these means Ireland was relieved from an intolerable load of
+debt; but those who contend that an immense boon was thus conferred on
+her, only illustrate the aphorism of Burke referred to before; the matter
+was decided by the opinion of the dominant power. Ireland, no doubt, was
+set free from an overwhelming burden; but the burden was one improperly
+cast on her by the Union; the relief was only a small redress of
+injustice.[161] On the other hand, the arrangements of 1816 abolished the
+contribution of the two-seventeenths, and made Ireland less a separate
+country, financially, than she had been before; the resolutions of the
+House of Commons did not all become law, but they at least declared that
+she might become 'assimilated in finance' to Great Britain at a convenient
+time, and thus diminished her security against undue taxation; and the
+amalgamation of her debt with that of Great Britain made her subject, at
+least conceivably, to a gigantic charge, for which she was not in any way
+liable. The compromise, however, effected at this time, rather
+contemplated the relief of Ireland from existing debt than her ultimate
+'assimilation in finance to Great Britain,' and the extension to both
+countries of the same fiscal system. For many years after 1816 Ireland
+remained, financially, completely distinct from Great Britain, and under a
+scheme of taxation altogether different. Nor is the reason difficult to
+seek; she was declared entitled, by the resolutions before mentioned, to
+the 'exemptions and abatements' secured to her by the Treaty of Union; and
+the Parliament of that day respected the treaty, interpreting these terms
+in their true sense, that Ireland was not to be taxed beyond her means.
+Her fiscal wrongs, besides, from 1800 to 1816, were still fresh in the
+minds of statesmen; these did not wish to repeat injustice; above all, she
+had many representatives of real weight at Westminster--Grattan was a
+tower of strength in himself, and he had very able followers; these men
+would certainly have fiercely resented attempts to impair the financial
+rights of their country.
+
+The fiscal systems of Great Britain and Ireland, still altogether
+distinct, continued nearly on this footing for a series of years. Great
+Britain was gradually relieved from taxation peculiar to herself,
+amounting to very considerable sums; Ireland was not relieved in the same
+proportion; but this was hardly a real grievance; the taxation of Great
+Britain during the war had been enormously higher than that of Ireland. In
+1819-20 the charge on Great Britain, which had been about £5 per head, had
+been reduced to £3 13_s._; that on Ireland, which had been about £1 a
+head, had been reduced to 15_s._ 5_d._ There seems to have been little to
+complain of in these figures. Some steps, however, but tentative only,
+were made by degrees in 'assimilating the two countries in finance,'
+according to the resolutions of 1816; the duties on tea were made equal
+for the Three Kingdoms, and the duties on tobacco, as early as 1819; but
+it deserves special notice that this policy was angrily opposed by many
+Irishmen in the House of Commons, the most conspicuous of these being Sir
+John Newport, a real master of Irish finance, who had been Chancellor of
+the Irish Exchequer in 1806-07. Still, notwithstanding innovations like
+these, the fiscal systems of Great Britain and Ireland remained
+substantially distinct for a long period; this was notably made manifest
+as late as 1842. At this time the population of England was in an alarming
+state; the Chartist agitation was in full swing; British commerce was half
+strangled by heavy duties on foreign imports; the corn laws crippled and
+burdened industry. Peel was at the head of his great Ministry; he began to
+carry into effect the policy of free trade, inaugurated by Pitt, but
+unhappily delayed; in order to accomplish this he had to diminish or get
+rid of the charges on foreign imports, and generally to substitute direct
+for indirect taxation. He was under a strong temptation to 'assimilate
+Great Britain and Ireland in finance;' but he had been a friend and
+colleague of Castlereagh; he understood the true import of the Treaty of
+Union; above all, he knew Ireland well for an Englishman; he had
+practically been her ruler for nearly six years. In these circumstances he
+imposed the income tax on Great Britain as an equivalent for many indirect
+taxes; but he pointedly abstained from extending the tax to Ireland; he
+felt that this would be an act of financial wrong; and though he increased
+for a short time the duty on Irish spirits, he took off the increase
+within a few months. The only 'assimilation in finance' he effected was to
+make the stamp duties in Great Britain and Ireland equal, and this was
+rather a legal than an economic reform.
+
+The life of the great minister was prematurely cut short; time brought
+with it its changes on its wings. The statesman who had living traditions
+of the Union and its finance had passed away; O'Connell had disappeared
+from the scene; the representation of Ireland had fallen into a
+deplorable state. Meanwhile the free trade policy of Peel had achieved
+great results in England and Scotland; free trade had given an immense
+impulse to our manufactures and our foreign commerce; the repeal of the
+corn laws had wonderfully quickened industry, and had been a magnificent
+boon to the mass of the people; the prosperity of Great Britain was
+advancing by leaps and bounds. The development of free trade was the
+object of nearly all our statesmen; to accomplish this it was essential
+still further to lessen or to abolish the duties on foreign imports, and
+to let in the raw materials of manufactures free; indirect taxation was
+still further to give place to direct. In 1853, and during part of the
+subsequent period, our finances were in the hands of a minister whose
+impulsive nature was upheld by a most imperious will, and who, whatever
+was his policy, seldom stuck at trifles. Apparently without mature
+reflection, and, it is to be hoped, with little knowledge of the facts of
+the case, Mr. Gladstone, setting the example of Peel at nought, suddenly
+subjected Ireland to the income tax, and began to raise the duties on
+Irish spirits; by 1860 these duties had been more than trebled; and the
+taxation of Ireland had been increased by upwards of two millions
+sterling. And what were the circumstances, during a large part of this
+period, of the country on which this enormous burden had been laid?
+Ireland, no doubt, had begun to revive from the effects of the catastrophe
+of 1845-47; but, compared with Great Britain, she was miserably poor; and
+the Great Famine had shaken her social structure to its base. Two millions
+of her population had fled from their homes into exile; a large part of
+the upper and of the middle classes had been involved in ruin; whole
+tracts of her lands were derelict wastes; her local taxation was
+exceedingly high. The imposition of this load of taxation on a country in
+such a condition, unjustifiable in the abstract, and from every point of
+view, was, in the existing position of affairs, an act of cruel wrong; no
+wonder even one of Mr. Gladstone's colleagues has remarked, measured as is
+his language, 'We think that if the House of Commons, in the period 1853
+to 1860, when the great enhancement of taxation took place, had fully
+considered the circumstances of Ireland, they would not have felt
+themselves justified in increasing the taxation of that country by means
+of the income tax and the equalisation of the spirit duties.'[162] At this
+time, in a word, the future Solon of Home Rule proved himself to be the
+merciless Draco of Irish finance.
+
+This great increase of taxation, to a considerable extent, 'assimilated
+Ireland to Great Britain in finance;' placed the two countries under
+nearly the same fiscal system; made the taxes of each not far from equal.
+This assimilation, however, was still by no means complete--indeed, is not
+complete to the present day; Ireland has still fiscal privileges under the
+Treaty of Union; and this should be carefully borne in mind. Mr.
+Gladstone, moreover, when he made this increase, acknowledged that Ireland
+remained a distinct country, entitled to immunities of her own; when he
+made her liable to the income tax, he cancelled a debt of £4,000,000 which
+he professed she owed; and if this was an illusory pretence, for her
+liability for this reason was more than doubtful, and the income tax she
+has since paid has exceeded £23,000,000, still he distinctly admitted the
+principle--indeed, it has always been admitted by statesmen worthy of the
+name. The enormous new burdens imposed on Ireland, from 1853 to 1860,
+provoked widespread and profound discontent; a Parliamentary inquiry was
+conceded; a Committee of the House of Commons went into the subject in
+1863-64. But the representation of Ireland, I have said, was feeble; her
+complaints were stifled by the arts of the treasury; the arguments of her
+members were overborne by specious but utterly false sophistry; the
+inquiry came to nothing as regards her interests. The question remained in
+abeyance for years; the Irish reforms of Mr. Gladstone, from 1869 to 1873,
+the troubles caused by the Land and the National Leagues, and the Home
+Rule agitation that followed, turned public attention away from the
+subject; but it was not forgotten by well-informed Irishmen; two real
+economists, Butt and Judge Longfield, insisted that Ireland had here a
+grievance; and this was the opinion of several independent gentlemen,
+survivors of the illustrious school of Grattan. At last Mr. Goschen,
+perhaps moved by remonstrances from Ireland being urged again, appointed a
+Committee of the House of Commons to examine into, and to report upon,
+'the equity of the financial relations in regard to the resources and the
+population of the Three Kingdoms;' Mr. Gladstone, in 1893, recurred to the
+subject, which, rather unaccountably, had been let drop. He directed a
+Commission of great authority, composed for the most part of expert
+Englishmen, and presided over by the late Mr. Childers, a Chancellor of
+the Exchequer of Mr. Gladstone, to inquire thoroughly into the whole
+question of the financial relations of Great Britain and Ireland, and
+fully to set forth the conclusions they should form. The scope of the
+investigation was to include the history of the subject since the Union; a
+consideration of the financial resources of Great Britain and Ireland
+regarded as distinct countries, and the principles to be kept in mind in
+forming a correct judgment; and, finally, the charge of Ireland with
+respect to the State, and the contribution which Ireland should make to
+it.[163]
+
+This inquiry, set on foot by a British statesman who had made himself
+notorious for 'assimilating Great Britain and Ireland in finance,'
+proceeded, nevertheless, upon an admission that, financially, the two
+countries were still distinct, and that the resources of each--their
+'taxable capacity,' in other words, a phrase turned into absurd
+ridicule--afforded the true and the only test, as to the equity of Irish
+compared to British taxation. The Commissioners were engaged in their
+arduous task for months; they explained, with a fulness and clearness
+never before so complete, the history of the financial relations between
+Great Britain and Ireland. They brought distinctly out the fiscal position
+of the two countries before the Union; they set forth at length the
+financial arrangements made in 1800-01; they described the compromise
+effected in 1816; they dwelt on the fiscal policy of Peel to Ireland, and
+placed it in significant contrast with that of Mr. Gladstone; and they
+conclusively proved that, from the Union to the present time, Great
+Britain and Ireland had been treated financially as separate countries,
+despite the 'assimilation' of 1853-60, and that the right of Ireland,
+under the Treaty of Union, to the 'exemptions and abatements' secured to
+her, these being interpreted as the case requires, still give her
+immunities from taxation especially her own, which must be recognised if
+she is to obtain justice. Turning, then, to the resources of Great Britain
+and Ireland, regarded as apart, as being the true criterion of the
+taxation which Ireland ought to bear, the Commissioners reviewed a great
+mass of evidence, which, as far as was perhaps possible, made the truth
+manifest, and arrived at conclusions which appear to be decisive.
+Comparing the death duties of Ireland and of Great Britain, the proportion
+is about 1 to 18; comparing the income tax, it is about 1 to 22; taking a
+great variety of other tests, receipts of railways, savings banks
+deposits, money and postal orders, and letters and telegrams, it varies
+from 1 to 24 and 16; and an estimate of the income of the two countries,
+an estimate certainly not fair to Ireland, gives a proportion of about 1
+to 18. There are many reasons that these figures exaggerate the true
+resources of Ireland, but, assuming them to be approximately correct, the
+Commission has reported that Great Britain exceeds Ireland in resources by
+20 to 1; in other words, that the 'taxable capacity of Ireland, as
+contrasted with that of Great Britain, cannot now be more than as 1 to
+20.'[164] Applying this inference to the taxation of the two countries,
+the conclusions formed by this tribunal can hardly admit of question. The
+revenue and taxation of Ireland compared with that of Great Britain from
+1889 to 1894 has been £7,300,000 and £7,800,000 against from £85,000,000
+to £89,000,000, that is, Ireland contributed from 8 to 9 per cent. of the
+sum total. But if the resources of Ireland are only one-twentieth of those
+of Great Britain, her taxation ought to be one-twentieth only, that is, it
+ought not to be from £7,300,000 to £7,800,000; it ought to be less than
+£5,000,000; not 8 or 9 per cent., but less than 5 per cent. It follows
+from this that Ireland has been overtaxed at the rate of between two and
+three millions a year, and that for a very considerable space of
+time.[165]
+
+Enormous against Ireland as is this excess of taxation, it may amount to a
+very much larger sum, if the national account be taken on another,
+perhaps a sounder, basis. There is the highest authority to show that
+taxation ought only to fall, in the instance of any given country, on the
+surplus remaining over and above the cost of the necessaries of life; and
+as regards the populations of Great Britain and Ireland, this cost may be
+assumed to be £12 a head. But if we take the income of Great Britain to be
+1400 millions sterling, the cost of the necessaries of life at the above
+rate would for Great Britain be a sum of 324 millions; and the surplus
+available for taxation would be 1076 millions. On the other hand, if we
+turn to Ireland, the poor country, and suppose her income to be 76
+millions sterling, the cost of the necessaries of life for Ireland would
+be a sum of 46 millions; and the surplus available for taxation would be
+30 millions only. On this hypothesis, the resources of Ireland which might
+be fairly taxed--her taxable capacity, in a word--would, compared with the
+resources of Great Britain, be, not as 1 to 20, but as 1 to 36 only; and
+her taxation ought to be less than £3,000,000, not, as before mentioned,
+less than £5,000,000. The Childers Commission, no doubt, with the
+exception of one of its members, did not give its sanction to this
+conclusion; but it was that formed by Sir Robert Giffen, a master of the
+subject on all its bearings, and it cannot, in common fairness, be left
+out of sight. Sir Robert Giffen's view is expressed in these words; it
+will be observed that his figures do not correspond with those just cited;
+but the only point to consider is the principle on which he takes his
+stand: 'If you deduct a minimum sum, so much per head from each of the
+community, as a sort of minimum sum, though you would not wish to take
+anything from a man who had no more than that, then the taxable income
+would be the whole income in each country above that sum. That was the
+sort of general idea. If you apply that to Ireland, and take a minimum sum
+of, say, £12 a head, you would get upon the basis of an Irish income of
+£76,000,000 a taxable surplus, I think, now of about £22,000,000, and in
+Great Britain your taxable surplus would come to over £900,000,000.'[166]
+
+Setting, however, these last considerations aside, the Childers Commission
+has conclusively shown that Ireland is very largely overtaxed, and has
+been so for a long series of years; and the figures that represent this
+great overcharge by no means represent the real difference of the burdens
+imposed on the two countries. It does not require the authority of Pitt to
+tell us that even equal taxation, equally applied, is felt much more
+acutely by a poor community than by one that is rich and prosperous; let
+us assume, what is by no means the fact, that this equality exists as
+between Great Britain and Ireland, still Ireland suffers much more than
+Great Britain. As Mill remarked a long time ago, 'It is not the same thing
+to take £2 from a man who has £40 a year, as to take £4 from a man who has
+£80, or £40 from a man who has £800; the sacrifice imposed on the taxpayer
+is greater upon the man from whom you take £2 out of £40 than it is on the
+man from whom you take £40 out of £800, although the proportion is the
+same.' A few examples, taken from the case of Great Britain and Ireland,
+will make the truth of this proposition perfectly clear. The wages of an
+agricultural labourer in Great Britain are, say, £40 a year; the wages of
+an agricultural labourer in Ireland are, say, £26; the first pays £3 taxes
+on his tea and tobacco; the second pays only £2; but the £2 are obviously
+much the heavier charge. Or suppose that a British artisan has £100 a
+year, and an Irish artisan no more than £80; is not the first more lightly
+taxed than the second, if he contributes £5 to the revenue against £4? And
+the same thing happens if we ascend the social scale; the £150 income tax
+paid by a British landlord of £3000 a year is not felt by him to be such
+a charge as the £50 paid by an Irish landlord of £1000 a year; the same
+principle would extend to the profits of trade were there small sums in
+Ireland and large sums in Great Britain. Make taxes, therefore, as equal
+as possible, and make their incidence completely equal, still, in the case
+of a poor compared to a wealthy country, the real burden on the taxpayer
+will be very different; it was for this reason that the late Mr. Nassau
+Senior, an economist of no ordinary parts, pointedly remarked, as regards
+British and Irish taxation, 'England is the most lightly taxed and Ireland
+the most heavily taxed country in Europe, although both are nominally
+liable to equal taxation: I do not believe that Ireland is a poor country
+because she is overtaxed, but I think she is overtaxed because she is
+poor.'[167]
+
+Ireland, therefore, on a full review of the argument, has been overtaxed
+at least between two and three millions sterling a year for certainly more
+than forty years; and this excess, as she is a very poor country, is, in
+her case especially severe. The trend of taxation, if the phrase may be
+employed, as we follow its course, during a long period, clearly indicates
+that she has suffered from grave financial wrong. In 1819-20, we have
+seen, the taxation of Great Britain was at the rate of £3 13_s._ a head,
+that of Ireland being 15_s._ 5_d._; the proportion was £2 13_s._ 1_d._ and
+£1 6_s._ 7_d._ in 1859-60; in 1893 it was £2 4_s._ and £1 8_s._; in other
+words, the imposts of the wealthy country were progressively decreased,
+while the imposts of the poor country were progressively raised. This
+distinction, no doubt, has been partly due to the fact that the population
+of Great Britain has been largely augmented, and the population of Ireland
+has been enormously reduced in numbers; the charge in Great Britain has
+been distributed among ever growing millions, the charge in Ireland has
+been concentrated upon ever lessening thousands; but this will not nearly
+account for the difference; 'the wealthier country' it has been
+caustically said, 'was taxed less and less as it became more wealthy; the
+poorer country was burdened more and more as its poverty increased.'[168]
+And the overcharge on Ireland is all the more grievous because it owed its
+origin to the policy of free trade; and this policy has been a
+questionable boon to Ireland, while to Great Britain it has been an
+immense benefit. No doubt the cheapening of the price of the necessaries
+and of some of the conveniences of life, which has been one of the results
+of free trade, has been a great advantage to the Irish labourer, artisan,
+and mere cottar peasant; but free trade has been injurious to the real
+Irish farmer and the Irish landlord, and to most of the classes connected
+with the land; and the land is the main source of the scanty wealth of
+Ireland. Free trade, on the other hand, has been a principal cause of the
+extraordinary development of the material welfare of England which has
+been witnessed during the last fifty years; it has doubled and trebled her
+gigantic manufactures and trade, if her agriculture is by no means
+flourishing. This striking contrast gives pain to right-minded Irishmen;
+they feel, as Grattan predicted would be the case, that their country's
+interests have been sacrificed to British commerce; and the following
+observations are essentially true and just: 'The change' (from protection
+to free trade) 'has not been so advantageous to Ireland, a country in
+which there is but little trade or manufacturing industry, as it has been
+to England; although, as consumers, the Irish population may have gained
+in some cases by the abolition of the duties on foodstuffs, yet, on the
+other hand, as producers, chiefly dependent on agriculture, they have lost
+in a far greater degree by the cheap prices in the British markets,
+produced, in part at least, by the free and untaxed supply of foreign
+corn, live stock, dead meat, butter, cheese, eggs, and other articles of
+food.... It may even perhaps be said that just as Ireland suffered in the
+last century from the protective and exclusive commercial policy of Great
+Britain, so she has been at a disadvantage in this century from the
+adoption of an almost unqualified free trade policy for the United
+Kingdom.'[169]
+
+Many attempts, I have said, have been made to answer the conclusive Report
+of the Childers Commission, to carp at its proceedings, to challenge its
+statements, to deny that Ireland has been largely overtaxed; but, with
+scarcely an exception, they have been grotesque failures. I need hardly
+notice an audacious sally, which has been turned to account in the House
+of Commons, and has split the ears of the groundlings in different parts
+of England. England, the argument runs, has been too kind to Ireland;
+Ireland pays no land tax and sundry other duties; in other respects she is
+equally taxed with Great Britain; she has not even a semblance of a real
+complaint; and--exactly in the manner of Swift's satire--'let her hold her
+tongue, or it may be the worse for her.' Ireland, no doubt, 'assimilated
+as she has been in finance,' is free from some charges imposed on England;
+she has still 'exemptions and abatements' which, to some extent, preserve
+her rights under the Treaty of Union, and show that she is still
+financially a distinct country, as has been recognised by every leading
+British statesman, from the day of Pitt to the day of Mr. Gladstone. But
+the English land tax, properly speaking, is not a tax at all; it is a
+rent-charge for centuries payable by the land; at all events, the Irish
+Crown and quit rents may be set off against it; and, as to the other taxes
+referred to, the cost of collection in Ireland would exceed the returns;
+it would be a case of _in Thesauro nihil_, as in Plantagenet times.
+Another argument, of which the late Mr. Lowe was the author, is more
+plausible, and has done better service; but it is not the less shallow
+and false sophistry, when brought to the test. Taxation, it is said, falls
+on populations only; it is sheer nonsense to say that it falls on
+countries; it is not levied from Great Britain and Ireland; it is levied
+from the inhabitants within their borders. But the Englishman, the
+Scotsman, and the Irishman are equally taxed; the Irishman, indeed, has a
+small advantage; equality of taxation is the rule in this matter; and
+obviously equality is the same thing as equity. An English landlord in
+Kent, a Scotch landlord in Perthshire, an Irish landlord in Kildare, pay
+the same income tax on the same rentals; so does a merchant in London, a
+merchant in Edinburgh, a merchant in Belfast, on the same profits; and the
+same principle extends to all other classes. A farmer in Surrey, a crofter
+in Argyleshire, a shopkeeper in Galway, pay exactly the same tax on a
+gallon of rum, a gallon of whiskey, a hogshead of beer; the charge is the
+same for each commodity in the three households. This Irish grievance,
+therefore, is a mere delusion; it is a sickly phantom that vanishes in the
+light of the day.
+
+That taxation falls on populations and not on areas of land is a truism
+really never disputed; the use of the word 'countries,' in this sense, is
+a mere popular phrase. This argument keeps out of sight the fact that
+equal taxes, however equally imposed, are much heavier in the case of a
+poor than of a rich community; but, waiving this objection, it is a sheer
+fallacy. If two populations had exactly the same tastes, used the same
+commodities in the same proportions, and were in the possession of the
+same resources; equality of taxation, if equally applied, would probably
+be essentially just. But if two populations have different tastes, if they
+differ in the use of even the same commodities, and if their resources are
+very different, and especially if equal taxation be not equally applied,
+this apparent equality, far from being equity, may become plain, nay, very
+grave iniquity. This may be made intelligible, at a glance, by the
+consideration of a few instances easily conceived. Impose an equal tax on
+coals in England and Ireland: would the charge fall equally on Englishmen
+in a land of coal and on Irishmen in a land of peat mosses? Tax Londoners
+and Parisians at the same rate on coffee: would the Londoner, who drinks
+comparatively little coffee, be as heavily mulcted as the Parisian, who
+drinks a great deal? Or suppose that light taxes were laid on articles
+that suit Englishmen, and enter into the consumption of the millions of
+England, and that heavy taxes were laid on articles that suit Irishmen,
+and are consumed by the Irish millions: would not this system favour
+Englishmen, and injure Irishmen, though the taxes on all these articles
+were the same in both countries? Examples by the hundred might be brought
+forward; these suffice to prove that equality of taxation, as between
+communities, differing from each other in the conditions and circumstances
+of life, and notably if the incidence of this taxation is not the same,
+may be made to effect the grossest injustice. And this financial wrong has
+been done, to a very great extent, if we compare the taxation of Great
+Britain and Ireland. The consumption of tea and tobacco by the head is
+nearly the same in both countries; the taxes on these commodities are the
+same; admit that this is equitable in a certain sense, though the impost
+is relatively more burdensome on the poor community. The consumption of
+spirits by the head, also, is much the same for the Three Kingdoms; the
+taxation is precisely the same; this, for the sake of argument, I will
+call justice. But the consumption of beer by the head in Great Britain is
+about double what it is in Ireland; probably ten Englishmen drink beer
+compared to one Irishman; whiskey is the ordinary spirituous drink of
+Irishmen. Now, the taxes on beer and on whiskey are the same in Great
+Britain and Ireland; but the tax on beer, measured by the alcoholic
+standard, is about six times lower than the tax on whiskey;[170] beer,
+therefore, compared with whiskey is greatly undertaxed; whiskey compared
+with beer is greatly overtaxed; the ordinary drink of Englishmen is
+treated differently from the ordinary drink of Irishmen, one being
+encouraged, the other discouraged; though the taxes on each commodity may
+be everywhere the same, the equality of taxation manifestly results in
+wrong. The difference amounts to a very large sum; it is one of the causes
+that Ireland is overtaxed.[171]
+
+Equality of taxation may, therefore, be not equity; it may, as I have
+said, be sheer iniquity; and this is emphatically the case with respect to
+Ireland. This system is productive of gross injustice as regards what may
+be deemed the popular Irish drink; but arguments to support it have not
+been wanting; they have been complacently gulped down at several public
+meetings, it is unnecessary to add within the borders of England. The
+'mere Irish,' it is said, have shocking bad tastes; let them take beer
+instead of whiskey and they can have no grievance; besides, whiskey is a
+nasty and unwholesome thing; it is in mercy to them that it is excessively
+taxed. Is it possible that people who utter this stuff do not see that
+sumptuary legislation of extreme harshness, nay, persecution of the worst
+kind, may be justified on the same class of premises? Suppose that
+Napoleon, in the plenitude of his power, had declared that the Parisians
+did not know what was good for them, and had heavily taxed their coffee to
+make them drink tea, even Austerlitz would not have saved the Empire.
+Marie Antoinette actually made an attempt to banish from her Court the
+velvets and silks of Lyons, and to make it adopt the cambrics and muslins
+of Belgium; she would have been too glad to see the first taxed and the
+second duty free, for she thought the French taste for heavy and gorgeous
+apparel bad; she only aroused the indignation of Versailles. Or say that
+the priests of the Jove of the Capitol had argued in this way: 'Really
+these detestable Christians are fools for worshipping a crucified Jew;
+they have only to bow down to Cæsar to escape the lions; otherwise they
+have themselves alone to blame.' Nay, coming nearer home, might not a holy
+prelate of the Irish Established Church in the eighteenth century have
+reconciled the penal code to his conscience, by whispering to himself that
+the deluded Papists had but to give up their vain superstitions, and to
+conform to the pure well of faith that had its source in the Castle, and
+that then they would be no longer outlaws; but let them take the
+consequences if they were blind to their best interests on earth and in
+heaven. In fact, any act of despotism on the part of the State might be
+vindicated on these very laudable principles; but on this matter of the
+taxation of Irish whiskey I shall confine myself to a single remark.
+Reverse the cases of England and Ireland with respect to the imposts on
+beer and on whiskey; tax beer very heavily and whiskey very lightly; and
+what would Englishmen say of an argument that has been thought good enough
+for Irishmen; how long would a Government exist that would try to carry
+out such a policy? In truth, this reasoning, if it can be so called, is
+the worst kind of sophistry: the frank brutality of the Roman proconsul,
+who told the population of a subject province that they must endure their
+burdens as they would endure the rain and the tempest, is less censurable,
+to my mind at least, than this compound of absurd and offensive insolence.
+
+Another argument, really of no greater value, has had many supporters in
+the House of Commons. True it is, it is admitted, that, compared with
+Great Britain, Ireland has been hardly treated in finance; but this is
+because she is a poor country, and a poor country must suffer from
+taxation, fair as it may be, more than a wealthy country. But the same
+inequality is seen in England: Dorset and Wiltshire are more heavily
+burdened than Yorkshire and Lancashire, yet Dorset and Wiltshire make no
+complaints as Ireland does. This argument, however, ignores history, and
+sets the Treaty of Union at nought; Dorset and Wiltshire are mere
+fractions of England; Ireland has always been financially a distinct
+country, entitled to separate financial rights; and this has been
+recognised by the ablest British statesmen, notably, of late years, by Mr.
+Goschen, and by Mr. Gladstone. This reasoning, in a word, assumes that
+Ireland is merely an aggregate of British counties; but this has never
+been her true financial position; it is easy to sneer at the phrase
+'separate entity' by which she has been called, that is, a land,
+financially, apart from Great Britain, but sneers cannot get the better of
+facts. These statements of distinguished English experts are
+unquestionable in view of the record of history. Lord Farrer has remarked:
+'It is abundantly clear that of the two conflicting theories--viz. the one
+which regards Great Britain and Ireland as one country for the purpose of
+taxation and expenditure, and the other which regards Great Britain and
+Ireland as separate partners--the second is the one upon which our
+instructions are founded; the one which has the greatest support in
+history, and the one upon which all parties in Parliament have recently
+acted.'[172] And Mr. Childers completely concurs: 'If apart from the
+reference, it is asked why a distinction should be taken between Great
+Britain and Ireland any more than between Kent and Yorkshire, the answer
+is that Ireland entered into a partnership with Great Britain under a
+formal Treaty of Union, which did, to a certain extent, by the recognition
+of the claim of Ireland to abatements and exemptions, if circumstances
+should require, maintain the position of Ireland as entitled to separate
+treatment as a whole, so far as relates to taxation. It must also be
+recollected that, as a matter of fact, Ireland has, at all times since the
+Union, in various degrees received such separate treatment. Ireland,
+therefore, cannot be regarded as merely a group of counties of the United
+Kingdom.'[173]
+
+Two other arguments may be ascribed to the ingenuity, if this is the true
+word, of the Treasury; but the first rests on a gross misrepresentation of
+fact, the other upon a false theory; both, with a slight reservation, may
+be dismissed as hopeless. Ireland, it is said, may possibly be
+overtaxed--admit this for the sake of argument--but she has had more than
+her fair share of loans from the State; a considerable part of these has
+been freely remitted; this has not been the case in England and Scotland;
+a large counterclaim, therefore, may be made against her. 'Out of a total
+sum of about one hundred and nineteen millions and a half advanced in the
+United Kingdom, a little over fifty-two millions, or 43.7 per cent., has
+been advanced to Ireland, and of this, so large a proportion as one-fifth,
+or over ten millions, had to be remitted, or treated as a free grant,
+whilst only one fifty-eighth part of the advances made to Great Britain
+were so treated.'[174] So far as these loans have been advances for the
+real good of Ireland, for example, for the promotion of reproductive
+works-these may fairly be taken into account; but millions have been
+misapplied and wasted or spent in the unproductive relief of
+distress;[175] these sums probably are greater than the excess made out by
+the Treasury. As regards the remission of the £10,000,000, the assertion
+relied on is simply deceptive. Not less than £4,000,000 of this sum
+represent the fund the extinction of which was the consideration of
+putting the income tax on Ireland by Mr. Gladstone; and, as the charge of
+that tax has been since more than £23,000,000, it savours of impudence to
+call this a remission; it was writing off a doubtful debt to justify a new
+and portentous burden. The residue of the £10,000,000 is composed of
+advances that have been misspent or spent on purposes really not Irish;
+these were not remitted in the proper acceptation of the word. 'The
+remaining portion of the ten millions of alleged remissions of loans
+consists mainly of remissions of the repayment of expenditure by the Board
+of Works, where it was shown that such expenditure had been wasteful, and
+of advances to the clergy and laity of the Established Church of Ireland,
+which advances Parliament, by legislation, deprived them of the ability of
+repaying. Altogether it would appear, from Sir Edward Hamilton's evidence,
+that in reality only about one million out of the ten corresponded in
+their character to the advances made to Great Britain, and that
+consequently the proportion of real remissions of loans to Ireland did not
+differ very materially from that of the proportion of the remission in
+Great Britain.'
+
+The second argument appears to be more plausible; but it is mischievous,
+in a high degree, and dangerous; except to a slight extent, it is
+completely fallacious. Ireland, it is allowed, contributes from £7,300,000
+to £7,800,000 to the exchequer; but of this sum £5,000,000 and upwards are
+expended on her; she really hardly pays £2,000,000 to the State; the
+£5,000,000 therefore, or nearly all this sum, create a just counterclaim
+against her, even admitting she is excessively taxed. This expenditure on
+Ireland, it is contended, is for Irish 'local' purposes; it is not
+expenditure for 'Imperial' purposes; the account, as between Great Britain
+and Ireland, is to be taken as if all this expenditure, or nearly so, were
+purely local. But is not the expenditure for keeping up the
+Lord-Lieutenant and his Court, is not the expenditure on the government
+and administration of Ireland, essentially, and in the main, Imperial, and
+not local in a legitimate sense, so long as the United Kingdom exists? Is
+it not as Imperial, at least for the most part, as the expenditure on the
+British army and navy and on the government and administration of England
+and Scotland is Imperial, and not, properly speaking, local? This argument
+could be retorted with decisive effect, if urged in the interest of
+Ireland against Great Britain. If this kind of expenditure in Ireland is
+held to be local, not Imperial, the same rule must apply to England and
+Scotland; this expenditure in their case must be local and not Imperial.
+Why, then, should Ireland contribute to such charges as public works in
+Edinburgh and London, as the maintenance of the great English dockyards
+and harbours, as the cost of the army and navy outside Ireland, and of the
+government and administration of England and Scotland? Clearly on the
+Treasury hypothesis she should not contribute; and if she does, she has an
+immense counterclaim, so far as her contributions are applied to these
+local objects. But, in truth, this whole argument, when examined, is a
+mere sophism. The revenues of the Three Kingdoms are paid into a common
+exchequer; they are distributed according to the uses of the State; this
+expenditure, as a general rule, must be held to be Imperial, not local,
+and cannot give a part of the Three Kingdoms a right to make a claim
+against another. The State spends millions on London which it does not
+spend on Surrey; it spends millions in Hants which it does not spend in
+Berkshire: does this circumstance give Surrey or Berkshire a title to say
+we can make a demand on London and Hants? Precisely in the same way, the
+expenditure of the State on Ireland, as contra-distinguished from that on
+Great Britain, cannot, at least as a general principle, give Great Britain
+a right to make a counterclaim on Ireland.
+
+It is unnecessary to point out how this theory has a tendency to create
+local and even national ill-will; to set parts of one country against
+other parts, and two countries against each other; it distinctly alienates
+Ireland from Great Britain; as I have said, it is full of mischief and
+peril. In truth, however, it is a mere device to excuse the overcharge of
+Irish taxation; it has never entered the minds of statesmen. Nothing can
+be more certain than that every great British financier, from the day of
+Pitt to the day of Peel, and to the day of Mr. Gladstone, has regarded the
+expenditure of the Three Kingdoms, as this is paid into a common
+exchequer, as a general fund to be allocated as the State requires; and
+has not regarded it as a fund, under local heads, to be laid out in
+separate districts, so as to give any one district a counterclaim against
+another. I quote from a report of one of the members of the Childers
+Commissions: 'A division of the expenditure of the United Kingdom into
+"charge for Irish purposes" and "Imperial expenditure," cannot be made
+under the system of finance embodied in the constitution established by
+the Legislative Union. All expenditure under that system is "expenditure
+of the United Kingdom," or, to express it more briefly, "Imperial
+expenditure;" and all Imperial expenditure is defrayed from the common
+fund of the Imperial Exchequer. If a part of the Imperial expenditure be
+described as a charge "for Irish purposes," this classification does not
+affect the fact that it is Imperial expenditure, and charged as such upon
+the whole Imperial revenue. To regard this expenditure as non-Imperial, to
+deduct it from the particular revenue contributed by Ireland to Imperial
+expenditure, to treat the fraction of Irish revenue left as if it were the
+whole of the Irish contribution to Imperial expenditure, and to regard
+Imperial expenditure itself as not including "the charge for Irish
+purposes," would be to do what the Constitution does not sanction: it
+would be to deal with the revenue and expenditure of the United Kingdom as
+if the revenues of Great Britain and Ireland were raised and administered
+by separate authorities, each of which, having first, out of its own
+revenue, defrayed its separate charges, then applied the balance to
+payment of common expenses, which, in that case, would be properly
+classified as Imperial.'[176] And the evidence of Sir Robert Giffen is to
+the same effect: 'The opinion which I have formed is that, on the whole,
+it is not possible to make the distinction between the different objects
+of Imperial expenditure which is made in some of these discussions; that,
+in fact, all the expenditure by an Imperial Government is to be considered
+expenditure for Imperial purposes, and although part of it may be spent
+locally, you cannot in any way call it expenditure for the special benefit
+of that locality. It is expenditure for the general objects of the
+Imperial Government.'[177]
+
+The theory of the Treasury is thus essentially false; but accidentally, it
+contains, I think, a residuum of truth. When, as between two countries,
+one pays a considerable sum, exclusively or mainly from local rates, and
+the same charge in the other country is for the most part defrayed from
+Imperial taxation by the State, it appears to me that a portion of the sum
+so paid by the State may give one country a counterclaim against the other
+to some extent. This is the case as between Great Britain and Ireland; the
+cost of national education and of the police force is largely discharged
+in Great Britain by local rates; in Ireland it amounts to about
+£2,700,000, and is mainly defrayed from Imperial taxes; this may create a
+counterclaim against Ireland within reasonable limits at least. No doubt
+the charge of bringing up the young of the poorer classes and of
+maintaining public order by a suitable force, ought largely to be an
+Imperial charge; but when in one community it is chiefly borne by local
+funds, and in another it is chiefly borne by the common Exchequer of both,
+this seems to give the first community a partial claim against the second.
+This counterclaim, such as it is, has been reckoned, in addition to a sum
+for free grants, at about £500,000 a year by the Childers Commission; but
+it did not thoroughly go into the subject; this estimate is believed to be
+too low by well-informed persons; the counterclaim has been calculated to
+be about £1,000,000 sterling. Lord Salisbury's Government, we have seen,
+promised to appoint a second Commission to examine this question at
+length, besides some other financial questions suggested by the Report of
+the Childers Commission; for some unknown reason it has not redeemed its
+pledge; it is very desirable that it should redeem it. Apart from the
+mischief of a delay approaching a breach of public faith, the only
+inference that can be drawn, if this promise is broken, is that the
+Government accepts the view in this matter of the Childers Commission.
+
+The Childers Commission has conclusively proved that Ireland is much too
+highly taxed; whatever counterclaim may be made against this excess, the
+overcharge can be little less than two millions a year. The arguments
+urged against this conclusion are mere leather and prunella that may be
+brushed aside; the Report of the Commission has had the sanction of nearly
+all economists of a high order. By all means let another Commission strike
+a balance after making every fair allowance; but if it shall be struck, as
+it must be in Ireland's favour, the only real question for impartial men
+will be how it shall be best discharged. Ireland has practically
+acquiesced for years in fiscal injustice; in any view of the case she has
+no right to call for a change in our whole system of finance for her
+special benefit. Still less has she a right to demand that her customs and
+excise duties should be placed at a lower level than those of Great
+Britain; this would raise a mischievous barrier between the two countries;
+this policy would be, perhaps, impossible; if possible, it would probably
+injure Ireland greatly in the long run. The only remaining alternative is
+to leave our existing fiscal system intact, but to make an annual grant
+from the exchequer for Irish uses, as compensation for excessive taxation;
+this has the support of the Childers Commission. 'The third method, and
+that which most strongly recommends itself to our judgment, is to give
+compensation to Ireland by making an annual allocation of revenue in their
+favour, to be employed in promoting the material prosperity and social
+welfare of the country.'[178] It is difficult to suppose, should a large
+yearly sum be found to be due to Ireland, as affairs now stand, that
+Parliament will refuse to pay honourably a just debt; it would be a
+shameful act to repudiate an obligation of the kind. Years ago Pitt
+declared in his characteristic style that 'Ireland might safely rely on
+Great Britain for the discharge of any fair claim on her; the liberality,
+the justice, the honour of the people of Great Britain have never been
+found deficient.' The time has come to test the value of this pledge; it
+has been announced by the highest authority, in which English opinion
+largely prevails, that Ireland has been immensely overtaxed for years:
+will the 'people of Great Britain' give effect to this judgment, and make
+good a claim which hardly admits of a doubt? The demand of Ireland, no
+doubt, is not sustained by violent agitation and the shouts of multitudes;
+but it is backed by all that is best in Irish opinion; it rests upon the
+simplest financial justice. It is dangerous to treat a demand such as this
+with contempt, and still more so with weak sophistry; not that Ireland can
+make an effective resistance to fiscal wrong, however clearly proved; and
+I for one deprecate rhodomontade about 'the Boston tea-ships.' But a claim
+may have great moral force, though it be not supported by physical power;
+the disregard of this claim would provoke well-informed Irishmen, and
+weaken the Union perhaps greatly; and, after all, is it a seemly sight, is
+it becoming in the eyes of the world, that the richest country in Europe
+should practically impose an iniquitous burden upon the poorest?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE QUESTIONS OF IRISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND EDUCATION--OTHER
+QUESTIONS--CONCLUSION
+
+    Irish county government--The grand jury system in the eighteenth
+    century--Its merits and defects--The grand jury system in the
+    nineteenth century, and especially since 1836--The Irish poor law
+    system--Elected and _ex-officio_ guardians--The local government of
+    cities and towns in Ireland--Municipal institutions founded in Ireland
+    by the Norman kings--Why they did not prosper--Boroughs and
+    municipalities founded by James I. and the Stuarts--Their condition in
+    the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries--The Municipal Reform Act of
+    1840--The Towns Commissioners Acts--Attempts to reform the municipal
+    system of local government in Ireland--The Local Government of Ireland
+    Act, 1898--Complete change in Irish local government--The County
+    Councils--The County Borough Councils--The District, Rural, and the
+    Urban District Councils--Their functions, rights, and duties--All
+    these bodies placed on a democratic basis--Attitude of the County
+    Councils in the southern provinces--Education in Ireland--History of
+    primary education--The national system of education--The principles on
+    which it is founded--How it has worked, and what its results have
+    been--Secondary education in Ireland--Its history--Its present
+    condition very imperfect--The Intermediate Education Act--University
+    education in Ireland--Its history--Trinity College--The Queen's
+    Colleges and the Queen's University founded by Peel--Their comparative
+    failure--Mr. Gladstone's Bill to reform University education in
+    Ireland--Its glaring errors and failure--Trinity College thrown open
+    in 1873--The Royal University founded in 1879--Present state of
+    University education in Ireland--The true principles of reform--Other
+    Irish questions--Conclusion.
+
+
+That local government in Ireland should still be a 'Present Irish
+Question,' may appear strange to persons only versed in the mere routine
+of politics. The subject has been before Parliament for nearly thirty
+years; it has engaged the attention of more than one of its Committees;
+Butt endeavoured, to no purpose, to legislate on it. In 1892 Lord
+Salisbury's Government brought in a measure which aimed at transforming
+the whole system of administering local affairs in Ireland; but it had
+unquestionable defects and was vehemently opposed; unfortunately, as I
+believe, it was permitted to drop. Six years afterwards, that is, in 1898,
+the greater part of a parliamentary session was employed in dealing with
+the question again; a Bill became law which placed Irish local government,
+in all its departments, upon a new basis, and completely changed the
+characteristics it had had for centuries. The measure was to be a _ne plus
+ultra_; it was extolled by applauding partisans as a magnificent scheme of
+popular reform; these have since, over and over again, declared that its
+success has been more than manifest. It is too soon to pronounce, with
+anything like confidence, on what its ultimate results may be, or even to
+say, with certainty, how it will practically work; but enough has already
+been made apparent to cause thoughtful and fair-minded Irishmen to regard
+the changes it has effected with grave misgivings; to question the
+principles on which it rests, or at least the wisdom of applying them to
+Ireland as she now is; and to ask whether it must not be amended if the
+social structure of Ireland is not to be still more violently disturbed,
+than it has been by the experiments that have been made on it. Besides,
+the local government and administration of every community, especially if
+formed on a popular type, affect its existence in many ways; strongly
+indicate what its opinions are, what its qualities, what its evident
+tendencies; in a word, largely represent its essential nature. It was not
+for nothing that in his survey of the Revolution in France, Burke did not
+confine himself to the sovereign assembly at Versailles, but turned his
+penetrating glance on the petty assemblies which had been set up in the
+new-made departments, for the conduct of their local affairs; these, he
+insisted, formed the truest expression of the mind of the people and of
+the leaders at its head. For these reasons, therefore, if we would
+understand Ireland, her local government is a 'Present Irish Question;' it
+is a question, moreover, which, whatever may be said, in all probability
+has not been finally settled.
+
+In order to understand the subject, I must glance at the system of Irish
+local government, as this existed until, as it were, yesterday; I turn, in
+the first instance, to Irish county government. The beginnings of this
+scheme have been traced back to the time of Strafford; but it was not
+finally established until the reign of William III., when the subjugation
+of Ireland had been made complete. The Irish grand juries always had
+criminal jurisdiction in their countries like their English fellows; but
+unlike these they were now entrusted with almost absolute control over
+Irish county government. This was partly because they were representatives
+of the conquering race, by this time the owners of nine-tenths of the
+lands of the country; and partly because there was no local organisation
+in Ireland, like the English parish, which could give local influence to
+the conquered race. The grand juries were always composed of the leading
+landed gentry of their respective counties; they were nominated by the
+sheriffs, that is, by officials of the Central Government; they were
+wholly devoid of a popular element; and as no Catholic could have a share
+in their councils, until nearly the end of the eighteenth century, they
+embodied, in the fullest sense, the Protestant ascendency of the day,
+supreme in every sphere of authority in the State. The grand juries had
+almost the exclusive power of administering the local affairs of their
+counties, of managing their roads, public buildings, and police; and they
+levied the charges for these by a local rate, known as the county cess to
+this hour, and imposed almost wholly on the occupiers of the soil, that
+is, in five cases out of six on the Catholic peasantry, a striking
+instance of taxation without representation to check it. These assemblies
+of local magnates met twice a year at the assizes which were held in their
+counties. Miss Edgeworth has given us graphic accounts of them: how a seat
+on a grand jury was deemed a prize to be sometimes fought for; how the
+grand juries entertained the judges in state, and vied with these sages in
+their mighty potations; and how, while wretches were hanged and jurymen
+dined, the assize towns were scenes of not fastidious revelry. There was
+much jobbing, corruption, and waste in the administration of the counties
+in those days; much of the 'scratch me, and I will scratch you;' much
+'give and take' at the cost of the ratepayers. But there was another and
+better side to the picture: the Irish gentry of the time had the faculty
+of command; they ruled their districts efficiently with their police; the
+public works for which they were responsible were usually good. Arthur
+Young has especially noticed that the roads they constructed were almost
+always well laid out and kept up.
+
+Catholics were not admitted on grand juries until the great Relief Act of
+1793, the first general relaxation of the execrable penal code. But the
+Catholic members of these bodies have always been few; the large majority
+of the Irish landlords remains still Protestant. The bureaucracy of the
+Castle, after the Union, began to encroach on the domain of the grand
+juries; at the same time the growing needs of the country made the
+expenditure on local affairs much larger. The grand juries lost much of
+their authority by degrees; they were more and more controlled by the
+Central Government, which supplanted them in a variety of ways; and they
+were ere long compelled to vote sums for public works of different kinds
+for the behoof of their counties. This change effectually checked
+corruption and jobbing; but as the requirements of the counties
+increased, and the 'imperative presentments,' as they were called, were
+augmented, the charge of the local rate or county cess became more
+onerous--it has advanced enormously in the last sixty years; and this was
+still mainly imposed on the Catholic peasantry. The civil or fiscal
+administration, which the grand juries possessed until 1898, was finally
+arranged by an Act of Parliament passed in 1836,[179] supplemented, from
+time to time, by subsequent statutes. These bodies were composed of the
+same elements, and nominated by the sheriffs as before; and they had a
+general supervision over all the public works, roads, bridges, and
+buildings for public purposes, comprised within their different counties,
+including within these areas nearly all villages, and the large majority
+of the lesser towns. But they were made strictly dependent on the Central
+Government; this had the appointment of their chief officers; their
+accounts were subjected to a regular audit; and their 'imperative
+presentments' were largely extended. They acquired, too, an additional
+jurisdiction in some respects, especially as regards inquiries into
+criminal injuries and compensating persons who had been sufferers, and as
+regards voting an extra police force in disturbed districts; but their old
+local police had disappeared, and had been replaced by the great central
+constabulary force. A change, too, was effected in the modes through which
+local rates were voted in the counties for public purposes. These sums
+were 'presented' in the first instance at 'baronial' and 'county at large'
+sessions, held by county justices and ratepayers of substance; but these
+bodies were subordinate to the grand juries, and to a considerable extent
+drawn from the same classes; no popular element was infused in county
+government, and the grand juries were, in the last resort, supreme, within
+the limits which had been assigned to them. The local expenditure voted
+and assessed in this way was subject to examination by a judge of assize,
+who 'fiated' it, as a general rule; and ratepayers had a right to
+challenge it, by a procedure called 'a traverse,' which, however, was
+seldom turned to account.
+
+The Irish grand juries were thus oligarchic bodies, survivals of the
+Protestant ascendency of a bygone age, and with a tendency, in their later
+history, to become subordinate boards of the Castle. I pass on to the
+Irish poor law system, another considerable department of Irish local
+government. As we have seen, unlike what had been the case in England, no
+poor law existed in Ireland until 1838; the want of such a measure was one
+of the causes of the pressure of a huge mass of indigence on the soil
+before the catastrophe of 1845-47. The Irish poor law, with some marked
+distinctions, was analogous to the new English poor law, as it has long
+been called; it has now been in operation for about sixty years. The
+country was divided into a series of unions, which have varied from 130 to
+163 in number; at present there are 159 of these; these were the principal
+units for carrying the poor law system into effect. The unions were again
+subdivided into lesser districts, electoral divisions for the county,
+wards for the larger towns; the persons chosen to administer the poor law
+were taken from these areas; and the unions and all that pertained to them
+were placed under the control of the Central Government, represented by
+the Local Government Board of Ireland. The persons returned from the
+electoral divisions and the wards were selected by the votes of the
+ratepayers, and were known as the elected guardians; a popular element was
+thus introduced into the administration of the law, which had never been
+introduced into Irish county government. The vote of the ratepayers,
+however, was cumulative, not single; the largest ratepayers had the most
+votes, a safeguard, it has been assumed, for property; and the elected
+guardians, in theory at least, were balanced by an equal number of
+_ex-officio_ guardians, composed of magistrates within the unions. The
+chief duties of the elected and the _ex-officio_ guardians, collectively
+known as Boards of Guardians, were to provide for the wants of the poor,
+and to assess and levy poor rates for that purpose; but many other duties
+were gradually imposed on them, the principal of these being the care of
+the sanitary state of the lesser towns within their districts. There was a
+marked difference between the incidence of the poor rate and of the county
+rate, or cess, of the grand juries. The county cess, we have seen, was
+mainly a charge on the Catholic occupiers of the soil, the poor rate was,
+to a very considerable extent, a charge on the owners, for the most part
+Protestants; for the landlord was bound to pay the whole poor rate in the
+case of the pettiest holdings, and to allow his tenants half the poor rate
+in the case of other holdings; by these means the burden of at least half
+the poor rate, it is believed, was borne by the Irish landed gentry. It
+should be added that the elected guardians have practically had the
+administration of the poor law in their hands; the _ex-officio_ guardians,
+especially of late years, took little part in it.[180]
+
+I turn from the administration of local rural affairs in Ireland to that
+of its chief cities and its towns. The Irish towns, conquered and settled
+by the Danes, had, perhaps, a kind of municipal government; the
+Plantagenet kings conferred municipal rights as freely in Ireland as they
+did in England. Thus Dublin received a charter from John, modelled on that
+of his 'liegemen of Bristol;' Limerick, Waterford, Kilkenny, and several
+other towns were incorporated and given powers of self-government at
+different periods of the Middle Ages. But the municipal life and the
+municipal spirit which grew up and gained strength in the thriving towns
+of England, and secured for them a large measure of local liberty, had
+hardly any existence in a land like Ireland, distracted by feudal and
+tribal anarchy; the corporate cities and towns of Ireland fell into the
+hands of great Anglo-Norman nobles and Celtic chiefs, and seem to have all
+but lost their local franchises. During the long agony of the sixteenth
+century, when Ireland was devastated by a horrible strife of race and
+faith, these privileges were still further effaced; at the death of
+Elizabeth the Irish municipal centres, with the exception of the capital,
+were mere names and shadows. A great change took place when the subjugated
+land passed under the domination of the first Stuarts. English law was now
+extended over the whole of Ireland; a colonial caste of settlers was
+becoming lords of the soil; the Government was conducted by the men at the
+Castle, ruling through a Parliament largely composed of the new settlers.
+James I. created forty-six Irish boroughs with a stroke of the pen, and
+gave them a representation in the Parliament and municipal rights; but
+these, for the most part, were mere villages; they obtained their large
+privileges solely in order to support 'the English interest,' as it was
+called, in the Irish House of Commons. This system was continued by the
+later Stuarts; besides Dublin and the larger towns of Ireland, there were
+about a hundred of these petty municipalities and parliamentary boroughs
+in the eighteenth century. These places, however, could have no municipal
+freedom, and were wholly devoid of municipal feeling; they became nearly
+all the mere appanages of the neighbouring leading families; and, with
+hardly an exception, they were extreme types of the Protestant ascendency
+which prevailed everywhere. Something of the same kind was witnessed in
+England, under the aristocratic rule of that age, but there was the
+difference between a sorry caricature and a picture; the great cities and
+the better towns of England still retained an ample measure of municipal
+liberty, and, especially, did not lose the municipal spirit; the exact
+contrary was the case in Ireland.
+
+A large majority of the little Irish boroughs were deprived of their
+parliamentary representation at the Union, but they retained their nominal
+municipal rights. They still remained under the control of the chief
+landed gentry; and they became, as indeed they had always been, centres of
+maladministration, corruption, and peculation of all kinds. When, after
+the passing of the great Reform Act of 1832, statesmen directed their
+minds to the questions of corporate and municipal reform in England, they
+naturally turned their minds to Ireland also, where this reform was
+notoriously still more imperative. After the publication of a masterly
+report in 1834-35, which thoroughly illustrated the whole subject, the
+abuses in the Irish corporations were shown to be such--they were enormous
+even in the cities and larger towns--that Peel, the leader of the
+Opposition, actually gave them up; he proposed to deprive the corporate
+towns of all municipal rights and franchises, and to place them under the
+authority of Commissioners appointed by the Crown. This plan, however, was
+rejected by the Melbourne Government, and was not sanctioned by the House
+of Commons; after a long and angry controversy, which continued for years,
+a measure became law as late as 1840; and by this, with the exception of
+ten, all the corporate towns of Ireland lost their municipal rights, and
+were thus left without any power of self-government. With respect even to
+the ten still enfranchised towns, their old privileges were greatly
+curtailed and were transferred to the Central Government; and their
+municipal liberties were restricted and narrowed. They retained, indeed,
+many rights of self-government; but the municipal franchise was placed at
+a high level; the great body of the townsmen did not possess it; and they
+were subject to the supervision of the Local Government Board, that is, of
+the Central Government, to a considerable extent at least. True municipal
+life, and the municipal sentiment, could not, therefore, become well
+developed, in the case of towns under such conditions; they showed but few
+symptoms of the wonderful growth of prosperity and power which has been
+such a marked feature in the history of the great corporate towns of
+England, in what may be called the Victorian age, though, no doubt, the
+cases were widely different--poor Ireland could not, in this respect,
+compete with wealthy and progressive England. The deficiency of corporate
+towns in Ireland was felt ere long to be such, that, in 1854, and
+subsequent years, municipal rights were, in some measure, extended to
+nearly a hundred of these towns. These places were governed by bodies
+called Town Commissioners elected by a kind of popular vote; but the
+authority of these bodies has never been large; the municipal franchise
+was very high; and these towns were also under the Irish Local Government
+Board.
+
+Municipal institutions, like others of English origin, had thus, from a
+variety of causes, when transferred to Ireland, only a stunted, imperfect,
+and maimed existence. We may briefly glance at the operation of the system
+of rural and urban local government, of which we have endeavoured to
+sketch the outlines. Except, perhaps, in the instance of criminal
+injuries, and of the compensation to be adjudged by them, where they did
+not always give proof of a judicial spirit, the grand juries, for upwards
+of two generations, administered county affairs very well; they were
+economical, prudent, and jealous of expense, if the public buildings they
+sanctioned were, occasionally, too costly; but the system was an
+anachronism, and had had its day. In ordinary times the Irish poor law was
+reasonably well administered by the Boards of Guardians, as well,
+probably, as was the case in England; they were rather parsimonious in
+assessing rates, and gave little attention to the sanitary state of their
+towns, but, on the whole, there was not much cause to complain of them;
+and the Irish people, it must be recollected, have never liked the poor
+law. The local administration of the cities and the larger towns of
+Ireland was worse--a notable exception was seen in Belfast; but these, as
+a rule, gave proof of the restricted system on which their government had
+been formed; the results appeared in a high death rate, in bad supplies of
+water, in crowds of squalid and deserted dwellings--in a word, in
+stagnation and a want of progress, if other and powerful causes concurred.
+When the movement conducted by Parnell acquired strength, almost a
+revolution passed over the seats of Irish local government, where these,
+except in Ulster, possessed a popular element. Parnell called on the
+Boards of Guardians, the Corporations, and the Town Commissioners, in
+places where the 'people' had any effective voice, to rally round the Land
+and the National Leagues; he achieved remarkable success in the three
+provinces of the south. This was especially made manifest in the Boards of
+Guardians, composed largely of farmers of substance, and in which the
+_ex-officio_ guardians had little real power; these bodies set a crusade
+against the landed gentry on foot; marked them out for plunder in many
+ways; encouraged 'boycotting' and defiance of the law; gave a free rein to
+rebellious utterances of many kinds; and denounced Irish 'landlordism' and
+British rule in Ireland, as fiercely as they had been denounced at Land
+and National League gatherings.[181] The same phenomena appeared in many
+of the corporate and inferior towns: the Corporation of Dublin indulged in
+anti-British threats and speeches; the Corporation of Limerick refused to
+pay a lawful tax; the Corporation of Cork proclaimed itself supreme in a
+'rebel' city; the example was generally followed in the lesser towns of
+the south; in short, these bodies became centres of sedition, socialism,
+and resistance to the law, and widely disseminated their pernicious
+teaching. In fact, they made themselves agencies of the Land and the
+National Leagues; at the same time, in numerous instances, they set the
+authority of the Local Government Board at naught.[182]
+
+The system of Irish local government was obviously so defective, so
+antiquated, so contrary to the spirit of the age, that several attempts,
+we have seen, were made, long ago, to reform it. It has now been
+completely transformed on the principles applied to England and Scotland;
+the occasion of this transformation was somewhat singular. In 1896
+considerable relief was given, in England and Scotland, to the landed
+interest by a subvention made by the State, which defrayed half the charge
+of the local county rates, the depression of agriculture being so
+grievous; the justice of this measure was hardly disputed. But the Report
+of the Childers Commission, declaring that Ireland was greatly overtaxed,
+and had been for a long series of years, was published about the same
+time; the Government, probably because it had made up its mind not to
+countenance the report in any way, refused to extend the same relief to
+Ireland, although it was as much required--a decision that simply nothing
+could warrant. The indignation, however, expressed in Ireland, and the
+remonstrances even of the Ministerial Press, angrily as it had challenged
+the findings of the report, before long changed the Government's purpose;
+it was formally announced, in 1897, that Ireland would obtain the same
+boon as Great Britain, and, apparently, as a condition of this, that Irish
+local government was to be reformed. The measure of 1898 was the result of
+this compromise; the interdependence of two subjects, which have nothing
+in common, has made it not easy to interpret; but, as we shall see, its
+authors have provided, with skill, against one of the dangers the change
+involved, that is, the probability that it might expose the Irish landed
+gentry to predatory attacks. Before examining the recent law, I venture to
+make a single remark. The question of the alleviation of the charge of
+rates, a concession made to Ireland with bad grace, and made to England
+and Scotland as a matter of course, has nothing to do with the infinitely
+larger question of the excessive taxation imposed on Ireland; relief in
+the one case does not imply relief in the other; the two subjects are
+altogether distinct. It is essential carefully to keep this in mind, for
+attempts are being made to confuse the two questions, and
+characteristically to argue that Ireland ought to rest and be thankful,
+and not to say a word about her overtaxation, because, forsooth, in common
+with England and Scotland, she has received assistance as regards her
+local rates.
+
+The transformation which has been effected in Irish local government has
+completely changed the old order of things, and is of an extremely
+democratic character. County government has been taken from the grand
+juries, and has been extended to bodies known by the name of County
+Councils, recently formed in Great Britain. The County Councils proper are
+thirty-two in number, corresponding to the number of the Irish counties;
+they are popular assemblies in the fullest sense of the word. They are
+elected by the ratepayers of their districts, who possess the present
+extravagantly low suffrage; the right of election is also bestowed on
+women; and the protection of the cumulative vote has been removed; a
+cottar has the same voting power as a man of forty thousand a year. Any of
+these voters may have a seat in a County Council; the body, therefore, may
+be crowded with petty ratepayers; and women also may have seats. Three
+members of the grand jury, in each county, are entitled to sit in a County
+Council, but for a short time only--a provision intended to reconcile the
+old with the new; the County Councils are given a right to 'co-opt' a few
+members; and the heads of bodies subordinate to them have the privilege of
+taking part in their counsels. The rights and the responsibilities of the
+grand juries have, as a rule, been transferred to the County Councils,
+except in the instance of criminal injuries, and of determining
+compensation for these; this jurisdiction, subject to an appeal to a judge
+of assize, has been properly conferred on the County Court judges, for it
+is essentially of a judicial nature. The powers of the County Councils
+thus extend to the management and the supervision of the roads, bridges,
+and buildings for public purposes comprised within their counties, and
+also to the regulation of villages and petty towns; but, like the grand
+juries, they are subject to the same control of the Central Government;
+they must make 'imperative presentments' like the grand juries; and, as in
+the instance of the grand juries, subordinate bodies have the initiative
+in part of their duties. Their powers, however, have been made larger and
+wider than those of the grand juries; they have been given the right to
+assess and levy the poor rate in rural districts, the management of the
+asylums of the lunatic poor, an authority, in cases of exceptional
+distress, subject to the permission of the Local Government Board, to
+sanction relief to poor people out-of-doors, and several other powers of
+not much importance. It should be added that the County Councils are not
+restricted in any way by judge's 'fiats' and by 'traverses' as the grand
+juries were; these securities, such as they were, have disappeared; but
+their conduct may be controlled to a certain extent by the Superior Courts
+of Ireland, as that of most public bodies may be, if only through a
+tedious and costly procedure, and they are more or less under the
+authority of the Local Government Board.
+
+Six of the principal cities and towns of Ireland, Dublin, Belfast, Cork,
+Limerick, Londonderry, and Waterford, have been made distinct counties,
+with the appellation of County Boroughs. The scheme of County Councils has
+been applied to these also; the townsmen and townswomen have the same
+power of voting, and the same democratic suffrage as the counties proper;
+the borough assemblies may have the same kinds of members; but the titles
+of mayors, aldermen, and burgesses have been preserved, in recognition, so
+to speak, of strictly urban government. These bodies, which, it will be
+observed, are popular in the widest sense of the word, have the powers of
+grand juries within their respective spheres; but they retain besides
+their former administrative powers subject to the control of the Local
+Government Board; they have thus been changed from narrow and close
+oligarchies into democracies on the very broadest basis. The County
+Councils have under them two minor bodies, the Rural District Councils and
+the Urban District Councils, the characteristics of which may be briefly
+noticed. The sphere of the authority of the Rural District Council
+corresponds, for the most part, to the Poor Law Union; these councils are
+elected and constituted under the same conditions as the larger councils
+already described; they are, therefore, mere democracies in considerable
+numbers. The Rural District Councils are given the powers of the Baronial
+Presentment Sessions of the Grand Juries, that is, they may initiate
+proceedings as their predecessors did; they are made the sole guardians of
+the poor within their districts, the _ex-officio_ guardians having been
+abolished; their chairmen are members of the County Councils; it may be
+added here that rating for the poor has been extended generally over the
+union, not as hitherto confined to the electoral division and the ward, a
+questionable provision which will certainly increase the expenditure for
+the relief of poverty. The sphere of the authority of the Urban District
+Councils has been made that of the larger towns of Ireland, being sanitary
+areas within themselves; but power has been taken to increase the number
+of these towns, and this increase will be probably witnessed. The Urban
+District Councils resemble, in their mode of election and their
+constitution, the other assemblies, that is, they are democracies to the
+fullest extent; but they retain the names of Corporate or Town
+Commissioners towns, and of mayors, aldermen, and burgesses where they
+possessed these before. The powers of the Urban District Councils are
+those of the grand juries within the towns, except as respects the larger
+public buildings, which were formerly charged on 'the county at large;'
+these councils levy and assess the poor rate within their districts; and
+they retain the powers of urban government they formerly possessed. The
+Local Government Board has authority, also, over the Rural District and
+the Urban District Councils.
+
+The entire system of Irish local government has thus been placed on an
+extremely democratic basis, subject, however, to partial control by the
+Central Government. This revolution, for it has been nothing less, was
+obviously liable to be attended by the many mischiefs inseparable from a
+sudden transfer of enormous powers to local assemblies of the most popular
+type, to maladministration, waste, and extravagance, and, as especially
+would be the case in Ireland, to violent or insidious attacks on the
+landed gentry. The late measure has provided against these evils, if not
+completely or adequately, with ingenuity and skill. The relief of Irish
+agriculture was its first financial object; to effect this the county cess
+and the poor rate have been consolidated into a single charge; and half of
+this is to be defrayed by the State and appropriated to the relief of
+agricultural lands, towns and lands, within municipal limits, being
+excepted. The subvention is not to extend to sums payable in respect of
+criminal injuries, nor to sums payable in respect of extra police in
+disturbed districts; these charges are properly to be borne by local areas
+as before. The relief afforded is an annual sum of about £700,000; it is
+divided in tolerably equal shares between the owners and the occupiers of
+the soil, that is, between the landlords and tenants of Ireland; it is
+characteristic of Radical clamour, that a boon, the justice of which could
+not be disputed, was denounced as an 'infamous job' for the behoof of the
+Irish landed gentry. A powerful check has been placed on extravagance and
+waste, and on attempts to injure property in land, exposed, we have seen,
+to undoubted dangers. The relief afforded was calculated on the local
+expenditure for 1897, in the words of the law, 'the standard year;' it was
+regularly to be one-half of this sum. Should the local expenditure,
+therefore, in subsequent years, be in excess of that of the standard year,
+the proportionate value of the relief would fall; should it be a lesser
+amount, the value would rise. A strong restraint was thus imposed on
+attempts recklessly to job and waste local funds, and notably to plunder
+Irish landlords; but this restriction only applies to agricultural lands;
+it does not extend to property in towns; and it is difficult to say that
+it will always prove effective against democratic sentiment, passion, and
+greed. The extent of the relief afforded to Irish landlords differs widely
+as between landlords of different classes of tenants; landlords of mere
+cottars will get very little; landlords of farmers of substance will get
+much more; but it is unnecessary here to enlarge on this special
+subject.[183]
+
+This sweeping measure, in my judgment at least, might have been better
+framed to carry out its policy. Like much of the legislation of the
+Imperial Parliament, it has been fashioned too closely on the English
+model; it gives to a poor and backward country, not trained in
+self-government, local institutions naturally adapted only to an opulent
+and well-ordered country accustomed for centuries to local liberties.
+Having regard to the peculiar state of Ireland, it might have made the
+powers of local government it conferred larger, but it ought not to have
+been as purely democratic as it is; and it ought to have been accompanied
+by safeguards it does not possess. I would have been disposed to give the
+Irish County Councils a right to take evidence for private Bills on the
+spot; this, if transmitted to the Irish Privy Council, and considered by
+it, might be made the basis of reports by that body, which could be turned
+into Acts of Parliament, by a summary process, thus getting rid of great
+and useless expense, and silencing one of the few real arguments in favour
+of Home Rule. I would also have allowed the County Councils of different
+counties, in matters in which they had a common interest, say, in the
+drainage of some of the great Irish rivers, to carry out together public
+works of this kind, and to assess and levy rates for the purpose if, on
+consideration, this was deemed expedient; at present they have no
+authority like this; and such a power would, I think, be for the general
+good of Ireland. The County Councils, too, I believe, might be given a
+deliberative voice, in cases they have not at present; for example, should
+the rate-payers of any county make a demand for sectarian education,
+within its area, and declare themselves ready to pay a rate for it, the
+County Council should have a right to entertain the project, and to report
+on it to the Central Government. And I am convinced that members of the
+County Councils ought to have some seats on the Local Government Board,
+and on other boards now filled by the Castle bureaucracy; this would
+introduce a popular element into these bodies, and, in many ways, would be
+of real advantage. On the other hand, in the election and the constitution
+of the County and other Councils, democracy has simply been let run riot;
+and the resulting evils have already been made manifest. Illiterate
+persons ought not to have been qualified to be electors; the single should
+not have replaced the cumulative vote, property being thus deprived of its
+legitimate weight; above all, as is evident, security should have been
+taken that the landed gentry should have a proper representation on the
+County Councils. The authority, too, of the Superior Courts over all these
+assemblies should have been made more effective and less costly than it is
+at present; and that of the Local Government Board should have been better
+defined and increased. In all this province the checks possessed by the
+Central Government over these local democracies are not, I think,
+sufficient.
+
+It is impossible, I have remarked, to say with certainty what the end of
+this social revolution will be; but some of the results are, even now,
+apparent. There has, as yet, been little tendency in the local boards to
+waste, or to attempts to despoil the landed gentry; the check in this
+respect is of great force; but no one, I repeat, can predict what may be
+done under the influence of democratic sympathies, especially should the
+existing agitation acquire increased strength in Ireland. Some of the
+councils have been very fairly managed; a few others have been badly
+administered; as a rule, much time has been misspent in irrelevant talk;
+there has been a good deal of squabbling with the Local Government Board;
+but, on the whole, the local business of the counties and towns has been
+conducted as reasonably well as could be expected in the case of a new and
+immense experiment. But the consequences of giving raw democracies great
+and sudden power have already been made but too manifest, as persons, who
+knew Ireland, foresaw would happen. In parts of Ulster representatives of
+the landed gentry have been elected to the County Councils; property in
+these has still legitimate influence. But in Leinster, Munster, and
+Connaught, this order of men has been all but completely shut out from
+these boards; the land is not represented at all; this is an absolutely
+unnatural position of affairs, pregnant with many ills to the community as
+a whole. It is not only that the landed gentry have been deprived of an
+influence they ought to possess, in a society in any degree well ordered;
+this change has a tendency to make them more and more, what they have
+largely been made already, a privileged class without duties, akin to the
+old seigneurie of France, a state of things of which Tocqueville has
+powerfully described the evils. In the southern provinces, too, the new
+democracies, composed of Catholic 'Nationalists,' by large majorities,
+have driven loyal, and especially Protestant, men and women from local
+offices they had filled with credit, and this too at a considerable charge
+on the rates, a clear proof how no restraints can be wholly effective. But
+the main feature in the conduct of the County and other Councils is that
+in most parts of Ireland they have followed the advice given by Parnell to
+their weaker forerunners; they have made themselves agencies of the United
+Irish League, as boards before them were agencies of the Land and the
+National Leagues, and they have given but too ample proof of disaffection,
+disloyalty, and hatred of British rule. In some counties, the councils
+seized the court houses, and refused light and fire to the Superior and
+the County Court judges. Throughout the South of Ireland most of the
+boards vied with each other in wild expressions of sympathy with the
+Boers, and of hopes that disaster would befall the British army; many gave
+free voice to frankly rebellious language; many denounced Irishmen being
+recruited for the British army. Nor did these sinister exhibitions end
+here; some of these bodies went out of their way to sneer at their aged
+sovereign, when she paid last year her last visit to the Irish shores, to
+question her motives, to speak all kinds of evil; a few even refused to
+say a word of regret for her death, nay, indulged in language of scarcely
+veiled insult. These councils, in a word, in a number of instances, have
+shown a marked resemblance to the Assemblies of the Communes of Jacobin
+France, indignantly held up to execration by Burke; they have been petty
+nests of seditious agitation and clamour. It is at least well that this
+manner of men has not succeeded, in the great statesman's language, in
+'ascending from parochial tyranny to federal anarchy' and have warned us
+what would be the nature of a Home Rule Parliament.
+
+This scheme of local government must be given a trial; but ultimately it
+will have to be reformed, in a Conservative sense, if things in Ireland
+are not to be left upside down.[184] I turn to the subject of Irish
+education, which has been lately attracting much public attention.
+University education is the most prominent part of this question; but, in
+order to understand it, we must briefly consider the history of Irish
+education in all its branches. The first scheme of primary education in
+Ireland, of which we have a record--I pass over the traditions of the
+Middle Ages--was due to the policy of Henry VIII.; he procured an Act
+from the Irish Parliament, to the effect that elementary schools should be
+set up in different Irish parishes; but, true to the ideal of Tudor
+statesmen--an ideal, however, which he did not always pursue--he required
+that these should be 'English schools,' to teach the Irish poor 'the
+English language.' Many years passed before these schools were found
+beyond the borders of the Pale; but, as the march of conquest advanced,
+they existed in many Irish parishes; there were more than five hundred of
+them in 1810, the largest number probably they ever attained. These
+schools were originally intended to be open without distinction of creed;
+but, under the conditions of Irish history, they necessarily became
+confined to the lower Protestant classes; they were under the control of
+the clergy of the Established Church, and Catholic children were kept away
+from them. Elizabeth founded another class of schools, in part elementary,
+in part of a higher type; these were known as the Diocesan Irish Schools;
+but there seem never to have been more than sixteen of these; and they,
+too, became exclusively Protestant. To these schools should be added 'the
+English Erasmus Smith Schools,' as they were called, foundations grafted,
+so to speak, on grammar schools established by a wealthy Cromwellian
+settler; at one time they were more than one hundred in number; and if not
+wholly, they were nearly confined to Protestant children. A series of
+Reports of Commissions and other records show that the education afforded
+in all these schools was not what it ought to have been; but this was to
+be expected in the case of a country where Protestant ascendency was
+supreme, where all administration was selfish and corrupt, and where the
+schools were the monopoly of a fraction of the people only. As to the
+education of the Irish Catholic poor in these centuries, it was
+discouraged, and ultimately prohibited by the penal code; the Catholic
+child could not learn the rudiments in his own land; but in spite of
+this, 'hedge schools,' a significant name, grew up, in hundreds,
+throughout the country, in which, to adopt the words of Davis, a man of
+genius--
+
+  'Still crouching 'neath the sheltering hedge, or stretched on mountain
+        fern,
+  The teacher and his pupils met feloniously to learn.'
+
+As may, however, be supposed the instruction afforded in these schools was
+usually bad; throughout the eighteenth century and a part of the
+nineteenth, the young of Catholic Ireland were brought up in ignorance. In
+1733 an odious experiment was made, and continued for a long period, to
+cause education to wean the Catholic child from his faith. An institution,
+called the Charter School, was established; the object of its founders was
+to make 'the young of the Papists' Protestant, by attracting them to
+seminaries where they were kept apart from their parents and priests,
+boarded, lodged, and handed over to Protestant tradesmen; millions were
+spent in furthering a detestable policy, which literally set up Mammon
+against God. The Charter Schools, however, completely failed; they never
+had more than fourteen hundred pupils, and they became wretched Dotheboys
+Halls where cruel and pampered Squeerses, eating up funds set apart for
+education such as it was, starved and ill-treated children victims of
+every kind of disease.
+
+When the partial relaxation of the penal laws allowed the children of the
+Irish Catholics to be taught the rudiments, the 'Christian Brothers' began
+to found their schools, under the sanction of a Bull of Pius VI.; these
+schools, sectarian, like the genius of the Irish people, have, though
+receiving no endowment from the State, grown from small beginnings into a
+number of excellent Catholic schools. The Quakers in Ireland had
+established a few elementary schools before the Union; and so had the
+Presbyterians of Ulster. The Charter Schools lingered down to the year
+1832; they disappeared when their subsidies ceased; but the 'Incorporated
+Irish Society' is in possession of the lands they once held, and it
+supports a number of good Protestant schools. Primary education, however,
+in Ireland remained very backward; the Protestant schools did not
+flourish; the Catholic 'hedge schools' continued until the nineteenth
+century had far advanced. Attempts were made to promote Irish primary
+education, in different ways, after the Union; a Board of Commissioners of
+Education was appointed, and made valuable reports; but these efforts were
+of little avail for the benefit at least of the Catholic young; the
+schools thus established were all Protestant; and the evangelical
+movement, which was then powerful, made them proselytising with scarcely a
+single exception, a danger which the example of the Charter Schools had
+especially made the Catholic Irish priesthood dread. An institution,
+however, called the 'Kildare Place Schools' had, for a time, considerable
+success; these schools were thrown open to children of all creeds, and had
+the high approval of O'Connell himself; but it was one of the rules that
+the Bible should be read in the schools; they became proselytising in no
+doubtful sense, and ultimately they were tabooed by the Catholic
+priesthood. Primary education in Ireland was in this state, when the
+subject was taken up by Mr. Stanley, the Chief Secretary for Ireland of
+Lord Grey, and, in after years, the 'Rupert of Debate.' He founded in
+1831-34 what has ever since been known as the 'National System of
+Education' of an elementary kind in Ireland. The principles on which he
+proceeded were in accord with the somewhat shallow Liberalism of the day,
+but, it must be added, with the ideas of many enlightened Irishmen.
+Primary education was to be endowed by the State, but it was to be divided
+into two parts: secular instruction was to be given in the new schools to
+children assembled together to learn, and that without distinction of
+creed; but religious instruction was to be given to children kept apart,
+Protestants and Catholics being completely separate, by the pastors of
+their respective communions. By these means it was hoped that a sound
+system of primary education would be formed; that proselytising would be
+made impossible; and that the youth of the warring races and faiths of
+Ireland, under the influence of a common teaching, would be made gradually
+to forget the animosities of the past. The National Schools were to be the
+Lethe of Irish discords.
+
+I can barely glance at the chequered history of the institution which was
+thus established. The 'National System,' the name long in common use, was
+angrily condemned by the clergy of the Established Church of Ireland, and
+by a majority, perhaps, of the laity; this opposition was partly due to
+the spirit of an ascendency that would not brook equality; but it was
+largely to be ascribed to a higher motive. The new system, it was argued,
+cut education in two; the separation of what is secular from what is
+religious practically postpones what is divine to the human; and this is
+especially the case under the arrangements in force, for religious
+instruction in the schools may be a mere accident. The Irish Protestant
+clergy, and many other Protestants, have never taken to the National
+Schools; their sincerity is proved by the fact that a 'Church Education
+Society' exists, which, though depending on voluntary subscriptions alone,
+supports nearly two hundred exclusively Protestant schools. As for the
+Presbyterians of Ireland, the National system of education fell in with
+their views; its 'Liberalism' was congenial to them; but though schools of
+this type have flourished in Ulster, the Presbyterians have given a great
+deal of trouble to the Commissioners charged to carry out the law, and
+have shown much animosity to the Catholic Irish. The Irish Catholic
+priesthood at first accepted the National system almost with gratitude; it
+gave their flocks a rudimentary instruction they were much in need of; it
+seemed to provide against the proselytising they feared above all things;
+and during some years the heads of their Church in Ireland, for the most
+part not of the Ultramontane faith, were not indisposed to welcome a
+compromise. By degrees, however, opposition grew up in Catholic Ireland
+against the system; and, it must be allowed, not without reason. The
+Catholic element on the Commission was much too weak; the purely secular
+instruction in the schools was made partly religious, for books of a
+Protestant complexion found their way into them; a cry of Protestant
+proselytising was raised; and the National system was solemnly condemned
+in 1850, at the great Catholic Synod of Thurles, a sentence, however,
+which had no effect on the Government. But the real grievances of the
+Irish Catholics, in this matter, have nearly all been removed; the
+Catholic Commissioners have been made equal in number with the
+Presbyterian and Protestant; secular instruction in the schools has again
+been made strictly secular; attempts at proselytising have long been
+rendered impossible; it should be added--and this is very important--the
+Catholic priesthood have become the managers of a large majority of the
+schools. The system has certainly struck deep roots in Ireland; there are
+now nearly 9000 National Schools, endowed with about £1,300,000 by the
+State, and teaching nearly 800,000 pupils; they are supported by model and
+training schools, and have a large staff of competent teachers; the
+instruction they afford, if not remarkable, is, on the whole, sufficiently
+good. It may fairly be said that the National system has been a beneficent
+influence of the greatest value; light has shone on a people that once
+sate in darkness. The system, however, has become, insensibly, but
+greatly, changed; the National Schools have long been, for the most part,
+sectarian, that is, composed of Protestant or of Catholic children; the
+'mixed' schools, as they are called, are comparatively few. But the main
+principle of the system still is in force; the instruction given in the
+schools, when the pupils sit together, is strictly secular; and this is
+secured by a conscience clause; the Bible cannot be read, in school hours,
+even in a Protestant school; no Catholic school can have a Catholic
+emblem. The religious instruction given in the schools is hardly what it
+ought to be, especially in the case of the Protestant schools; it must be
+added that the hope of their founders that they would bridge over the gulf
+of discords in Ireland has not been, in the slightest degree, realised.
+
+The Irish are, naturally, a religious people; their history, a long
+conflict of races and faiths, has, necessarily, made them intensely
+sectarian. The system of education, of which I have traced the outlines,
+was certainly not well designed for them; it would have been severely
+condemned by Burke, the deepest of thinkers on the affairs of Ireland. And
+though the National system has had a real measure of success, it owes
+this, in the main, to the immense subvention it receives from the State;
+it has little or no support from voluntary aid; an attempt to impose an
+education rate on Ireland would be a failure, would not improbably wreck
+the system. Nor is this in harmony with genuine Irish sentiment; one of
+the most conclusive proofs is that National education has become, to a
+great extent, sectarian; the 'Christian Brothers' and the 'Church
+Education Society' schools, sustained by voluntary effort alone, and
+overweighted in the race by the endowed schools of the State, show how
+strong is Irish sectarian feeling. The clergy, too, of the late
+Established Church, and a considerable body of their communion, remain
+hostile to the National Schools; and though the Catholic priesthood have
+made them, to a great extent, their own, and avail themselves of the
+advantages they afford, they are hardly in heartfelt sympathy with them.
+Nor can it be denied that the conscientious objections to the National
+system have real weight; the system, if not irreligious, is, we may say,
+neutral; it does not make religion an essential part of school life. It
+would, nevertheless, I believe, be exceedingly unwise to disturb a system
+which, on the whole, has for many years had excellent results in Ireland.
+The opposition to it is not strong; the children of the humbler classes
+freely avail themselves of it, and that with the full consent of their
+parents. Nor is the conscientious objection of much force in the case of
+schools which are only day schools, and in which the rudiments alone are
+taught; this is not the case of education of the higher kind, in which
+this objection is perhaps decisive; and it cannot be said that the
+National Schools have, in any sense, impaired the religion of the Irish
+people.[185]
+
+I pass from elementary to schools of a secondary kind in Ireland. The
+Diocesan Schools of Elizabeth were nearly all secondary schools; but they
+were never numerous, and have all but disappeared. The two first Stuarts
+made an attempt to establish secondary education in Ireland on a larger
+scale. They founded the 'Free Royal Schools,' as they have been called,
+now seen at Armagh, Cavan, Dungannon, Portora, and Raphoe; they endowed
+them with lands perhaps worth in our day, £6000 a year; they looked
+forward to a time when they might rival Eton, Winchester, and the great
+public schools of England. Erasmus Smith established three considerable
+'grammar schools,' and granted valuable estates for their support; a
+tolerably large number of secondary schools was also founded, from time to
+time, by benefactors of the dominant race in Ireland: of these Kilkenny
+College, a seminary created by the House of Ormond, which reared Swift and
+Berkeley, was the most conspicuous. These schools, though often nominally
+open to different creeds, became, nevertheless, in the eighteenth century,
+under the Protestant ascendency, supreme in the land, restricted to the
+young of the Protestant caste; they felt the effects of monopoly, and of
+the corruption prevailing in the State; the education they afforded was,
+for the most part, bad; their governing bodies and masters were often
+grasping and selfish. After the relaxation of the penal code, the Irish
+Catholics began to found secondary schools; their exertions were, in a
+high degree, praiseworthy; and though these schools received no support
+from the State, some of them have done really excellent work. A number,
+too, of secondary schools were established in Ulster, for the most part
+for Presbyterian uses; some of these are sectarian, some open to all
+faiths; some have, others have not, received assistance from the State; in
+several the education given has been, on the whole, good. A few secondary
+schools--St. Columba is much the best--have also been founded within the
+last century, usually for the benefit of the late Established Church of
+Ireland.
+
+The progress made by secondary schools in Ireland, even in the nineteenth
+century, has not been rapid. It is not to be named with the immense
+development of public schools in England, within the same period, caused,
+in some measure, by the genius of Arnold; secondary Irish schools, in
+fact, have been largely a failure, like other institutions of British
+origin. This is mainly to be attributed to three reasons: the higher upper
+classes in Ireland usually send their sons to be educated in the great
+English public schools; the Irish secondary schools are seldom well
+endowed; above all, the upper middle class in Ireland is small and has
+little influence. Two Commissions, appointed in 1854 and in 1878, examined
+secondary education in Ireland as it then existed; their reports give a
+far from favourable account of the system. The secondary Irish schools
+have not been much affected by an Act of Parliament passed in 1885, which
+provided for making better schemes for their management; but certainly
+they have derived very great benefit from the Intermediate Education Act
+of Lord Cairns, which established a system of competition between them,
+and secured prizes for successful competitors. In these honourable trials
+the Catholic schools have done well; but even now the secondary schools
+are decidedly inferior to what they ought to be, and do not exhibit many
+signs of improvement. An impartial inquirer thus described them in
+1871:[186] 'Upon the whole, secondary instruction, throughout the country,
+was as some one--I believe Lord Cairns--said, "bad in quality and
+deficient in quantity." The fact seems incredible, but there can be no
+doubt of its authenticity, viz. that out of a total population of
+5,500,000, there were only 10,814 boys in Ireland learning Latin, Greek,
+or modern languages in 1871. Or, to put the matter in another way, while
+in England about ten or fifteen in every 1000 were instructed in these
+languages, only two in every 1000 were instructed in them in
+Ireland.'[187]
+
+I pass on to University life in Ireland, the question, I have said, most
+prominent at this time. Ireland had no Oxford or Cambridge in the Middle
+Ages; an attempt to establish a University in Dublin failed; science and
+literature could not grow up in a land distracted by feudal and tribal
+strife, and in which two Churches were continually at war with each other.
+Elizabeth founded Trinity College towards the close of her reign, on the
+site of a monastery that had been suppressed; it was the intention of the
+queen, and of her two first successors, that this seminary should expand
+into a University in the true sense, containing a number of colleges
+within its sphere, and probably open to all students whatever their race
+or their faith. This happy consummation, however, was made impossible
+during the long period of civil war and trouble, which only came to an end
+with that of the seventeenth century. Trinity College remained a single
+foundation; and, in the era of Protestant ascendency that ensued, when
+Catholic Ireland lay under the ban of the penal code, it necessarily
+became an exclusively Protestant place of learning, its dignities, its
+honours, nay, admission to it, being reserved to members of the
+Established Church. It had, however, been amply endowed; and, from an
+early period, it possessed many distinguished worthies, the names of
+Ussher, of King, of Browne, and of others, being still remembered. Trinity
+College, strange to say, was very High Church during the reigns of the two
+last Stuarts and of Anne; its leading divines preached the creed of
+passive obedience; and it was remarkable for its aversion to Presbyterian
+Ireland, as was clearly shown in the diatribes of Swift. The college,
+however, became Whiggish and Low Church during the reign of Walpole--its
+Provost was appointed by the Crown; and until nearly the close of the
+eighteenth century, its professorships, its fellowships, its scholarships,
+its degrees, even entrance to its walls, were strictly confined to the
+dominant communion of the Anglican Church. But a liberal spirit grew up,
+and gained strength within it; this appears in many of the admirable
+writings of Berkeley, breathing the ideas that afterwards inspired
+Grattan, and in the histories of Leland and Warner, on the whole just to
+the vanquished Catholic people; and after the almost National movement
+which produced the Revolution of 1782, Trinity College took a remarkable
+step, which proved that it was in advance of the politics of that age. In
+1793, when the Irish Parliament passed a great measure of Catholic relief,
+the college made Catholics eligible for its degrees and its minor prizes;
+and, but that its statutes made this impossible, it would, perhaps, have
+allowed Catholics to become professors, fellows, and scholars--in short,
+to have a share in its dignities and its government. Nothing like this was
+done at Oxford and Cambridge until the nineteenth century had run far its
+course.
+
+From this time onwards Trinity College, accessible to Presbyterians some
+years before, received Catholics honourably within its precincts. A few
+distinguished Catholic Irishmen have obtained the excellent education it
+has always afforded; and these have been treated with scrupulous fairness;
+no attempt at proselytising has ever been made or thought of. Their
+numbers, however, have never been large; and they were necessarily placed
+in an inferior position, for they could not become professors, fellows, or
+scholars; the college remained an institution essentially Protestant, even
+anti-Catholic, in much of its teaching, for example, in the predilection
+it long showed for Locke. The college continued to thrive and to make
+progress; the reproach cast on it that she was the 'silent sister,' was
+rather due to the want of publishing enterprise in the Irish capital, than
+to any deficiency in literary power; at all events, it has long ago been
+removed; Trinity College has stood for a century in the foremost rank of
+places of learning famed for scientific eminence. In 1843-44 an attempt
+was made to introduce Catholics on the foundation, as scholars; but this
+was prohibited by the statutes; some 'non-foundation' scholarships were
+then endowed; and Catholics were enabled to compete for them. This was the
+position of the college, when, in 1844-45, after the agitation for Repeal
+had shown how disaffected Catholic Ireland still was, Peel turned his mind
+to Irish remedial measures, and among these to a reform of high education
+in Ireland. His policy was to maintain the Union intact, and all the
+institutions closely connected with it, but to create institutions, so to
+speak, alongside of these, to which Irish Presbyterians, and Catholics
+especially, might freely resort, in complete equality with all Irishmen;
+he therefore left Trinity College exactly as it was, but resolved to
+establish and endow places of learning, which he hoped would be popular
+supplements to it, and would give a University training to students who,
+as affairs stood, were not on the same level as the favoured Protestants
+in it. He founded the Queen's Colleges of Belfast, of Cork, and of Galway;
+these were supplied with an ample staff of professors, endowed, and given
+the means to bestow many prizes; and they were affiliated to the Queen's
+University, empowered to confer degrees. The principle on which these
+institutions were formed was, following the so-called liberalism of the
+time, almost exactly the same as that on which the Irish National Schools
+had been based. Secular education in them was to be united, religious
+education was to be kept apart; their students were to learn the things
+that belonged to this world together; but as to what belonged to another
+world, this teaching was to be provided by their pastors outside their
+colleges, and they were not to have it in common. The colleges, and the
+University, therefore, were essentially seats of non-religious knowledge;
+religious equality, it was said, could be only thus secured; and residence
+in the colleges was not required.
+
+The principle pervading the Irish National education system was certainly
+open to grave objections; these became infinitely stronger, when it was
+applied to a system of high education in Ireland. Secular instruction
+could be really combined, and given to children together, when limited to
+the first rudiments: how could it be combined when it should embrace such
+subjects as moral philosophy, metaphysics, modern history, nay, physical
+science, and when taught to young men of the University age? Besides,
+religious instruction, without a great shock to conscience, could be made
+a subordinate consideration in mere day schools: how could it,
+consistently with Christian duty, be practically excluded from a
+University course, and left to undergraduates to be dealt with as they
+might think fit, and that at the most critical time of their life?
+Indifference to the Divine, masked in specious 'liberal' phrases, was, in
+truth, the cardinal feature of this scheme; it would have been severely
+reprobated by Burke; it was repugnant to the ideas of five-sixths of
+Irishmen; its tendency was to form minds in superior men, like those of
+Hume and Gibbon, in inferior men, to produce infidel, even atheistic,
+sentiments. It was denounced as 'godless' in the House of Commons by the
+High Church party; it was condemned by O'Connell, from the outset, though
+the men of 'Young Ireland' were not adverse; after some hesitation, it was
+rejected unequivocally by the Irish Catholic bishops,[188] and finally was
+held up to anathema at the Synod of Thurles. That the bishops were sincere
+is proved by the fact, that they established the Irish Catholic University
+a few years afterwards--the first head of this creation was Newman; and
+the foundation has been maintained ever since, though it could not give a
+degree, and it received nothing from the State, and its only funds were
+the contributions of a poor communion, a noble example of self-sacrifice
+and of a true sense of duty. Meanwhile, the Queen's Colleges and
+University were kept up and endowed, at the rate of about £30,000 a year;
+the College of Belfast has done well, for it falls in with Presbyterian
+ideas; but the Colleges of Cork and of Galway, notably the last, have been
+sorry, nay, almost useless, failures; and Peel's hope that his project
+would secure a good University training to Irish Catholics of the better
+class has not been, to any real extent, fulfilled. Trinity College
+remained for many years unchanged, that is, it gave an admirable education
+to a very few Catholics; but it continued to be a Protestant institution
+in its essential nature; its governing body and its hierarchy were all
+Protestant; its teaching was Protestant in some of its parts; its higher
+honours were a monopoly of the favoured communion.
+
+The extreme unfairness of this University system, the ascendency secured
+to Trinity College, which, admirable institution as it was, was
+practically nearly confined to Protestants of the upper class; the
+failure, with respect to Catholic Ireland, of the Queen's Colleges and the
+Queen's University, and the large and useless expenditure this involved;
+above all, the denial to the Catholic University of any share in the
+bounty of the State, though its claim to it could be hardly
+doubtful,--attracted the attention of several statesmen, from 1850 to
+1870; but nothing was done, or even attempted. The subject was taken up by
+Mr. Gladstone, with characteristic earnestness, during his first Ministry;
+he declared that University education in Ireland was 'a scandal;' indeed,
+Irish education of the higher kind was the third branch of the upas tree
+which threw its baleful shade over the land. He brought in a measure of
+reform in the session of 1873; it was an ambitious and a comprehensive
+scheme; but it was much the worst of his Irish reforms of this period; and
+it ended in complete and disastrous failure. With the historical instinct
+occasionally seen in his legislation, Mr. Gladstone proposed to revive the
+idea of Elizabeth and the first Stuarts, and to found a great National
+University, which was to have the management and control of the higher
+education throughout Ireland. The governing body of this new institution
+was to be composed partly of men chosen by the Lord-Lieutenant, and partly
+of the heads of the colleges to be connected with it; and it was to have
+the sole power of conferring degrees in Ireland. Trinity College was to
+hand over to the National University a sum of £12,000 a year, that is,
+more than a fourth of its endowments from the State; its professorships,
+its fellowships, its scholarships, in a word, all its prizes, were to be
+thrown open to all its students whatever their faith; but in most other
+respects it was not to be essentially changed, except as to the power of
+granting degrees. Trinity College was to be affiliated to the National
+University as a dependent college, and so were a number of minor colleges;
+but this remarkable distinction was made in homage to the 'liberalism' of
+the day: the Queen's Colleges, that of Galway being suppressed as useless,
+were to retain the endowments they received from the State, on the ground
+that they were free to all comers; but the Catholic University was not to
+obtain a shilling, nor yet other colleges of a sectarian type, on the
+ground that they were 'close and exclusive,' this being the case of all
+the Catholic colleges that could be affiliated to the new foundation. The
+Queen's University was to be abolished, for the National University was to
+be sole and supreme; and then came provisions, which, strange as they may
+appear at first sight, were perhaps inevitable under the conditions on
+which the project was formed. Moral philosophy, metaphysics, and modern
+history were shut out from the National University course; they might be
+taught in the colleges, but were to be no part of University learning. And
+the National University, like the Queen's Colleges, was to be
+'non-religious;' its system of education was to be secular and united,
+that is its students were to be examined together in secular learning, but
+in religious matters they were to stand apart; religion, indeed, might be
+a subject of college teaching, but it was not to be heard of within the
+University walls; in fact, it was probably to be left to the students and
+their clergy.
+
+This complicated measure, not easy thoroughly to understand, was
+sustained, for a few days, by the glamour of Mr. Gladstone's rhetoric. But
+ere long it arrayed against it an immense preponderance of opinion in
+Ireland, and was assailed with fatal effect in the House of Commons. The
+Heads of Trinity College took the initiative in declaring against it; in
+debates, wise, patriotic, and just alike, they recognised the claims of
+Catholic Ireland; but they protested against the wrong being done to the
+great and ancient foundation they represented, and especially against the
+degradation to which it was subjected by the Bill. Trinity College was to
+be deprived for no reason of a large part of its revenue; it was to be
+placed under a governing body, in which nominees of the Castle would be
+all-powerful--an influence pernicious to its independence and
+self-government; above all, the National University was to supplant it,
+and was to exclude from its teaching the noblest studies of the intellect
+of man. The Platonism which had inspired Berkeley, the records which had
+animated the genius of Burke, and had been fostered in the Alma mater of
+these great worthies, were to be banished from a foundation which was to
+be made the head of University life in Ireland. These sentiments were
+fully shared by enlightened Irishmen: that moral and metaphysical science
+and modern history should be virtually proscribed in the University about
+to be set up, was, as it were, putting out one of the eyes of the
+intellect, effacing what was best in the map of knowledge. But the most
+decisive condemnation of the scheme was that pronounced by the Irish
+Catholic bishops. Like their predecessors of nearly thirty years before,
+and the Anglican High Church party of that day, they asserted that the
+project was really 'godless;' it was irreligion in the mask of
+non-religion; its liberalism was in the highest degree illiberal, for it
+offered their flocks a system of education it was known they would reject;
+and it was flagrantly, nay, basely, unjust, for while Trinity College, and
+the Queen's Colleges, and the Queen's University, were to remain endowed,
+the Catholic University and all Catholic colleges were to get nothing from
+the State. These arguments made their way into the House of Commons, and
+were vindicated in speeches of great ability. Disraeli dwelt especially on
+the poverty and the imperfection of a University scheme, in which the
+finest branches of knowledge were not to enter; he frankly denounced the
+Bill as 'atheistic,' an epithet which Burke assuredly would have fastened
+on it. Other speakers, notably Ball, a very brilliant Irishman, enlarged
+on the wrong done to Trinity College, and earnestly advocated the Catholic
+claims; not only was the minister offering a stone for bread, he was
+virtually trying to bribe the Irish Catholic into accepting institutions
+he disliked, and in the attempt was deeply offending his conscience.
+Notwithstanding the efforts of a powerful Government, the Bill was
+rejected by the House of Commons; nearly all the Irish members voted
+against it, and so did the best men of the Liberal party.
+
+The year that witnessed the collapse of Mr. Gladstone's measure,
+witnessed, also, a reform of Trinity College conceived in the spirit of
+the 'liberalism' of the hour, and hailed as an illustration of what is
+called progress. The government, the dignities, and the prizes of the
+college were thrown open to all without regard to their creed; this was
+welcomed as 'University equality' in the most perfect sense. It is a
+mistake to suppose that a corresponding change was ever made at Oxford and
+Cambridge; the extension of their privileges to persons whatever their
+faith, has, thanks to the exertions of the late Lord Selborne, been
+strictly confined to lay offices; the religious character and teaching of
+the Universities have been carefully preserved.[189] Though Trinity
+College has been made 'non-religious' by this measure, and that to such a
+degree that its governing body might conceivably be composed of avowed
+atheists, it has, nevertheless, to this day remained a Protestant
+institution in all essential respects. Its professors, fellows, and
+scholars have, since 1873, been nearly all Protestants; its Catholic
+students are not eight in a hundred of the number as a whole; and the
+chief practical result of the late reform has been to make the heads of
+the Irish Catholic Church more opposed than before to seeing Catholics
+enter its precincts. In 1879, Lord Beaconsfield's Ministry made an attempt
+to diminish the injustice done to Irish Catholics by the system of
+University education still in force in Ireland. The Queen's University was
+abolished; a Royal University was established, which was enabled to confer
+degrees on, and to give prizes to, the students of the Catholic University
+and other colleges; but the Royal University is a mere Examining Board; it
+is not a University properly so called. One incident connected with this
+institution deserves attention; the success of the students of Catholic
+colleges at the Royal University examinations has been so great, that it
+ought to silence jeers at the 'superstition' which keeps them back, the
+vulgar cant of ignorant prejudice or worse.[190] Meanwhile the iniquities
+and anomalies of the Irish University system have continued but very
+little changed.[191] Trinity College remains a Protestant institution
+well endowed, almost a monopoly of the Protestant upper class in Ireland,
+practically little resorted to by Irish Catholics; the Queen's Colleges
+are avoided by the Irish Catholics, as being 'irreligious' if called
+'non-religious,' though the College of Belfast suits Presbyterian views;
+they, too, receive a large bounty from the State; but the Catholic
+University, the true seminary for the upper middle Catholic classes, and
+now divided into different colleges, is still, as such, left out in the
+cold. Its students, no doubt, can obtain Royal University degrees, and
+some of its professors have been placed as examiners on that foundation;
+but it is the veriest mockery to call this justice when we look at Trinity
+College and the Queen's Colleges. 'The words of scripture are reversed,'
+in Macaulay's language; 'the rich are filled with good things and the
+hungry are sent empty away.'
+
+I do not envy those who, whatever their reasons, refuse to acknowledge the
+wrong done by these arrangements. It will hardly be denied, in the
+twentieth century, that Protestant ascendency ought not to exist in any
+sphere of Irish affairs, and that in University life, as in all matters,
+Irish Catholics ought to have civil equality, and that without a violation
+of the rights of conscience. It has been triumphantly maintained that, in
+high education, these conditions are actually fulfilled in Ireland;
+Trinity College and the Queen's Colleges are accessible to all students,
+without regard to their religion or no religion; these have a perfectly
+equal right to share in the government and the honours of institutions
+thrown completely open. But those who argue in this way either shut their
+eyes to facts, or will not perceive that this fine 'liberalism' in Ireland
+works sheer injustice. Catholics are but a handful of students in Trinity
+College and the Queen's Colleges compared to what their natural proportion
+ought to be; Trinity College, if nominally open, is in all essential
+respects Protestant; the Queen's Colleges as being 'non-religious,' that
+is, in the view of their Church 'irreligious,' are practically avoided by
+Irish Catholics; yet the State endows Trinity College and the Queen's
+Colleges; it starves the Catholic University and other Catholic colleges,
+which are thus unfairly handicapped by their rivals. If this is not
+furthering Protestant ascendency in Irish high education, and denying
+civil equality to Irish Catholics who, in this matter, will not forego the
+rights of conscience, I do not know what else it can be; it seems to me to
+be iniquity in no doubtful sense. And are the objections of the Irish
+Catholics, in this province, as 'irrational' and 'superstitious' as has
+been scoffingly said? Reverse the case of Trinity College: suppose that
+England was a Catholic Power, and that she kept up a great Catholic
+University in the Irish capital, discountenancing Protestant institutions
+in many ways, how many Protestants would enter its walls, how soon would
+the cry of Catholic ascendency be raised? Or suppose that Oxford and
+Cambridge were made 'non-religious,' as the Queen's Colleges in Ireland
+are, would not an immense majority of English parents declare that these
+seats of learning were 'godless,' and persistently keep their sons away
+from them? The simple truth is that the Catholic objections to Trinity
+College and the Queen's Colleges are really those which, in this matter,
+have been entertained by the deepest thinkers; to my mind, at least, they
+seem perfectly well-founded. As to the statement that these objections are
+those of the Irish Catholic bishops alone, and are mere 'superstitious
+fancies,' it is enough to reply that, on two occasions, the Irish
+Catholic laity have distinctly pronounced on this subject, and have
+declared that they agree with the heads of their Church. And as to the
+argument that Catholic States do not endow sectarian institutions like the
+Catholic University and other Irish Catholic colleges, it will be quite
+time enough to examine this when anything like such a state of things can
+be found as that which at present exists in Ireland.
+
+One argument, however, seldom frankly set forth, but hinted at in a
+variety of ways, has been a real obstacle to a reform of this vicious
+system; it strongly appeals to British national prejudice, of all
+aberrations of opinion the most difficult to overcome. 'Popery,' it is
+said, is a 'detestable thing;' a 'Protestant' State 'must have nothing to
+do with it;' to endow a Catholic University in Ireland, therefore, or any
+colleges of the same complexion, would be 'sacrificing to Baal,' or
+something as wicked. Catholic Ireland must put up with Trinity College and
+the Queen's Colleges, which have been made open to all sorts and
+conditions of men; its 'conscientious objections' are mere 'bigotry.' This
+reasoning, which condemns as impious the religion of the greatest part of
+Christendom, would unfortunately overthrow many arrangements by which
+provision has been made in our 'Protestant' State for Catholic
+institutions of different kinds; if pushed to its consequences, it would
+revive the penal code in Ireland, and lead to the confiscation of Catholic
+charities. But though it has still indirectly an effect on some
+politicians, it is, in its naked simplicity, only the faith of Mr. Kensit
+and of those who walk in his footsteps; it is worthy of the philosophy of
+Lord George Gordon, of the meekness of Orangeism, of the bray of Exeter
+Hall. For some time a turn in British opinion has happily taken place;
+'liberalism,' it has been perceived, in Irish University education has
+failed; Mr. Arthur Balfour has made himself conspicuous in advocating the
+just claims of Catholic Ireland. Even as I write a Commission is being
+appointed to consider the whole subject of University life in Ireland;
+there can be no reasonable doubt that it will fully bring to light the
+anomalies and the unfairness of the existing system, and will recommend
+that the Catholic University, and other Catholic colleges perhaps, shall
+be endowed. In truth, things have already come to such a pass that Trinity
+College, the one institution of which, it is said, 'all Irishmen are
+really proud,' will, owing to the exceptional favour it receives from the
+State, be placed in grave danger, and the Queen's Colleges also, if a
+Catholic University in Ireland be not established and endowed, in order to
+secure to the Irish Catholic civil equality, in high education, through
+the assistance of the State.[192]
+
+On what principles, then, and by what means, is University education in
+Ireland to be so reformed as to do equal justice to all Irishmen, to place
+Protestants, Presbyterians, and Catholics on the same level, and,
+especially, to vindicate the rightful claims of Catholic Ireland? Two
+leading projects have at least been sketched out: the first, the grander
+and the more ambitious, but, in my judgment, scarcely possible to carry
+into effect; the second, more simple, more in harmony with existing facts,
+and, I think, safer and much more easy to realise. The first scheme,
+following in some respects the measure of Mr. Gladstone of 1873, but
+making a marked improvement on it, would aim at establishing and endowing
+a National University for all Irishmen, which should have a power to
+confer degrees, in common with the Royal University now existing, and
+should have an ample professional staff; it should have its examinations
+for degrees and for other honours. The governing body of this University
+should be composed of the heads of the colleges affiliated to it--the
+element of the Castle being excluded, according at least to the best
+authorities--and Trinity College should not be deprived of any part of its
+revenues, as it was to be under the Bill of 1873. Two of the Queen's
+Colleges probably should be suppressed; but the College of Belfast, which
+has been successful, should probably be made a Presbyterian college, at
+least in the main; the endowments it would receive should be, doubtless,
+increased. High Catholic education should be provided for in this way: The
+Catholic University should be established and endowed, and placed
+reasonably on a level with Trinity College, and perhaps other Catholic
+colleges also; but, in consideration of this assistance from the State, a
+lay element should be introduced into the Catholic University governing
+body; this should not be composed wholly of Catholic clergymen; and the
+teaching body should be composed of men, chosen without regard to
+religious distinctions, but so constituted that a majority should be
+Catholics, and that Catholic education should be predominant. Other
+Catholic colleges might be connected with this institution; and Trinity
+College, the Catholic University, and the Belfast and all other colleges,
+should be subordinate to the National University in this sense; their
+students should be obliged to resort to it, or to the Royal University if
+they preferred it, in order to pass examinations, and to obtain degrees or
+other honours, there being thus two Universities of different types in
+Ireland. Education in all the affiliated colleges should be perfectly
+free, that is, left to the arrangements made by their governing bodies;
+but a certain standard of proficiency should exist, which, however, the
+tests of University examinations would probably secure.
+
+An Irish National University, could it be founded on these lines, would
+present many attractive features, would realise, indeed, a noble ideal. It
+would preserve Trinity College as a great place of learning, would give
+Presbyterian Ireland a college practically its own, and ought to satisfy
+the legitimate demands of Catholic Ireland. That its dependent colleges
+should compete with each other for its degrees and honours, and be
+friendly rivals in the splendid race of learning, would also be an immense
+advantage; and the Royal University would, doubtless, suffice for students
+too poor to enter the dependent colleges, and yet aspiring to pass
+examinations and to obtain degrees. But could a National University of
+this type be set up in Ireland with a prospect that it would succeed or
+flourish? Its governing body would be formed of the heads of the colleges
+connected with it; these would be mainly composed of Catholic and
+Protestant divines: could these, in the existing state of Ireland, agree
+as to the University course that ought to be adopted? Suppose that
+Archbishop Walsh and Dr. Salmon, the venerable provost of Trinity College,
+were together members of this supreme board. Would the first approve of
+Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding as a subject of examination in
+the University schools? Would the second approve of Bellarmine and even of
+Bossuet? Dissension, I fear, would be the inevitable result; and in that
+case 'the Castle' would certainly try to gain authority over the governing
+body, and to place on it nominees of its own, in my judgment, an
+exceedingly mischievous thing. Very probably, too, the State, in the long
+run, would deprive Trinity College of some of its revenues, on different
+pleas that could be plausibly urged; to this there would be the gravest
+objections. And how could moral philosophy, metaphysics, and modern
+history, nay, even physical science itself, be made parts of University
+studies? How could Protestants and Catholics be examined in them in
+common? Would it not be necessary to exclude them from University
+teaching, as in the case of Mr. Gladstone's ill-starred measure--to close
+the University to the best works of the intellect of man, to deprive it of
+the most fruitful branches of learning? I fear the idea of a National
+University, as affairs now stand in Ireland, is not likely to become a
+reality with results that could be deemed hopeful. No doubt the Royal
+University does, to some extent, have examinations on these debateable
+subjects; but they occupy a very small place in its teaching; and in a
+National University this ought not to be the case.
+
+A National University would not be founded in Ireland under the second
+project. Trinity College would remain completely intact; it would retain
+its present governing body, its privileges, and its power of conferring
+degrees. The Queen's Colleges--that of Galway being probably suppressed,
+and its funds transferred to the College of Belfast--and the Royal
+University would continue unchanged; the students of the Queen's Colleges
+would probably seek degrees from the Royal University as they do at
+present. But the Catholic University should be established and endowed,
+and placed on the same level as Trinity College, as far as this could be
+effected by law; the charge of the endowment would not be great--it would
+be perhaps £100,000 for buildings, and perhaps £40,000 a year for other
+purposes; but the students, and those of other colleges to be connected
+with it, would not be numerous, at least for years; it should, of course,
+have the power of conferring honours and degrees. In return for these
+advantages, the State should have a right to insist that its governing
+body should be in part laymen--the Irish Catholic bishops have already
+agreed to this; and the State ought, also, to have a right to require
+that the secular education it should afford should be good, a security
+which could fully, if indirectly, be obtained. The advantages of this
+scheme, it is obvious, are that it would get rid of the difficulties
+inseparable from a National University in Ireland; it would preserve
+Trinity College exactly as it is, an enormous gain for that great place of
+learning; it would interfere as little as possible with things as they
+are; and it would do all that Catholic Ireland could reasonably demand. It
+is understood that a scheme of this description has the approval of the
+authorities of Trinity College, and of their distinguished representative,
+Mr. Lecky; their opinions are of the very greatest weight. The only real
+objection made to this plan is one made by characteristic prejudice: the
+education, in the Catholic University, it is said, would be bad, and its
+degrees would be of no value. In the face of the success of Catholic
+University students at the Royal University examinations, the first
+assertion has been proved to be false; and besides, this is the affair of
+the students and their parents alone. As to the inferiority of the
+Catholic University degrees, there is no reason to believe that this would
+exist; these degrees, moreover, would have to compete with those of the
+Royal University and of Trinity College; if they were really inferior,
+this would soon be found out, and the Catholic University would have to
+increase their value. This is the true security the State and the public
+would possess.
+
+A few 'Present Irish Questions' remain, on which I may offer passing
+remarks. Ireland is essentially a poor country; her middle class is
+comparatively very weak; her trade and manufactures are small; the greater
+part of the community is a Celtic race. It has long been contended by
+well-informed Irishmen that many undertakings, which, in Great Britain,
+have properly been left to private enterprise, ought, in Ireland, to be
+carried out by the State, as for centuries has been the case in France, a
+Celtic land, as was largely the case in Ireland under her extinct
+Parliament. This observation especially applies to the Irish railway
+system. As long ago as 1836, Thomas Drummond, the Under Secretary of
+well-known renown, strongly recommended that Irish railways should be laid
+out, managed, and controlled by the Government; but this was inconsistent
+with English ideas; the Irish railways were abandoned to private
+companies. The results have been very far from fortunate; many of the
+lines have been badly designed; the Irish railway fares are a great deal
+too high; too numerous boards of directors are a heavy charge; railway
+communication, in a word, in Ireland is of an inferior kind, and much too
+costly in a backward and poor country. Not indeed that the State has not
+made large advances to Irish railway companies, some of these on terms
+very unjust to ratepayers; but the system is faulty and ill-developed; a
+reform in this direction is greatly wanted.[193] As Drummond insisted, the
+State, even now, ought to buy up and direct the Irish railways; but this
+is only a part of what it ought to do in this province. The material
+condition of Ireland is not prosperous; her main river basins require
+drainage; her whole arterial drainage is in a bad state, and has suffered
+much from the legislation of 1881, and from the policy of so-called 'land
+purchase,' for ordinary Irish tenants will not keep it up, and their
+landlords cannot now be expected to do so; these works must be undertaken
+by the State, or assuredly they will not be undertaken at all. Mr. Arthur
+Balfour has done something in this direction by the encouragement of light
+railways in remote parts of Ireland, and by the foundation of the
+'Congested Districts Board,' an institution that has had excellent
+results. But this is only the fringe of the subject; an enormous amount of
+work remains to be done; and this, in the circumstances of Ireland, can
+only be done by the Government.
+
+In a book which has attracted some attention--'Ireland, 1798-1898'--I
+wrote these words nearly four years ago: 'An Irishman, Wolseley, an
+Irishman, Roberts, are the foremost of living British soldiers; but there
+are no Irish Guards, and few Irishmen in our artillery; we see here a want
+of tact and of sympathy.' Time, in this respect, has suddenly brought its
+changes; has again illustrated the genius of the Irishman in war, and, in
+some measure, has removed a reproach from England. It is true that the
+conspiracy, which still exists in Ireland, did all that it could to
+prevent Irishmen from taking part in the contest in South Africa, and that
+even a petty Irish contingent appeared in the ranks of the Boers. But Lord
+Wolseley had at least a great share in fitting out the largest expedition
+which has ever left our shores to fight an enemy at a distance of six
+thousand miles--no other power could do anything of the kind; and without
+disparaging our other generals, the presence of a superior mind was at
+once seen when Lord Roberts was given the supreme command in our army. And
+the Irish soldiery who fought in the campaigns of 1899-1900 were true to
+the noble traditions of their race; they were in the forefront of many a
+bloody conflict; and now that a regiment of Irish Guards has been at last
+embodied--a tardy acknowledgment of Irish military worth--England may rest
+assured that these men will rival the famous Irish Brigade of another age,
+'ever and everywhere true' to the Bourbon lilies, and conspicuous in the
+service of France on many a field of renown. I may add a word on another
+subject, in which Ireland perhaps has a just claim on England. The
+descendants of the chiefs, who, in Scotland, clung to the cause of the
+Stuarts, have, for the most part, regained their forfeited lands and
+honours; no such reparation has been made to the descendants of Irish
+nobles and princes, who supported the Stuarts in the nobler cause of
+their country. The representative of the last of the Celtic kings of
+Ireland--a man of large possessions and of unquestionable parts--has no
+place on the roll of the peerage; the sons of ennobled Cromwellian
+troopers and tradesmen have precedence at Court over the sons of the most
+illustrious Milesian Houses. This is not a mere trifle as may carelessly
+be said; it tends to revive memories that it were better to forget. Can
+nothing be done to make a graceful concession, which would touch many an
+Irish heart, and would go some way to promote a spirit of loyalty and hope
+in Ireland, which it should be a great object of statesmanship to create
+and foster?
+
+If the picture I have drawn of Ireland is correct in outline, there is
+much of evil omen in her present condition. The ancient divisions of race
+and faith, the most distinctive feature in her social structure, are at
+least as deeply marked as they have been for a century; bad legislation
+has made them deeper and wider. Catholic Ireland remains disaffected to
+British rule, despite efforts of conciliation and concessions that cannot
+be justified; no class in the community is completely satisfied;
+discontent rankles in the hearts of the landed gentry. The Union, indeed,
+has been successfully maintained; the frightful agrarian disorder of
+1881-89 no longer exists. But the Union is not permanently assured as long
+as the Liberal party and eighty Irish members demand Home Rule, and the
+over-representation of Ireland continues; the conspiracy of the Land and
+the National Leagues has revived in that of the United Irish League; and
+this seeks to compass the ends of its prototypes by obstruction in
+Parliament and detestable socialistic tyranny. And the frame of Irish
+society has been well-nigh shattered; ruins have been made, nothing solid
+has been put in their place. An aristocracy, long waning, has been
+practically destroyed, and can no longer be a support of the State; the
+bureaucracy of the Castle reigns in its stead; but this is essentially a
+weak Government; it can maintain order, but has no hold on the people; the
+Irish democracy, to which power has been transferred, regards it with a
+dislike and a contempt it does not try to conceal. The country has made
+hardly any progress of late years; if some improvement in the state of the
+middle classes appears, agriculture, its leading industry, has perceptibly
+declined. In by far the most important of Irish social relations, those
+connected with the land, a revolution has taken place; a huge if a veiled
+confiscation has gone on; the landed gentry have been shamefully wronged;
+the occupiers of the soil have been most unduly favoured; yet both classes
+declare they have been ill-treated, notably the last. And the Irish land
+system has been turned upside down, with consequences disastrous and
+far-reaching; the landlord has been cut off from his estate; the tenant
+has been encouraged in thriftlessness and waste by law; the land has been
+bound in a ruinous mortmain, like that which existed under the penal code,
+and subjected to demoralising litigation, breeding a war of class; capital
+and fruitful enterprise turn away from it. And, at the same time, in order
+to lessen these evils, recourse has been had to remedies that are perhaps
+worse; the system of so-called 'land purchase' has been devised; the
+result has been to create a class of peasant owners reproducing the nearly
+extinct middleman, and, above all, to arouse a cry for the 'compulsory
+purchase' of the rented lands of Ireland, an act of wholesale spoliation
+unjust and disastrous alike. In the position of affairs we now see in
+Ireland, the stability of society has been rudely shaken; the sense of the
+security of property has well-nigh disappeared; the sanctity of contracts
+has no respect; the pillars on which order and prosperity rest have been
+injured; violent revolution has been arrested, indeed, but revolutionary
+and socialistic ideas spread far and wide. And will any impartial inquirer
+deny that these untoward results may be largely ascribed to the faulty
+legislation of late years, and to a system of administration shifty and
+feeble? And what judgment is to be passed on the thoughtless optimism too
+common in opinion with respect to Ireland? Meanwhile, reforms imperatively
+required are not even attempted; they are passed over or postponed to some
+more convenient season. The time surely has come to look things in Ireland
+straight in the face; to see if statesmanship cannot do something really
+effective for her good. This end assuredly will not be attained by
+breaking up the Three Kingdoms under the guise of Home Rule, or by
+promoting a confiscation the worst Ireland has ever seen; still less will
+it be attained by the quackery in legislation and administration too
+apparent of late years; nor can trifling and foolish optimism blind the
+eyes of intelligent thinkers to facts. Ireland can only expect to make
+progress by ruling the community on the just and sound principles to which
+long experience has given its sanction; and this consummation can only be
+the slow result of time.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+
+THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL, 1886.
+
+ARRANGEMENT OF CLAUSES.
+
+Part I.
+
+  _Legislative Authority._
+
+  CLAUSE
+
+  1. Establishment of Irish Legislature.
+  2. Powers of Irish Legislature.
+  3. Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature.
+  4. Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature.
+  5. Prerogatives of Her Majesty as to Irish Legislative Body.
+  6. Duration of the Irish Legislative Body.
+
+  _Executive Authority._
+
+  7. Constitution of the Executive Authority.
+  8. Use of Crown Lands by Irish Government.
+
+  _Constitution of Legislative Body._
+
+  9. Constitution of Irish Legislative Body.
+  10. First order.
+  11. Second order.
+
+  _Finance._
+
+  12. Taxes and separate Consolidated Fund.
+  13. Annual contributions from Ireland to Consolidated Fund of United
+      Kingdom.
+  14. Collection and application of Customs and Excise duties in Ireland.
+  15. Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund.
+  16. Irish Church Fund.
+  17. Public loans.
+  18. Additional aid in case of war.
+  19. Money bills and votes.
+  20. Exchequer Division and revenue actions.
+
+  _Police._
+
+  21. Police.
+
+
+PART II.
+
+_Supplemental Provisions._
+
+  Powers of Her Majesty.
+
+  22. Powers over certain lands reserved to Her Majesty.
+
+  Legislative Body.
+
+  23. Veto by first order of Legislative Body, how overruled.
+  24. Cesser of power of Ireland to return members of Parliament.
+
+  Decision of Constitutional Questions.
+
+  25. Constitutional questions to be submitted to Judicial Committee.
+
+  Lord-Lieutenant.
+
+  26. Office of Lord-Lieutenant.
+
+  Judges and Civil Servants.
+
+  27. Judges to be removable only on address.
+  28. Provisions as to Judges and other persons having salaries charged on
+      the Consolidated Fund.
+  29. As to persons holding Civil Service appointments.
+  30. Provision for existing pensions and superannuation allowances.
+
+  _Transitory Provisions._
+
+  31. Transitory provisions in Schedule.
+
+  _Miscellaneous._
+
+  32. Post office and savings banks.
+  33. Audit.
+  34. Application of parliamentary law.
+  35. Regulations for carrying Act into effect.
+  36. Saving of powers of House of Lords.
+  37. Saving of rights of Parliament.
+  38. Continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, etc.
+  39. Mode of alteration of Act.
+  40. Definitions.
+  41. Short title of Act.
+
+
+SCHEDULES.
+
+_A Bill to amend the provision for the future Government of Ireland._
+[A.D. 1886.
+
+Be it enacted by the Queen's most excellent Majesty, by and with the
+advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in
+this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as
+follows:
+
+
+PART I.
+
+_Legislative Authority._
+
+[Sidenote: Establishment of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=1.= On and after the appointed day there shall be established in Ireland
+a Legislature consisting of Her Majesty the Queen and the Irish
+Legislative Body.
+
+[Sidenote: Powers of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=2.= With the exceptions and subject to the restrictions in this Act
+mentioned, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty the Queen, by and with the
+advice of the Irish Legislative Body, to make laws for the peace, order,
+and good government of Ireland, and by any such law to alter and repeal
+any law in Ireland.
+
+[Sidenote: Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=3.= The Legislature of Ireland shall not make laws relating to the
+following matters, or any of them:--
+
+    (1) The status or dignity of the Crown, or the succession the Crown or
+    a Regency;
+
+    (2) The making of peace or war;
+
+    (3) The army, navy, militia, volunteers, or other military or naval
+    forces, or the defence of the realm;
+
+    (4) Treaties and other relations with foreign States, or the
+    relations between the various parts of Her Majesty's dominions;
+
+    (5) Dignities or titles of honour;
+
+    (6) Prize or booty of war;
+
+    (7) Offences against the law of nations; or offences committed in
+    violation of any treaty made, or hereafter to be made, between Her
+    Majesty and any foreign State; or offences committed on the high seas;
+
+    (8) Treason, alienage, or naturalisation;
+
+    (9) Trade, navigation, or quarantine;
+
+    (10) The postal and telegraph service, except as hereafter in this Act
+    mentioned with respect to the transmission of letters and telegrams in
+    Ireland;
+
+    (11) Beacons, lighthouses, or sea-marks;
+
+    (12) The coinage; the value of foreign money; legal tender; or weights
+    and measures; or
+
+    (13) Copyright, patent rights, or other exclusive rights to the use or
+    profits of any works or inventions.
+
+Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void.
+
+[Sidenote: Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=4.= The Irish Legislature shall not make any law--
+
+    (1) Respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, or
+    prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
+
+    (2) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, on account
+    of religious belief; or
+
+    (3) Abrogating or derogating from the right to establish or maintain
+    any place of denominational education or any denominational
+    institution or charity; or
+
+    (4) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school
+    receiving public money without attending the religious instruction at
+    that school; or
+
+    (5) Impairing, without either the leave of Her Majesty in Council
+    first obtained on an address presented by the Legislative Body of
+    Ireland, or the consent of the corporation interested, the rights,
+    property, or privileges of any existing corporation incorporated by
+    royal charter or local and general Act of Parliament; or
+
+    (6) Imposing or relating to duties of customs and duties of excise, as
+    defined by this Act, or either of such duties, or affecting any Act
+    relating to such duties or either of them; or
+
+    (7) Affecting this Act, except in so far as it is declared to be
+    alterable by the Irish Legislature.
+
+[Sidenote: Prerogatives of Her Majesty as to Irish Legislative Body.]
+
+=5.=--Her Majesty the Queen shall have the same prerogatives with respect
+to summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the Irish Legislative Body as Her
+Majesty has with respect to summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the
+Imperial Parliament.
+
+[Sidenote: Duration of the Irish Legislative Body.]
+
+=6.=--The Irish Legislative Body whenever summoned may have continuance
+for five years and no longer, to be reckoned from the day on which any
+such Legislative Body is appointed to meet.
+
+_Executive Authority._
+
+[Sidenote: Constitution of the Executive Authority.]
+
+=7.=--(1) The Executive Government of Ireland shall continue vested in Her
+Majesty, and shall be carried on by the Lord-Lieutenant on behalf of Her
+Majesty with the aid of such officers and such Council as to Her Majesty
+may from time to time seem fit.
+
+(2) Subject to any instructions which may from time to time be given by
+Her Majesty, the Lord-Lieutenant shall give or withhold the assent of Her
+Majesty to Bills passed by the Irish Legislative Body, and shall exercise
+the prerogatives of Her Majesty in respect of the summoning, proroguing,
+and dissolving of the Irish Legislative Body, and any prerogatives the
+exercise of which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty.
+
+[Sidenote: Use of Crown lands by Irish Government.]
+
+=8.=--Her Majesty may, by Order in Council, from time to time place under
+the control of the Irish Government, for the purposes of that Government,
+any such lands and buildings in Ireland as may be vested in or held in
+trust for Her Majesty.
+
+_Constitution of Legislative Body._
+
+[Sidenote: Constitution of Irish Legislative Body.]
+
+=9.=--(1) The Irish Legislative Body shall consist of a first and second
+order.
+
+(2) The two orders shall deliberate together, and shall vote together,
+except that, if any question arises in relation to legislation or to the
+Standing Orders or Rules of Procedure or to any other matter in that
+behalf in this Act specified, and such question is to be determined by
+vote, each order shall, if a majority of the members present of either
+order demand a separate vote, give their votes in like manner as if they
+were separate Legislative Bodies; and if the result of the voting of the
+two orders does not agree the question shall be resolved in the negative.
+
+[Sidenote: First order.]
+
+=10.=--(1) The first order of the Irish Legislative Body shall consist of
+one hundred and three members, of whom seventy-five shall be elective
+members and twenty-eight peerage members.
+
+(2) Each elective member shall at the date of his election and during his
+period of membership be _bonâ fide_ possessed of property which--
+
+    (_a_) If realty, or partly realty and partly personalty, yields two
+    hundred pounds a year or upwards, free of all charges; or--
+
+    (_b_) If personalty yields the same income, or is of the capital value
+    of four thousand pounds or upwards, free of all charges.
+
+For the purpose of electing the elective members of the first order of the
+Legislative Body, Ireland shall be divided into the electoral districts
+specified in the First Schedule to this Act, and each such district shall
+return the number of members in that behalf specified in that Schedule.
+
+(3) The elective members shall be elected by the registered electors of
+each electoral district, and for that purpose a register of electors shall
+be made annually.
+
+(4) An elector in each electoral district shall be qualified as follows,
+that is to say, he shall be of full age, and not subject to any legal
+incapacity, and shall have been during the twelve months next preceding
+the _twentieth day of July_ in any year the owner or occupier of some land
+or tenement within the district of a net annual value of twenty-five
+pounds or upwards.
+
+(5) The term of office of an elective member shall be _ten years_.
+
+(6) In every fifth year thirty-seven or thirty-eight of the elective
+members, as the case requires, shall retire from office, and their places
+shall be filled by election; the members to retire shall be those who have
+been members for the longest time without re-election.
+
+(7) The offices of the peerage members shall be filled as follows, that is
+to say,--
+
+    (_a_) Each of the Irish peers who on the appointed day is one of the
+    twenty-eight Irish representative peers, shall, on giving his written
+    assent to the Lord-Lieutenant, become a peerage member of the first
+    order of the Irish Legislative Body; and if at any time within _thirty
+    years_ after the appointed day any such peer vacates his office by
+    death or resignation, the vacancy shall be filled by the election to
+    that office by the Irish peers of one of their number in manner
+    heretofore in use respecting the election of Irish representative
+    peers, subject to adaptation as provided by this Act, and if the
+    vacancy is not so filled within the proper time, it shall be filled by
+    the election of an elective member.
+
+    (_b_) If any of the twenty-eight peers aforesaid does not within _one
+    month_ after the appointed day give such assent to be a peerage member
+    of the first order, the vacancy so created shall be filled up as if he
+    had assented and vacated his office by resignation.
+
+(8) A peerage member shall be entitled to hold office during his life, or
+until the expiration of _thirty years_ from the appointed day, whichever
+period is the shortest. At the expiration of such _thirty years_ the
+offices of all the peerage members shall be vacated as if they were dead,
+and their places shall be filled by elective members qualified and elected
+in manner provided by this Act with respect to elective members of the
+first order, and such elective members may be distributed by the Irish
+Legislature among the electoral districts, so, however, that care shall be
+taken to give additional members to the most populous place.
+
+(9) The offices of members of the first order shall not be vacated by the
+dissolution of the Legislative Body.
+
+(10) The provisions in the Second Schedule to this Act relating to members
+of the first order of the Legislative Body shall be of the same force as
+if they were enacted in the body of this Act.
+
+[Sidenote: Second order.]
+
+=11.=--(1) Subject as in this section hereafter mentioned, the second
+order of the Legislative Body shall consist of two hundred and four
+members.
+
+(2) The members of the second order shall be chosen by the existing
+constituencies of Ireland, two by each constituency, with the exception of
+the City of Cork, which shall be divided into two divisions in manner set
+forth in the Third Schedule to this Act, and two members shall be chosen
+by each of such divisions.
+
+(3) Any person who, on the appointed day, is a member representing an
+existing Irish constituency in the House of Commons shall, on giving his
+written assent to the Lord-Lieutenant, become a member of the second order
+of the Irish Legislative Body as if he had been elected by the
+constituency which he was representing in the House of Commons. Each of
+the members for the City of Cork, on the said day, may elect for which of
+the divisions of that city he wishes to be deemed to have been elected.
+
+(4) If any member does not give such written assent within _one month_
+after the appointed day, his place shall be filled by election in the same
+manner and at the same time as if he had assented and vacated his office
+by death.
+
+(5) If the same person is elected to both orders, he shall, within _seven
+days_ after the meeting of the Legislative Body, or if the Body is sitting
+at the time of the election, within _seven days_ after the election, elect
+in which order he will serve, and his membership of the other order shall
+be void and be filled by a fresh election.
+
+(6) Notwithstanding anything in this Act, it shall be lawful for the
+Legislature of Ireland at any time to pass an Act enabling the Royal
+University of Ireland to return not more than two members to the second
+order of the Irish Legislative Body in addition to the number of members
+above mentioned.
+
+(7) Notwithstanding anything in this Act, it shall be lawful for the Irish
+Legislature, after the first dissolution of the Legislative Body which
+occurs, to alter the constitution or election of the second order of that
+body, due regard being had in the distribution of members to the
+population of the constituencies; provided that no alteration shall be
+made in the number of such order.
+
+_Finance._
+
+[Sidenote: Taxes and separate Consolidated Fund.]
+
+=12.=--(1) For the purpose of providing for the public service of Ireland,
+the Irish Legislature may impose taxes, other than duties of Customs or
+Excise as defined by this Act, which duties shall continue to be imposed
+and levied by and under the direction of the Imperial Parliament only.
+
+(2) On and after the appointed day there shall be an Irish Consolidated
+Fund separate from the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom.
+
+(3) All taxes imposed by the Legislature of Ireland and all other public
+revenues under the control of the Government of Ireland shall, subject to
+any provisions touching the disposal thereof contained in any Act passed
+in the present session respecting the sale and purchase of land in
+Ireland, be paid into the Irish Consolidated Fund, and be appropriated to
+the public service of Ireland according to law.
+
+[Sidenote: Annual contributions from Ireland to Consolidated Fund of
+United Kingdom.]
+
+=13.=--(1) Subject to the provisions for the reduction or cesser thereof
+in this section mentioned, there shall be made on the part of Ireland to
+the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom the following annual
+contributions in every financial year; that is to say,--
+
+    (_a_) The sum of _one million four hundred and sixty-six thousand
+    pounds_ on account of the interest on and management of the Irish
+    share of the National Debt:
+
+    (_b_) The sum of _one million six hundred and sixty-six thousand
+    pounds_ on account of the expenditure on the army and navy of the
+    United Kingdom:
+
+    (_c_) The sum of _one hundred and ten thousand pounds_ on account of
+    the Imperial civil expenditure of the United Kingdom:
+
+    (_d_) The sum of _one million pounds_ on account of the Royal Irish
+    Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police.
+
+(2) During the period of _thirty years_ from this section taking effect
+the said annual contributions shall not be increased, but may be reduced
+or cease as hereinafter mentioned. After the expiration of the said
+_thirty years_ the said contributions shall, save as otherwise provided by
+this section, continue until altered in manner provided with respect to
+the alteration of this Act.
+
+(3) The Irish share of the National Debt shall be reckoned at _forty-eight
+million pounds_ Bank annuities, and there shall be paid in every financial
+year on behalf of Ireland to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the
+National Debt an annual sum of _three hundred and sixty thousand pounds_,
+and the permanent annual charge for the National Debt on the Consolidated
+Fund of the United Kingdom shall be reduced by that amount, and the said
+annual sum shall be applied by the said Commissioners as a sinking fund
+for the redemption of the National Debt, and the Irish share of the
+National Debt shall be reduced by the amount of the National Debt so
+redeemed, and the said annual contribution on account of the interest on
+and management of the Irish share of the National Debt shall from time to
+time be reduced by a sum equal to the interest upon the amount of the
+National Debt from time to time so redeemed, but that last-mentioned sum
+shall be paid annually to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the
+National Debt in addition to the above-mentioned annual sinking fund, and
+shall be so paid and be applied as if it were part of that sinking fund.
+
+(4) As soon as an amount of the National Debt equal to the said Irish
+share thereof has been redeemed under the provisions of this section, the
+said annual contribution on account of the interest on and management of
+the Irish share of the National Debt, and the said annual sum for a
+sinking fund shall cease.
+
+(5) If it appears to Her Majesty that the expenditure in respect of the
+army and navy of the United Kingdom, or in respect of Imperial Civil
+expenditure of the United Kingdom, for any financial year has been less
+than _fifteen_ times the amount of the contributions above named on
+account of the same matter, a sum equal to _one-fifteenth_ part of the
+diminution shall be deducted from the current annual contribution for the
+same matter.
+
+(6) The sum paid from time to time by the Commissioners of Her Majesty's
+Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues to the Consolidated Fund of the United
+Kingdom on account of the hereditary revenues of the Crown in Ireland
+shall be credited to the Irish Government, and go in reduction of the said
+annual contribution payable on account of the Imperial Civil expenditure
+of the United Kingdom, but shall not be taken into account in calculating
+whether such diminution as above mentioned has or has not taken place in
+such expenditure.
+
+(7) If it appears to Her Majesty that the expenditure in respect of the
+Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police for any
+financial year has been less than the contribution above-named on account
+of such constabulary and police, the current contribution shall be
+diminished by the amount of such difference.
+
+(8) This section shall take effect from and after the _thirty-first day of
+March, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven_.
+
+[Sidenote: Collection and application of Customs and Excise duties in
+Ireland.]
+
+=14.=--(1) On and after such day as the Treasury may direct all moneys
+from time to time collected in Ireland on account of the duties of Customs
+or the duties of Excise as defined by this Act shall, under such
+regulations as the Treasury from time to time make, be carried to a
+separate account (in this Act referred to as the Customs and Excise
+account) and applied in the payment of the following sums in priority as
+mentioned in this section; that is to say,--
+
+    First, of such sum as is from time to time directed by the Treasury in
+    respect of the costs, charges, and expenses of and incident to the
+    collection and management of the said duties in Ireland not exceeding
+    four per cent. of the amount collected there;
+
+    Secondly, of the annual contributions required by this Act to be made
+    to the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom;
+
+    Thirdly, of the annual sums required by this Act to be paid to the
+    Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt;
+
+    Fourthly, of all sums by this Act declared to be payable out of the
+    moneys carried to the Customs and Excise account;
+
+    Fifthly, of all sums due to the Consolidated Fund of the United
+    Kingdom for interest or sinking fund, in respect of any loans made by
+    the issue of bank annuities or otherwise to the Government of Ireland
+    under any Act passed in the present session relating to the purchase
+    and sale of land in Ireland, so far as such sums are not defrayed out
+    of the moneys received under such Act.
+
+(2) So much of the moneys carried to a separate account under this section
+as the Treasury consider are not, and are not likely to be, required to
+meet the above-mentioned payments, shall from time to time be paid over
+and applied as part of the public revenues under the control of the Irish
+Government.
+
+[Sidenote: Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund.]
+
+=15.=--(1) There shall be charged on the Irish Consolidated Fund in
+priority as mentioned in this section:--
+
+    First, such portion of the sums directed by this Act to be paid out of
+    the moneys carried to the Customs and Excise account in priority to
+    any payment for the public revenues of Ireland, as those moneys are
+    insufficient to pay;
+
+    Secondly, all sums due in respect of any debt incurred by the
+    Government of Ireland, whether for interest, management, or sinking
+    fund;
+
+    Thirdly, all sums which at the passing of this Act are charged on the
+    Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom in respect of Irish services
+    other than the salary of the Lord-Lieutenant;
+
+    Fourthly, the salaries of all judges of the Supreme Court of
+    Judicature or other Superior Court in Ireland, or of any County or
+    other like Court, who are appointed after the passing of this Act, and
+    the pensions of such judges;
+
+    Fifthly, any other sums charged by this Act on the Irish Consolidated
+    Fund.
+
+(2) It shall be the duty of the Legislature of Ireland to impose all such
+taxes, duties, or imposts as will raise a sufficient revenue to meet all
+sums charged for the time being on the Irish Consolidated Fund.
+
+[Sidenote: Irish Church Fund.]
+
+=16.=--(1) Until all charges which are payable out of the Church property
+in Ireland, and are guaranteed by the Treasury, have been fully paid, the
+Irish Land Commission shall continue as heretofore to exist, with such
+Commissioners and officers receiving such salaries as the Treasury may
+from time to time appoint, and to administer the Church property and apply
+the income and other moneys receivable therefrom; and so much of the
+salaries of such Commissioners and officers and expenses of the office as
+is not paid out of the Church property shall be paid out of moneys carried
+to the Customs and Excise account under this Act, and if these moneys are
+insufficient, out of the Consolidated Fund of Ireland, and if not so paid,
+shall be paid out of the moneys provided by Parliament. Provided as
+follows:--
+
+    (_a_) All charges on the Church property for which a guarantee has
+    been given by the Treasury before the passing of this Act shall, so
+    far as they are not paid out of such property, be paid out of the
+    moneys carried to the Customs and Excise account under this Act, and
+    if such moneys are insufficient, the Consolidated Fund of Ireland,
+    without prejudice nevertheless to the guarantee of the Treasury;
+
+    (_b_) All charges on the Church property, for which no guarantee has
+    been given by the Treasury before the passing of this Act shall be
+    charged on the Consolidated Fund of Ireland, but shall not be
+    guaranteed by the Treasury nor charged on the Consolidated Fund of the
+    United Kingdom.
+
+(2) Subject to any existing charges on the Church property, such property
+shall belong to the Irish Government and any portion of the annual revenue
+thereof which the Treasury, on the application of the Irish Government,
+certify at the end of any financial year not to be required for meeting
+charges, shall be paid over and applied as part of the public revenues
+under the control of the Irish Government.
+
+(3) As soon as all charges on the Church property guaranteed by the
+Treasury have been paid, such property may be managed and administered,
+and subject to existing charges thereon disposed of, and the income or
+proceeds thereof applied, in such manner as the Irish Legislature may from
+time to time direct.
+
+[Sidenote: 32 & 33 Vict. c. 42.]
+
+[Sidenote: 44 & 45 Vict. c. 71.]
+
+(4) 'Church property' in this section means all property accruing under
+the Irish Church Act, 1869, and transferred to the Irish Land Commission
+by the Irish Church Act Amendment Act, 1881.
+
+[Sidenote: Public loans.]
+
+=17.=--(1) All sums due for principal or interest to the Public Works Loan
+Commissioners or to the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland in
+respect of existing loans advanced on any security in Ireland shall on and
+after the appointed day be due to the Government of Ireland instead of the
+said Commissioners, and such body of persons as the Government of Ireland
+may appoint for the purpose shall have all the powers of the said
+Commissioners or their secretary for enforcing payment of such sums, and
+all securities for such sums given to such Commissioners or their
+secretary shall have effect as if the said body were therein substituted
+for those Commissioners or their secretary.
+
+(2) For the repayment of the said loans to the Consolidated Fund of the
+United Kingdom, the Irish Government shall pay annually into that Fund by
+half-yearly payments _on the first day of January_ and _the first day of
+July_, or on such other days as may be agreed on, such instalments of the
+principal of the said loans as will discharge all the loans within _thirty
+years_ from the appointed day, and shall also pay interest half-yearly on
+so much of the said principal as from time to time remains unpaid at the
+rate of _three_ per cent. per annum, and such instalments of principal and
+interest shall be paid out of the moneys carried to the Customs and Excise
+account under this Act, and if those are insufficient, out of the
+Consolidated Fund of Ireland.
+
+[Sidenote: Additional aid in case of war.]
+
+=18.= If Her Majesty declares that a state of war exists and is pleased to
+signify such declaration to the Irish Legislative Body by speech or
+message, it shall be lawful for the Irish Legislature to appropriate a
+further sum out of the Consolidated Fund of Ireland in aid of the army or
+navy, or other measures which Her Majesty may take for the prosecution of
+the war and defence of the realm, and to provide and raise money for that
+purpose; and all moneys so provided and raised, whether by loan, taxation,
+or otherwise, shall be paid into the Consolidated Fund of the United
+Kingdom.
+
+[Sidenote: Money bills and votes.]
+
+=19.=--(1) It shall not be lawful for the Irish Legislative Body to adopt
+or pass any vote, resolution, address, or Bill for the raising or
+appropriation for any purpose of any part of the public revenue of
+Ireland, or of any tax, duty, or impost, except in pursuance of a
+recommendation from Her Majesty signified through the Lord-Lieutenant in
+the session in which such vote, resolution, address, or Bill is proposed.
+
+(2) Notwithstanding that the Irish Legislature is prohibited by this Act
+from making laws relating to certain subjects, that Legislature may, with
+the assent of Her Majesty in Council first obtained, appropriate any part
+of the Irish public revenue, or any tax, duty, or impost imposed by such
+Legislature, for the purpose of, or in connection with, such subjects.
+
+[Sidenote: Exchequer Division and revenue actions.]
+
+=20.=--(1) On and after the appointed day, the Exchequer Division of the
+High Court of Justice shall continue to be a Court of Exchequer for
+revenue purposes under this Act, and whenever any vacancy occurs in the
+office of any judge of such Exchequer Division, his successor shall be
+appointed by Her Majesty on the joint recommendation of the
+Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain.
+
+(2) The judges of such Exchequer Division appointed after the passing of
+this Act shall be removable only by Her Majesty on address from the two
+Houses of the Imperial Parliament, and shall receive the same salaries and
+pensions as those payable at the passing of this Act to the existing
+judges of such division, unless with the assent of Her Majesty in Council
+first obtained, the Irish Legislature alters such salaries or pensions,
+and such salaries and pensions shall be paid out of the moneys carried to
+the Customs and Excise account in pursuance of this Act, and if the same
+are insufficient shall be paid out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and if
+not so paid shall be paid out of the Consolidated Fund of the United
+Kingdom.
+
+(3) An alteration of any rules relating to the procedure in such legal
+proceedings as are mentioned in this section shall not be made except with
+the approval of the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, and the
+sittings of the Exchequer Division and the judges thereof shall be
+regulated with the like approval.
+
+(4) All legal proceedings instituted in Ireland by or against the
+Commissioners or any officers of Customs or Excise, or the Treasury,
+shall, if so required by any party in such proceedings, be heard and
+determined before the judges of such Exchequer Division, or some or one of
+them, and any appeal from the decision in any such legal proceeding, if by
+a judge, shall lie to the said division, and if by the Exchequer Division,
+shall lie to the House of Lords, and not to any other tribunal; and if it
+is made to appear to such judges, or any of them, that any decree or
+judgment in any such proceeding as aforesaid, has not been duly enforced
+by the sheriff or other officer whose duty it is to enforce the same, such
+judges or judge shall appoint some officer to enforce such judgment or
+decree; and it shall be the duty of such officer to take proper steps to
+enforce the same, and for that purpose such officer and all persons
+employed by him shall be entitled to the same immunities, powers, and
+privileges as are by law conferred on a sheriff and his officers.
+
+(5) All sums recovered in respect of duties of Customs and Excise, or
+under any Act relating thereto, or by an officer of Customs or Excise,
+shall, notwithstanding anything in any other Act, be paid to the Treasury,
+and carried to the Customs and Excise account under this Act.
+
+_Police._
+
+[Sidenote: Police.]
+
+=21.=--The following regulations shall be made with respect to police in
+Ireland:--
+
+    (_a_) The Dublin Metropolitan Police shall continue and be subject as
+    heretofore to the control of the Lord-Lieutenant as representing Her
+    Majesty for a period of _two years_ from the passing of this Act, and
+    thereafter until any alteration is made by Act of the Legislature of
+    Ireland, but such Act shall provide for the proper saving of all then
+    existing interests, whether as regards pay, pensions, superannuation
+    allowances, or otherwise.
+
+    (_b_) The Royal Irish Constabulary shall, while that force subsists,
+    continue and be subject as heretofore to the control of the
+    Lord-Lieutenant as representing Her Majesty.
+
+    (_c_) The Irish Legislature may provide for the establishment and
+    maintenance of a police force in counties and boroughs in Ireland
+    under the control of local authorities, and arrangements may be made
+    between the Treasury and the Irish Government for the establishment
+    and maintenance of police reserves.
+
+
+PART II.
+
+_Supplemental Provisions._
+
+Powers of Her Majesty.
+
+[Sidenote: Power over certain lands reserved to Her Majesty.]
+
+=22.=--On and after the appointed day there shall be reserved to Her
+Majesty--
+
+    (1) The power of erecting forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and
+    other buildings for military or naval purposes;
+
+    (2) The power of taking waste land, and, on making due compensation,
+    any other land for the purpose of erecting such forts, magazines,
+    arsenals, dockyards, or other buildings as aforesaid, and for any
+    other military or naval purpose, or the defence of the realm.
+
+Legislative Body.
+
+[Sidenote: Veto by first order of Legislative Body, how overruled.]
+
+=23.=--If a Bill or any provision of a Bill is lost by disagreement
+between the two orders of the Legislative Body, and after a period ending
+with a dissolution of the Legislative Body, or the period of _three
+years_, whichever period is longest, such Bill, or a Bill containing the
+said provision, is again considered by the Legislative Body, and such Bill
+or provision is adopted by the second order and negatived by the first
+order, the same shall be submitted to the whole Legislative Body, both
+orders of which shall vote together on the Bill or provision, and the same
+shall be adopted or rejected according to the decision of the majority of
+the members so voting together.
+
+[Sidenote: Cesser of power of Ireland to return members to Parliament.]
+
+=24.=--On and after the appointed day Ireland shall cease, except in the
+event hereafter in this Act mentioned, to return representative peers to
+the House of Lords or members to the House of Commons, and the persons who
+on the said day are such representative peers and members shall cease as
+such to be members of the House of Lords and House of Commons
+respectively.
+
+Decision of Constitutional Questions.
+
+[Sidenote: Constitutional questions to be submitted to Judicial
+Committee.]
+
+=25.= Questions arising as to the powers conferred on the Legislature of
+Ireland under this Act shall be determined as follows:--
+
+    (_a_) If any such question arises on any Bill passed by the
+    Legislative Body, the Lord-Lieutenant may refer such question to Her
+    Majesty in Council;
+
+    (_b_) If, in the course of any action or other legal proceeding, such
+    question arises on any Act of the Irish Legislature, any party to such
+    action or other legal proceeding may, subject to the rules in this
+    section mentioned, appeal from a decision on such question to Her
+    Majesty in Council;
+
+    (_c_) If any such question arises otherwise than as aforesaid in any
+    Act of the Irish Legislature, the Lord-Lieutenant or one of Her
+    Majesty's principal Secretaries of State may refer such question to
+    Her Majesty in Council;
+
+    (_d_) A question referred or appeal brought under this section to Her
+    Majesty in Council shall be referred for the consideration of the
+    Judicial Committee of the Privy Council;
+
+    (_e_) The decision of Her Majesty in Council on any question referred
+    or appeal brought under this section shall be final, and a Bill which
+    may be so decided to be, or contain a provision, in excess of the
+    powers of the Irish Legislature shall not be assented to by the
+    Lord-Lieutenant; and a provision of any Act which is so decided to be
+    in excess of the powers of the Irish Legislature shall be void;
+
+    (_f_) There shall be added to the Judicial Committee when sitting for
+    the purpose of considering questions under this section, such members
+    of Her Majesty's Privy Council, being or having been Irish judges, as
+    to Her Majesty may seem meet;
+
+    (_g_) Her Majesty may, by Order in Council from time to time, make
+    rules as to the cases and mode in which and conditions under which, in
+    pursuance of this section, questions may be referred and appeals
+    brought to Her Majesty in Council, and as to the consideration thereof
+    by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and any rules so made
+    shall be of the same force as if they were enacted in this Act;
+
+    (_h_) An appeal shall not lie to the House of Lords in respect of any
+    question in respect of which an appeal can be had to Her Majesty in
+    Council in pursuance of this section.
+
+Lord-Lieutenant.
+
+[Sidenote: Office of Lord-Lieutenant.]
+
+=26.=--(1) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any Act
+of Parliament, every subject of Her Majesty shall be eligible to hold and
+enjoy the office of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, without reference to his
+religious belief.
+
+(2) The salary of the Lord-Lieutenant shall continue to be charged on the
+Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, and the expenses of his household
+and establishment shall continue to be defrayed out of moneys to be
+provided by Parliament.
+
+(3) All existing powers vested by Act of Parliament or otherwise in the
+Chief Secretary for Ireland may, if no such officer is appointed, be
+exercised by the Lord-Lieutenant until other provision is made by Act of
+the Irish Legislature.
+
+(4) The Legislature of Ireland shall not pass any Act relating to the
+office or functions of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.
+
+Judges and Civil Servants.
+
+[Sidenote: Judges to be removable only on address.]
+
+=27.= A judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature or other Superior Court
+of Ireland, or of any County Court or other Court with a like jurisdiction
+in Ireland, appointed after the passing of this Act, shall not be removed
+from his office except in pursuance of an address to Her Majesty from both
+orders of the Legislative Body voting separately, nor shall his salary be
+diminished or right to pension altered during his continuance in office.
+
+[Sidenote: Provisions as to judges and other persons having salaries
+charged on the Consolidated Fund.]
+
+=28.=--(1) All persons who at the passing of this Act are judges of the
+Supreme Court of Judicature or County Court judges, or hold any other
+judicial position in Ireland shall, if they are removable at present on
+address to Her Majesty of both Houses of Parliament, continue to be
+removable only upon such address from both Houses of the Imperial
+Parliament, and if removable in any other manner shall continue to be
+removable in like manner as heretofore; and such persons, and also all
+persons at the passing of this Act in the permanent Civil Service of the
+Crown in Ireland whose salaries are charged on the Consolidated Fund of
+the United Kingdom, shall continue to hold office and to be entitled to
+the same salaries, pensions, and superannuation allowances as heretofore,
+and to be liable to perform the same or analogous duties as heretofore;
+and the salaries of such persons shall be paid out of the moneys carried
+to the Customs and Excise account under this Act, or if these moneys are
+insufficient, out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and if the same are not
+so paid shall continue charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United
+Kingdom.
+
+(2) If any of these said persons retires from office with the approbation
+of Her Majesty before he has completed the period of service entitling him
+to a pension, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty, if she thinks fit, to
+grant to that person such pension, not exceeding the pension to which he
+would have been entitled if he had completed the said period of service,
+as to Her Majesty seems meet.
+
+[Sidenote: As to persons holding Civil Service appointments.]
+
+=29.=--(1) All persons not above provided for and at the passing of this
+Act serving in Ireland in the permanent Civil Service of the Crown shall
+continue to hold their offices and receive the same salaries, and to be
+entitled to the same gratuities and superannuation allowances as
+heretofore, and shall be liable to perform the same duties as heretofore
+or duties of similar rank, but any of such persons shall be entitled at
+the expiration of _two years_ after the passing of this Act to retire from
+office, and at any time if required by the Irish Government shall retire
+from office, and on any such retirement shall be entitled to receive such
+payment as the Treasury may award to him in accordance with the provisions
+contained in the Fourth Schedule to this Act.
+
+(2) The amount of such payment shall be paid to him out of the moneys
+carried to the Customs and Excise account under this Act, or, if those
+moneys are insufficient, out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and so far as
+the same are not so paid shall be paid out of moneys provided by
+Parliament.
+
+[Sidenote: 34 & 35 Vict. c. 36.]
+
+(3) The Pensions Commutation Act, 1871, shall apply to all persons who,
+having retired from office, are entitled to any annual payment under this
+section in like manner as if they had retired in consequence of the
+abolition of their offices.
+
+(4) This section shall not apply to persons who are retained in the
+service of the Imperial Government.
+
+[Sidenote: Provision for existing pensions and superannuation allowances.]
+
+=30.= Where before the passing of this Act any pension or superannuation
+allowance has been granted to any person on account of service as a judge
+of the Supreme Court of Judicature of Ireland, or of any Court
+consolidated into that Court, or as a County Court judge, or in any other
+judicial position, or on account of service in the permanent Civil Service
+of the Crown in Ireland otherwise than in some office, the holder of which
+is, after the passing of this Act, retained in the service of the Imperial
+Government, such pension or allowance, whether payable out of the
+Consolidated Fund or out of moneys provided by Parliament, shall continue
+to be paid to such person, and shall be so paid out of the moneys carried
+to the Customs and Excise account under this Act, or, if such moneys are
+insufficient, out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and so far as the same
+is not so paid, shall be paid as heretofore out of the Consolidated Fund
+of the United Kingdom or moneys provided by Parliament.
+
+_Transitory Provisions._
+
+[Sidenote: Transitory provisions in Schedule.]
+
+=31.= The provisions contained in the Fifth Schedule to this Act relating
+to the mode in which arrangements are to be made for setting in motion the
+Irish Legislative Body and Government, and for the transfer to the Irish
+Government of the powers and duties to be transferred to them under this
+Act, or for otherwise bringing this Act into operation, shall be of the
+same effect as if they were enacted in the body of this Act.
+
+_Miscellaneous._
+
+[Sidenote: Post office and savings banks.]
+
+=32.= Whenever an Act of the Legislature of Ireland has provided for
+carrying on the postal and telegraphic service with respect to the
+transmission of letters and telegrams in Ireland, and the post office and
+other savings banks in Ireland, and for protecting the officers then in
+such service, and the existing depositors in such post-office savings
+banks, the Treasury shall make arrangements for the transfer of the said
+service and banks, in accordance with the said Act, and shall give public
+notice of the transfer, and shall pay all depositors in such post-office
+savings bank who request payment within _six months_ after the date fixed
+for such transfer, and after the expiration of such _six months_ the said
+depositors shall cease to have any claim against the Postmaster-General or
+the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, but shall have the like claim
+against the Consolidated Fund of Ireland, and the Treasury shall cause to
+be transferred in accordance with the said Act the securities representing
+the sums due to the said depositors in post-office savings banks, and the
+securities held for other savings banks.
+
+[Sidenote: Audit.]
+
+=33.= Save as otherwise provided by the Irish Legislature--
+
+    (_a_) The existing law relating to the Exchequer and the Consolidated
+    Fund of the United Kingdom shall apply to the Irish Exchequer and
+    Consolidated Fund, and an officer shall from time to time be appointed
+    by the Lord-Lieutenant to fill the office of the Comptroller-General
+    of the receipt and issue of Her Majesty's Exchequer and
+    Auditor-General of public accounts so far as respects Ireland; and
+
+[Sidenote: 29 & 30 Vict. c. 39.]
+
+    (_b_) The accounts of the Irish Consolidated Fund shall be audited as
+    appropriation accounts in manner provided by the Exchequer and Audit
+    Departments Act, 1866, by or under the direction of the holder of such
+    office.
+
+[Sidenote: Application of parliamentary law.]
+
+=34.=--(1) The privileges, immunities, and powers to be held, enjoyed, and
+exercised by the Irish Legislative Body, and the members thereof, shall be
+such as are from time to time defined by Act of the Irish Legislature, but
+so that the same shall never exceed those at the passing of this Act,
+held, enjoyed, and exercised by the House of Commons, and by the members
+thereof.
+
+(2) Subject as in this Act mentioned, all existing laws and customs
+relating to the members of the House of Commons and their election,
+including the enactments respecting the questioning of elections, corrupt
+and illegal practices, and registration of electors, shall, so far as
+applicable, extend to elective members of the first order and to members
+of the second order of the Irish Legislative Body. Provided that,--
+
+    (_a_) The law relating to the offices of profit enumerated in Schedule
+    H to the Representation of the People Act, 1867, shall apply to such
+    offices of profit in the Government of Ireland not exceeding ten, as
+    the Legislature of Ireland may from time to time direct;
+
+    (_b_) After the first dissolution of the Legislative Body, the
+    Legislature of Ireland may, subject to the restrictions in this Act
+    mentioned, alter the laws and customs in this section mentioned.
+
+[Sidenote: Regulations for carrying Act into effect.]
+
+=35.=--(1) The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland may make regulations for the
+following purposes:--
+
+    (_a_) The summoning of the Legislative Body and the election of a
+    Speaker, and such adaptation to the proceedings of the Legislative
+    Body of the procedure of the House of Commons as appears to him
+    expedient for facilitating the conduct of business by that body on
+    their first meeting;
+
+    (_b_) The adaptation of any laws relating to the election of
+    representative peers;
+
+    (_c_) The adaptation of any laws and customs relating to the House of
+    Commons or the members thereof to the elective members of the first
+    order and to members of the second order of the Legislative Body; and
+
+    (_d_) The mode of signifying their assent or election under this Act
+    by representative peers or Irish members of the House of Commons as
+    regards becoming members of the Irish Legislative Body in pursuance of
+    this Act.
+
+(2) Any regulations so made shall, in so far as they concern the procedure
+of the Legislative Body, be subject to alteration by Standing Orders of
+that Body, and so far as they concern other matters, be subject to
+alteration by the Legislature of Ireland, but shall, until alteration,
+have the same effect as if they were inserted in this Act.
+
+[Sidenote: Saving of powers of House of Lords.]
+
+=36.= Save as in this Act provided with respect to matters to be decided
+by Her Majesty in Council, nothing in this Act shall affect the appellate
+jurisdiction of the House of Lords in respect of actions and suits in
+Ireland, or the jurisdiction of the House of Lords to determine the
+claims to Irish peerages.
+
+[Sidenote: Savings of rights of Parliament.]
+
+=37.= Save as herein expressly provided, all matters in relation to which
+it is not competent for the Irish Legislative Body to make or repeal laws
+shall remain and be within the exclusive authority of the Imperial
+Parliament, whose power and authority in relation thereto, save as
+aforesaid, shall in no wise be diminished or restrained by anything herein
+contained.
+
+[Sidenote: Continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, etc.]
+
+=38.=--(1) Except as otherwise provided by this Act, all existing laws in
+force in Ireland, and all existing courts of civil and criminal
+jurisdiction, and all existing legal commissions, powers, and authorities,
+and all existing officers, judicial, administrative, and ministerial, and
+all existing taxes, licence, and other duties, fees, and other receipts in
+Ireland shall continue as if this Act had not been passed; subject,
+nevertheless, to be repealed, abolished, or altered in manner and to the
+extent provided by this Act; provided that, subject to the provisions of
+this Act, such taxes, duties, fees, and other receipts, shall, after the
+appointed day, form part of the public revenues of Ireland.
+
+(2) The Commissioners of Inland Revenue and Commissioners of Customs, and
+the officers of such Commissioners respectively, shall have the same
+powers in relation to any articles subject to any duty of excise or
+customs, manufactured, imported, kept for sale, or sold, and any premises
+where the same may be, and to any machinery, apparatus, vessels, utensils,
+or conveyance used in connection therewith, or the removal thereof, and in
+relation to the person manufacturing, importing, keeping for sale,
+selling, or having the custody or possession of the same as they would
+have had if this Act had not been passed.
+
+[Sidenote: Mode of alteration of Act.]
+
+=39.=--(1) On and after the appointed day this Act shall not, except such
+provisions thereof as are declared to be alterable by the Legislature of
+Ireland, be altered except--
+
+    (_a_) By Act of the Imperial Parliament and with the consent of the
+    Irish Legislative Body testified by an address to Her Majesty, or
+
+    (_b_) By an Act of the Imperial Parliament, for the passing of which
+    there shall be summoned to the House of Lords the peerage members of
+    the first order of the Irish Legislative Body, and if there are no
+    such members then twenty-eight Irish representative peers elected by
+    the Irish peers in manner heretofore in use, subject to adaptation as
+    provided by this Act; and there shall be summoned to the House of
+    Commons such one of the members of each constituency, or in the case
+    of a constituency returning four members such two of those members, as
+    the Legislative Body of Ireland may select, and such peers and members
+    shall respectively be deemed, for the purpose of passing any such Act,
+    to be members of the said Houses of Parliament respectively.
+
+(2) For the purposes of this section, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty
+by Order in Council to make such provisions for summoning the said peers
+of Ireland to the House of Lords and the said members from Ireland to the
+House of Commons as to Her Majesty may seem necessary or proper, and any
+provisions contained in such Order in Council shall have the same effect
+as if they had been enacted by Parliament.
+
+[Sidenote: Definitions.]
+
+=40.= In this Act--
+
+    The expression 'the appointed day' shall mean such day after the
+    _thirty-first day of March in the year one thousand eight hundred and
+    eighty-seven_ as may be determined by order of Her Majesty in Council.
+
+    The expression 'Lord-Lieutenant' includes the lords justices or any
+    other chief governor or governors of Ireland for the time being.
+
+    The expression 'Her Majesty the Queen,' or 'Her Majesty in Council,'
+    or 'the Queen,' includes the heirs and successors of Her Majesty the
+    Queen.
+
+    The expression 'Treasury' means the Commissioners of Her Majesty's
+    Treasury.
+
+    The expression 'Treaty' includes any convention or arrangement.
+
+    The expression 'existing' means existing at the passing of this Act.
+
+    The expression 'existing constituency' means any county or borough,
+    or division of a county or borough, or a University returning at the
+    passing of this Act a member or members to serve in Parliament.
+
+    The expression 'duties of excise' does not include a duty received in
+    respect of any licence whether for the sale of intoxicating liquors or
+    otherwise.
+
+    The expression 'financial year' means the twelve months ending on the
+    _thirty-first day of March_.
+
+[Sidenote: Short title of Act.]
+
+=41.= This Act may be cited for all purposes as the Irish Government Act,
+1886.
+
+
+SCHEDULES.
+
+FIRST SCHEDULE.
+
+First order of the Irish Legislative Body.
+
+  -------------------------------------------------
+  Electoral Districts.|Number of Members.|Rotation.
+  --------------------|------------------|---------
+                      |                  |
+                      |                  |
+                      |                  |
+  -------------------------------------------------
+
+SECOND SCHEDULE.
+
+Provisions relating to the first order of the Irish Legislative Body.
+
+THIRD SCHEDULE.
+
+Boundaries of divisions of the City of Cork for the purpose of returning
+members to the second order of the Legislative Body.
+
+FOURTH SCHEDULE.
+
+Provisions as to superannuation allowances of persons in the Permanent
+Civil Service.
+
+FIFTH SCHEDULE.
+
+Transitory provisions.
+
+
+
+
+THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL, 1893.
+
+ARRANGEMENT OF CLAUSES.
+
+PART I.
+
+  _Legislative Authority._
+
+  CLAUSE
+
+  1. Establishment of Irish Legislature.
+  2. Powers of Irish Legislature.
+  3. Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature.
+  4. Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature.
+
+  _Executive Authority._
+
+  5. Executive power in Ireland.
+
+  _Constitution of Legislature._
+
+  6. Composition of Irish Legislative Council.
+  7. Composition of Irish Legislative Assembly.
+  8. Disagreement between two Houses, how settled.
+
+  _Irish Representation in House of Commons._
+
+  9. Representation in Parliament of Irish counties and boroughs.
+
+  _Finance._
+
+  10. As to separate Consolidated Fund and taxes.
+  11. Hereditary revenues and income tax.
+  12. Financial arrangements as between United Kingdom and Ireland.
+  13. Treasury Account (Ireland).
+  14. Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund.
+  15. Irish Church Fund.
+  16. Local loans.
+  17. Adaptation of Acts as to Local Taxation Accounts and Probate, etc.,
+      duties.
+  18. Money bills and votes.
+  19. Exchequer judges for revenue actions, election petitions, etc.
+
+  _Post Office, Postal Telegraphs, and Savings Banks._
+
+  20. Transfer of post office and postal telegraphs.
+  21. Transfer of savings banks.
+
+  _Irish Appeals and Decision of Constitutional Questions._
+
+  22. Irish appeals.
+  23. Special provision for decision of constitutional questions.
+
+  _Lord-Lieutenant and Crown Lands._
+
+  24. Office of Lord-Lieutenant.
+  25. Use of Crown lands by Irish Government.
+
+  _Judges and Civil Servants._
+
+  26. Tenure of future judges.
+  27. As to existing judges and other persons having salaries charged on
+      the Consolidated Fund.
+  28. As to persons holding Civil Service appointments.
+  29. As to existing pensions and superannuation allowances.
+
+  _Police._
+
+  30. As to police.
+
+  _Miscellaneous._
+
+  31. Irish Exchequer Consolidated Fund and Audit.
+  32. Law applicable to both Houses of Irish Legislature.
+  33. Supplemental provisions as to powers of Irish Legislature.
+  34. Limitation on borrowing by local authorities.
+
+  _Transitory Provisions._
+
+  35. Temporary restriction on powers of Irish Legislature and Executive.
+  36. Transitory provisions.
+  37. Continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, etc.
+  38. Appointed day.
+  39. Definitions.
+  40. Short title.
+
+
+SCHEDULES.
+
+_A Bill to amend the provision for the Government of Ireland._ [A.D. 1893.
+
+Whereas it is expedient that without impairing or restricting the supreme
+authority of Parliament, an Irish Legislature should be created for such
+purposes in Ireland as in this Act mentioned: Be it therefore enacted by
+the Queen's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of
+the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament
+assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:--
+
+
+PART I.
+
+_Legislative Authority._
+
+[Sidenote: Establishment of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=1.= On and after the appointed day there shall be in Ireland a
+Legislature consisting of Her Majesty the Queen and of two Houses, the
+Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly.
+
+[Sidenote: Powers of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=2.= With the exceptions and subject to the restrictions in this Act
+mentioned, there shall be granted to the Irish Legislature power to make
+laws for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland in respect of
+matters exclusively relating to Ireland or some part thereof.
+
+[Sidenote: Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=3.= The Irish Legislature shall not have power to make powers of laws
+respect of the following matters or any of them:--
+
+    (1) The Crown, or the succession to the Crown, or a Regency; or the
+    Lord-Lieutenant as representative of the Crown; or
+
+    (2) The making of peace or war or matters arising from a state of war;
+    or
+
+    (3) Naval or military forces, or the defence of the realm; or
+
+    (4) Treaties and other relations with foreign States, or the relations
+    between different parts of Her Majesty's dominions, or offences
+    connected with such treaties or relations; or
+
+    (5) Dignities or titles of honour; or
+
+    (6) Treason, treason-felony, alienage or naturalisation; or
+
+    (7) Trade with any place out of Ireland; or quarantine, or navigation
+    (except as respects inland waters and local health or harbour
+    regulations); or
+
+    (8) Beacons, lighthouses, or sea-marks (except so far as they can
+    consistently with any general Act of Parliament be constructed or
+    maintained by a local harbour authority); or
+
+    (9) Coinage; legal tender; or the standard of weights and measures; or
+
+    (10) Trade marks, merchandise marks, copyright, or patent rights.
+
+Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void.
+
+[Sidenote: Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=4.= The powers of the Irish Legislature shall not extend to the making of
+any law--
+
+    (1) Respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, or
+    prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
+
+    (2) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, on account
+    of religious belief; or
+
+    (3) Abrogating or prejudicially affecting the right to establish or
+    maintain any place of denominational education or any denominational
+    institution or charity; or
+
+    (4) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school
+    receiving public money, without attending the religious instruction at
+    that school; or
+
+    (5) Whereby any person may be deprived of life, liberty, or property
+    without due process of law, or may be denied the equal protection of
+    the laws, or whereby private property may be taken without just
+    compensation; or
+
+    (6) Whereby any existing corporation incorporated by Royal Charter or
+    by any local or general Act of Parliament (not being a corporation
+    raising for public purposes taxes, rates, cess, dues, or tolls, or
+    administering funds so raised) may, unless it consents, or the leave
+    of Her Majesty is first obtained on address from the two Houses of the
+    Irish Legislature, be deprived of its rights, privileges, or property
+    without due process of law; or
+
+    (7) Whereby any inhabitant of the United Kingdom may be deprived of
+    equal rights as respects public sea fisheries.
+
+Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void.
+
+_Executive Authority._
+
+[Sidenote: Executive power in Ireland.]
+
+=5.=--(1) The executive power in Ireland shall continue vested in Her
+Majesty the Queen, and the Lord-Lieutenant, on behalf of Her Majesty,
+shall exercise any prerogatives or other executive power of the Queen the
+exercise of which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty, and shall, in
+Her Majesty's name, summon, prorogue, and dissolve the Irish Legislature.
+
+(2) There shall be an Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Ireland
+to aid and advise in the government of Ireland, being of such numbers, and
+comprising persons holding such offices, as Her Majesty may think fit, or
+as may be directed by Irish Act.
+
+(3) The Lord-Lieutenant shall, on the advice of the said Executive
+Committee, give or withhold the assent of Her Majesty to Bills passed by
+the two Houses of the Irish Legislature, subject nevertheless to any
+instructions given by Her Majesty in respect of any such Bill.
+
+_Constitution of Legislature._
+
+[Sidenote: Composition of Irish Legislative Council.]
+
+=6.=--(1) The Irish Legislative Council shall consist of _forty-eight_
+councillors.
+
+(2) Each of the constituencies mentioned in the First Schedule to this
+Act shall return the number of councillors named opposite thereto in that
+schedule.
+
+[Sidenote: 48 & 49 Vict. c. 3.]
+
+(3) Every man shall be entitled to be registered as an elector, and when
+registered to vote at an election, of a councillor for a constituency, who
+owns or occupies any land or tenement in the constituency of a rateable
+value of more than _twenty_ pounds, subject to the like conditions as a
+man is entitled at the passing of this Act to be registered and vote as a
+Parliamentary elector in respect of an ownership qualification, or of the
+qualification specified in section five of the Representation of the
+People Act, 1884, as the case may be: Provided that a man shall not be
+entitled to be registered, nor if registered to vote, at an election of a
+councillor in more than one constituency in the same year.
+
+(4) The term of office of every councillor shall be _eight_ years, and
+shall not be affected by a dissolution; and one _half_ of the Councillors
+shall retire in every _fourth_ year, and their seats shall be filled by a
+new election.
+
+[Sidenote: Composition of Irish Legislative Assembly.]
+
+=7.=--(1) The Irish Legislative Assembly shall consist of _one hundred and
+three_ members, returned by the existing parliamentary constituencies in
+Ireland, or the existing divisions thereof, and elected by the
+parliamentary electors for the time being in those constituencies or
+divisions.
+
+(2) The Irish Legislative Assembly when summoned may, unless sooner
+dissolved, have continuance for _five_ years from the day on which the
+summons directs it to meet and no longer.
+
+(3) After _six_ years from the passing of this Act, the Irish Legislature
+may alter the qualification of the electors, and the constituencies, and
+the distribution of the members among the constituencies, provided that in
+such distribution due regard is had to the population of the
+constituencies.
+
+[Sidenote: Disagreement between two Houses, how settled.]
+
+=8.= If a Bill, or any provision of a Bill, adopted by the Legislative
+Assembly is lost by the disagreement of the Legislative Council, and after
+a dissolution, or the period of _two years_ from such disagreement, such
+Bill, or a Bill for enacting the said provision, is again adopted by the
+Legislative Assembly, and fails within three months afterwards to be
+adopted by the Legislative Council, the same shall forthwith be submitted
+to the members of the two Houses deliberating and voting together thereon,
+and shall be adopted or rejected according to the decision of the majority
+of those members present and voting on the question.
+
+_Irish Representation in House of Commons._
+
+[Sidenote: Representation in Parliament of Irish counties and boroughs.]
+
+=9.= Unless and until Parliament otherwise determines, the following
+provisions shall have effect:--
+
+    (1) After the _appointed day_ each of the constituencies named in the
+    Second Schedule to this Act shall return to serve in Parliament the
+    number of members named opposite thereto in that Schedule, and no
+    more, and Dublin University shall cease to return any member.
+
+    (2) The existing divisions of the constituencies shall, save as
+    provided in that Schedule, be abolished.
+
+    (3) An Irish representative peer in the House of Lords and a member of
+    the House of Commons for an Irish constituency shall not be entitled
+    to deliberate or vote on--
+
+        (_a_) Any Bill or motion in relation thereto, the operation of
+        which Bill or motion is confined to Great Britain or some part
+        thereof; or
+
+        (_b_) Any motion or resolution relating solely to some tax not
+        raised or to be raised in Ireland; or
+
+        (_c_) Any vote or appropriation of money made exclusively for some
+        service not mentioned in the Third Schedule to this Act; or
+
+        (_d_) Any motion or resolution exclusively affecting Great
+        Britain, or some part thereof, or some local authority, or some
+        person or thing therein; or
+
+        (_e_) Any motion or resolution incidental to any such motion or
+        resolution, as either is last mentioned, or relates solely to some
+        tax not raised or to be raised in Ireland, or incidental to any
+        such vote or appropriation of money as aforesaid.
+
+    (4) Compliance with the provisions of this section shall not be
+    questioned otherwise than in each House in manner provided by the
+    House.
+
+    (5) The election laws and the laws relating to the qualification of
+    parliamentary electors shall not, so far as they relate to
+    parliamentary elections, be altered by the Irish Legislature, but this
+    enactment shall not prevent the Irish Legislature from dealing with
+    any officers concerned with the issue of writs of election, and if any
+    officers are so dealt with, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty by
+    Order in Council to arrange for the issue of such writs, and the writs
+    issued in pursuance of such Order shall be of the same effect as if
+    issued in manner heretofore accustomed.
+
+_Finance._
+
+[Sidenote: As to separate Consolidated Fund and taxes.]
+
+=10.=--(1) On and after the appointed day there shall be an Irish
+Exchequer and Consolidated Fund separate from those of the United Kingdom.
+
+(2) The duties of Customs and Excise and the duties on postage shall be
+imposed by Act of Parliament, but subject to the provisions of this Act
+the Irish Legislature may, in order to provide for the public service of
+Ireland, impose any other taxes.
+
+(3) Save as in this Act mentioned, all matters relating to the taxes in
+Ireland and the collection and management thereof shall be regulated by
+Irish Act, and the same shall be collected and managed by the Irish
+Government, and from part of the public revenues of Ireland: Provided
+that--
+
+    (_a_) The duties of Customs shall be regulated, collected, managed,
+    and paid into the Exchequer of the United Kingdom as heretofore; and
+
+    (_b_) All prohibitions in connection with the duties of Excise, and
+    so far as regards articles sent out of Ireland, all matters relating
+    to those duties, shall be regulated by Act of Parliament; and
+
+    (_c_) The excise duties on articles consumed in Great Britain shall be
+    paid in Great Britain, or to an officer of the Government of the
+    United Kingdom.
+
+(4) Save as in this Act mentioned, all the public revenues of Ireland
+shall be paid into the Irish Exchequer and form a Consolidated Fund, and
+be appropriated to the public service of Ireland by Irish Act.
+
+(5) If the duties of Excise are increased above the rates in force on the
+_first day of March one thousand eight hundred and ninety-three_ the net
+proceeds in Ireland of the duties in excess of the said rates shall be
+paid from the Irish Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom.
+
+(6) If the duties of Excise are reduced below the rates in force on the
+said day, and the net proceeds of such duties in Ireland are in
+consequence less than the net proceeds of the duties before the reduction,
+a sum equal to the deficiency shall, unless it is otherwise agreed between
+the Treasury and the Irish Government, be paid from the Exchequer of the
+United Kingdom to the Irish Exchequer.
+
+[Sidenote: Hereditary revenues and income tax.]
+
+=11.=--(1) The hereditary revenues of the Crown in Ireland which are
+managed by the Commissioners of Woods shall continue during the life of
+Her present Majesty to be managed and collected by those Commissioners,
+and the net amount payable by them to the Exchequer on account of those
+revenues, after deducting all expenses (but including an allowance for
+interest on such proceeds of the sale of those revenues as have not been
+re-invested in Ireland), shall be paid into the Treasury Account (Ireland)
+hereinafter mentioned, for the benefit of the Irish Exchequer.
+
+(2) A person shall not be required to pay income tax in Great Britain in
+respect of property situate or business carried on in Ireland, and a
+person shall not be required to pay income tax in Ireland in respect of
+property situate or business carried on in Great Britain.
+
+(3) For the purpose of giving to Ireland the benefit of the difference
+between the income tax collected in Great Britain from British, Colonial,
+and foreign securities held by residents in Ireland, and the income tax
+collected in Ireland from Irish securities held by residents in Great
+Britain, there shall be made to Ireland out of the income tax collected in
+Great Britain, an allowance of such amount as may be from time to time
+determined by the Treasury, in accordance with a minute of the Treasury,
+laid before Parliament before the appointed day, and such allowance shall
+be paid into the Treasury Account (Ireland) for the benefit of the Irish
+Exchequer.
+
+(4) Provided that the provisions of this section with respect to income
+tax shall not apply to any excess of the rate of income tax in Great
+Britain above the rate in Ireland or of the rate of income tax in Ireland
+above the rate in Great Britain.
+
+[Sidenote: Financial arrangements as between United Kingdom and Ireland.]
+
+=12.=--(1) The duties of Customs contributed by Ireland and, save as
+provided by this Act, that portion of any public revenue of the United
+Kingdom to which Ireland may claim to be entitled, whether specified in
+the Third Schedule to this Act or not, shall be carried to the
+Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, as the contribution of Ireland to
+Imperial liabilities and expenditure as defined in that Schedule.
+
+(2) The civil charges of the Government in Ireland shall, subject as in
+this Act mentioned, be borne after the appointed day by Ireland.
+
+(3) After _fifteen_ years from the passing of this Act the arrangements
+made by this Act for the contribution of Ireland to Imperial liabilities
+and expenditure, and otherwise for the financial relations between the
+United Kingdom and Ireland, may be revised in pursuance of an address to
+Her Majesty from the House of Commons, or from the Irish Legislative
+Assembly.
+
+[Sidenote: Treasury Account (Ireland)]
+
+=13.=--(1) There shall be established under the direction of the Treasury
+an account (in this Act referred to as the Treasury Account (Ireland)).
+
+(2) There shall be paid into such account all sums payable from the Irish
+Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, or from the latter to
+the former Exchequer, and all sums directed to be paid into the account
+for the benefit of either of the said Exchequers.
+
+(3) All sums which are payable from either of the said Exchequers to the
+other of them, or being payable out of one of the said Exchequers are
+repayable by the other Exchequer, shall in the first instance be payable
+out of the said account so far as the money standing on the account is
+sufficient; and for the purpose of meeting such sums the Treasury out of
+the Customs revenue collected in Ireland, and the Irish Government out of
+any of the public revenues in Ireland, may direct money to be paid to the
+Treasury Account (Ireland) instead of into the Exchequer.
+
+(4) Any surplus standing on the account to the credit of either Exchequer,
+and not required for meeting payments, shall at convenient times be paid
+into that Exchequer, and where any sum so payable in to the Exchequer of
+the United Kingdom is required by law to be forthwith paid to the National
+Debt Commissioners, that sum may be paid to those Commissioners without
+being paid into the Exchequer.
+
+(5) All sums payable by virtue of this Act out of the Consolidated Fund of
+the United Kingdom or of Ireland shall be payable from the Exchequer of
+the United Kingdom or of Ireland shall be payable from the Exchequer of
+the United Kingdom or Ireland, as the case may be, within the meaning of
+this Act, and all sums by this Act made payable from the Exchequer of the
+United Kingdom shall, if not otherwise paid, be charged on and paid out of
+the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom.
+
+[Sidenote: Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund.]
+
+=14.=--(1) There shall be charged on the Irish Consolidated Fund in favour
+of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom as a first charge on sums which--
+
+    (_a_) Are payable to that Exchequer from the Irish Exchequer; or
+
+[Sidenote: 54 & 55 Vict. c. 48.]
+
+    (_b_) Are required to repay to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom
+    sums issued to meet the dividends or sinking fund or guaranteed land
+    stock under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891: or
+
+    (_c_) Otherwise have been or are required to be paid out of the
+    Exchequer of the United Kingdom in consequence of the non-payment
+    thereof out of the Exchequer of Ireland or otherwise by the Irish
+    Government.
+
+(2) If at any time the Controller and Auditor-General of the United
+Kingdom is satisfied that any such charge is due, he shall certify the
+amount of it, and the Treasury shall send such certificate to the
+Lord-Lieutenant, who shall thereupon by order, without any
+counter-signature, direct the payment of the amount from the Irish
+Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, and such order shall be
+duly obeyed by all persons, and until the amount is wholly paid no other
+payment shall be made out of the Irish Exchequer for any purpose whatever.
+
+(3) There shall be charged on the Irish Consolidated Fund next after the
+foregoing charge--
+
+[Sidenote: 54 & 55 Vict. c. 48.]
+
+    (_a_) All sums, for dividends or sinking fund on guaranteed land stock
+    under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891, which the Land
+    Purchase Account and the Guarantee Fund under that Act are
+    insufficient to pay;
+
+    (_b_) All sums due in respect of any debt incurred by the Government
+    of Ireland, whether for interest management, or sinking fund;
+
+    (_c_) An annual sum of _five thousand pounds_ for the expenses of the
+    household and establishment of the Lord-Lieutenant;
+
+    (_d_) All existing charges on the Consolidated Fund of the United
+    Kingdom in respect of Irish services other than the salary of the
+    Lord-Lieutenant; and
+
+    (_e_) The salaries and pensions of all judges of the Supreme Court or
+    other Superior Court in Ireland or of any County or other like Court,
+    who are appointed after the passing of this Act, and are not the
+    Exchequer judges hereafter mentioned.
+
+(4) Until all charges created by this Act upon the Irish Consolidated Fund
+and for the time being due are paid, no money shall be issued from the
+Irish Exchequer for any other purpose whatever.
+
+[Sidenote: Irish Church Fund. 32 & 33 Vict. c. 42. 44 & 45 Vict. c. 71.]
+
+=15.=--(1) All existing charges on the Church property in Ireland--that is
+to say, all property accruing under the Irish Church Act, 1869, and
+transferred to the Irish Land Commission by the Irish Church Amendment
+Act, 1881--shall so far as not paid out of the said property be charged on
+the Irish Consolidated Fund, and any of those charges guaranteed by the
+Treasury, if and so far as not paid, shall be paid out of the Exchequer of
+the United Kingdom.
+
+(2) Subject to the existing charges thereon, the said Church property
+shall belong to the Irish Government, and be managed, administered, and
+disposed of as directed by Irish Act.
+
+[Sidenote: Local loans.]
+
+=16.=--(1) All sums paid or applicable in or towards the discharge of the
+interest or principal of any local loan advanced before the appointed day
+on security in Ireland, or otherwise in respect of such loan, which but
+for this Act would be paid to the National Debt Commissioners, and carried
+to the Local Loans Fund, shall, after the appointed day, be paid, until
+otherwise provided by Irish Act, to the Irish Exchequer.
+
+(2) For the payment of the Local Loans Fund of the principal and interest
+of such loans, the Irish Government shall after the appointed day pay by
+half-yearly payments an annuity for _forty-nine_ years, at the rate of
+_four_ per cent., on the principal of the said loans, exclusive of any
+sums written off before the appointed day from the account of assets of
+the Local Loans Fund, and such annuity shall be paid from the Irish
+Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, and when so paid shall
+be forthwith paid to the National Debt Commissioners for the credit of the
+Local Loans Fund.
+
+(3) After the appointed day, money for loans in Ireland shall cease to be
+advanced either by the Public Works Loan Commissioners or out of the Local
+Loans Fund.
+
+[Sidenote: Adaptation of Acts as to Local Taxation Accounts and Probate,
+etc., duties. See 50 & 51 Vict. c. 41. 54 & 55 Vict. c. 48.]
+
+=17.=--(1) So much of any Act as directs payment to the Local Taxation
+(Ireland) Account of any share of Probate, Excise, or Customs duties
+payable to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom shall, together with any
+enactment amending the same, be repealed as from the appointed day without
+prejudice to the adjustment of balances after that day; the like amounts
+shall continue to be paid to the Local Taxation Accounts in England and
+Scotland as would have been paid if this Act had not passed, and any
+residue of the said share shall be paid into the Exchequer of the United
+Kingdom.
+
+[Sidenote: See 21 & 22 Vict. c. 86, ss. 12-18. 21 & 22 Vict. c. 95, s. 29.
+22 & 23 Vict. c. 31, s. 25. 39 & 40 Vict. c. 70, ss. 41-44.]
+
+(2) The stamp duty chargeable in respect of the personalty of a deceased
+person, shall not in the case of administration granted in Great Britain
+be chargeable in respect of any personalty situate in Ireland; nor in the
+case of administration granted in Ireland be chargeable in respect of any
+personalty situate in Great Britain; and any administration granted in
+Great Britain shall not, if re-sealed in Ireland, be exempt from stamp
+duty on administration granted in Ireland, and any administration granted
+in Ireland shall not, when re-sealed in Great Britain, be exempt from
+stamp duty on administration granted in Great Britain.
+
+(3) In this section the expression 'administration' means probate or
+letters of administration, and as respects Scotland, confirmation
+inclusive of the inventory required under the Acts relating to the said
+stamp duty, and the expression 'personalty' means personal or movable
+estate and effects.
+
+[Sidenote: Money bills and votes.]
+
+=18.=--(1) Bills for appropriating any part of the public revenue or for
+imposing any tax shall originate in the Legislative Assembly.
+
+(2) It shall not be lawful for the Legislative Assembly to adopt or pass
+any vote, resolution, address, or Bill for the appropriation for any
+purpose of any part of the public revenue of Ireland, or of any tax,
+except in pursuance of a recommendation from the Lord-Lieutenant in the
+Session in which such vote, resolution, address, or Bill is proposed.
+
+[Sidenote: Exchequer judges for revenue actions, elections petitions,
+etc.]
+
+=19.=--(1) Two of the judges of the Supreme Court in Ireland shall be
+Exchequer judges, and shall be appointed under the Great Seal of the
+United Kingdom; and their salaries and pensions shall be charged on and
+paid out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom.
+
+(2) The Exchequer judges shall be removable only by Her Majesty on address
+from the two Houses of Parliament, and each such judge shall, save as
+otherwise provided by Parliament, receive the same salary and be entitled
+to the same pension as is at the time of his appointment fixed for the
+puisne judges of the Supreme Court, and during his continuance in office
+his salary shall not be diminished, nor his right to pension altered,
+without his consent.
+
+(3) An alteration of any rules relating to such legal proceedings as are
+mentioned in this section shall not be made except with the approval of
+Her Majesty the Queen in Council; and the sittings of the Exchequer judges
+shall be regulated with the like approval.
+
+(4) All legal proceedings in Ireland, which are instituted at the instance
+of or against the Treasury or Commissioners of Customs, or any of their
+officers, or relate to the election of members to serve in Parliament, or
+touch any matter within the powers of the Irish Legislature, or touch any
+matter affected by a law which the Irish Legislature have not power to
+repeal or alter, shall, if so required by any party to such proceedings,
+be heard and determined before the Exchequer judges or (except where the
+case requires to be determined by two judges) before one of them, and in
+any such legal proceeding an appeal shall, if any party so requires, lie
+from any Court of first instance in Ireland to the Exchequer judges, and
+the decision of the Exchequer judges shall be subject to appeal to Her
+Majesty the Queen in Council and not to any other tribunal.
+
+(5) If it is made to appear to an Exchequer judge that any decree or
+judgment in any such proceeding as aforesaid has not been duly enforced by
+the sheriff or other officer whose duty it is to enforce the same, such
+judge shall appoint some officer whose duty it shall be to enforce the
+judgment or decree; and for that purpose such officer and all persons
+employed by him shall be entitled to the same privileges, immunities, and
+powers as are by law conferred on a sheriff and his officers.
+
+(6) The Exchequer judges, when not engaged in hearing and determining such
+legal proceedings as above in this section mentioned, shall perform such
+of the duties ordinarily performed by other judges of the Supreme Court in
+Ireland as may be assigned by Her Majesty the Queen in Council.
+
+(7) All sums recovered by the Treasury or the Commissioners of Customs or
+any of their officers, or recovered under any Act relating to duties of
+Customs, shall, notwithstanding anything in any other Act, be paid to such
+public account as the Treasury or the Commissioners direct.
+
+_Post Office, Postal Telegraphs, and Savings Banks._
+
+[Sidenote: Transfer of post office and postal telegraphs.]
+
+=20.=--(1) As from the _appointed day_ the postal and telegraph service in
+Ireland shall be transferred to the Irish Government, and may be regulated
+by Irish Act, except as in this Act mentioned and except as regards
+matters relating--
+
+    (_a_) To such conditions of the transmission or delivery of postal
+    packets and telegrams as are incidental to the duties on postage; or
+
+    (_b_) To foreign mails or submarine telegraphs or through lines in
+    connection therewith; or
+
+    (_c_) To any other postal or telegraph business in connection with
+    places out of the United Kingdom.
+
+(2) The administration of or incidental to the said excepted matters
+shall, save as may be otherwise arranged with the Irish Post Office,
+remain with the Postmaster-General.
+
+(3) As regards the revenue and expenses of the postal and telegraph
+service, the Postmaster-General shall retain the revenue collected and
+defray the expenses incurred in Great Britain, and the Irish Post Office
+shall retain the revenue collected and defray the expenses incurred in
+Ireland, subject to the provisions of the Fourth Schedule to this Act;
+which schedule shall have full effect, but may be varied or added to by
+agreement between the Postmaster-General and the Irish Post Office.
+
+(4) The sums payable by the Postmaster-General or Irish Post Office to the
+other of them in pursuance of this Act shall, if not paid out of
+Post-Office moneys, be paid from the Exchequer of the United Kingdom or of
+Ireland, as the case requires, to the other Exchequer.
+
+[Sidenote: 26 & 27 Vict. c. 112.]
+
+(5) Sections forty-eight to fifty-two of the Telegraph Act, 1863, and any
+enactment amending the same, shall apply to all telegraphic lines of the
+Irish Government in like manner as to the telegraphs of a company within
+the meaning of that Act.
+
+[Sidenote: Transfer of savings banks]
+
+=21.=--(1) As from the _appointed day_ there shall be transferred to the
+Irish Government the post-office savings banks in Ireland, and all such
+powers and duties of any department or officer in Great Britain as are
+connected with post-office savings banks, trustee savings banks, or
+friendly societies in Ireland, and the same may be regulated by Irish Act.
+
+(2) The Treasury shall publish not less than six months previous notice of
+the transfer of savings banks.
+
+(3) If before the date of the transfer any depositor in a post-office
+savings bank so requests, his deposit shall, according to his request,
+either be paid to him or transferred to a post-office savings bank in
+Great Britain, and after the said date the depositors in a post-office
+savings bank in Ireland shall cease to have any claim against the
+Postmaster-General or the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, but
+shall have the like claim against the Government and Consolidated Fund of
+Ireland.
+
+(4) If before the date of the transfer the trustees of any trustees
+savings bank so request, then, according to the request, either all sums
+due to them shall be repaid, and the savings bank closed, or those sums
+shall be paid to the Irish Government, and after the said date the
+trustees shall cease to have any claim against the National Debt
+Commissioners or the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, but shall
+have the like claim against the Government and Consolidated Fund of
+Ireland.
+
+(5) Notwithstanding the foregoing provisions of this section, if a sum due
+on account of any annuity or policy of insurance which has before the
+above-mentioned notice been granted through a post-office or trustee
+savings bank, is not paid by the Irish Government, that sum shall be paid
+out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom.
+
+_Irish Appeals and Decision of Constitutional Questions._
+
+[Sidenote: Irish appeals.]
+
+=22.=--(1) The appeal from Courts in Ireland to the House of Lords shall
+cease; and where any person would, but for this Act, have a right to
+appeal from any Court in Ireland to the House of Lords, such person shall
+have the like right to appeal to Her Majesty the Queen in Council; and
+the right so to appeal shall not be affected by any Irish Act; and all
+enactments relating to appeals to Her Majesty the Queen in Council, and to
+the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, shall apply accordingly.
+
+[Sidenote: 39 & 40 Vict. c. 59]
+
+(2) When the Judicial Committee sit for hearing appeals from a Court in
+Ireland, there shall be present not less than four Lords of Appeal, within
+the meaning of the Appellate Jurisdiction Act, 1876, and at least one
+member who is or has been a judge of the Supreme Court in Ireland.
+
+(3) A rota of privy councillors to sit for hearing appeals from Courts in
+Ireland shall be made annually by Her Majesty in Council, and the privy
+councillors, or some of them, on that rota shall sit to hear the said
+appeals. A casual vacancy in such rota during the year may be filled by
+Order in Council.
+
+(4) Nothing in this Act shall affect the jurisdiction of the House of
+Lords to determine the claims to Irish peerages.
+
+[Sidenote: Special provision for decision of constitutional questions.]
+
+=23.=--(1) If it appears to the Lord-Lieutenant or a Secretary of State
+expedient in the public interest that steps shall be taken for the speedy
+determination of the question whether any Irish Act, or any provision
+thereof, is beyond the power of the Irish Legislature, he may represent
+the same to Her Majesty in Council, and thereupon the said question shall
+be forthwith referred to and heard and determined by the Judicial
+Committee of the Privy Council, constituted as if hearing an appeal from a
+Court in Ireland.
+
+(2) Upon the hearing of the question such persons as seem to the Judicial
+Committee to be interested may be allowed to appear and be heard as
+parties to the case, and the decision of the Judicial Committee shall be
+given in like manner as if it were the decision of an appeal, the nature
+of the report or recommendation to Her Majesty being stated in open Court.
+
+(3) Nothing in this Act shall prejudice any other power of Her Majesty in
+Council to refer any question to the Judicial Committee, or the right of
+any person to petition Her Majesty for such reference.
+
+_Lord-Lieutenant and Crown Lands._
+
+[Sidenote: Office of Lord-Lieutenant.]
+
+=24.=--(1) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in any Act, every
+subject of the Queen shall be qualified to hold the office of
+Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, without reference to his religious belief.
+
+(2) The term of office of the Lord-Lieutenant shall be _six years_,
+without prejudice to the power of Her Majesty the Queen at any time to
+revoke the appointment.
+
+[Sidenote: Use of Crown lands by Irish Government.]
+
+=25.= Her Majesty the Queen in Council may place under the control of the
+Irish Government, for the purposes of that Government, such of the lands
+and buildings in Ireland vested in or held in trust for Her Majesty, and
+subject to such conditions or restrictions (if any) as may seem expedient.
+
+_Judges and Civil Servants._
+
+[Sidenote: Tenure of future judges.]
+
+=26.= A judge of the Supreme Court or other Superior Court in Ireland, or
+of any County Court or other Court with a like jurisdiction in Ireland,
+appointed after the passing of this Act, shall not be removed from his
+office except in pursuance of an address from the two Houses of
+Legislature of Ireland, nor during his continuance in office shall his
+salary be diminished or right to pension altered without his consent.
+
+[Sidenote: As to existing judges and other persons having salaries charged
+on the Consolidated Fund.]
+
+=27.=--(1) All existing judges of the Supreme Court, County Court judges,
+and Land Commissioners in Ireland, and all existing officers serving in
+Ireland in the permanent Civil Service of the Crown and receiving salaries
+charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, shall, if they are
+removable at present on address from both Houses of Parliament, continue
+to be removable only upon such address, and if removable in any other
+manner shall continue to be removable only in the same manner as
+heretofore; and shall continue to receive the same salaries, gratuities,
+and pensions, and to be liable to perform the same duties as heretofore,
+or such duties as Her Majesty may declare to be analogous, and their
+salaries and pensions, if and so far as not paid out of the Irish
+Consolidated Fund, shall be paid out of the Exchequer of the United
+Kingdom: Provided that this section shall be subject to the provisions of
+this Act with respect to the Exchequer judges.
+
+(2) If any of the said judges, commissioners, or officers retires from
+office with the Queen's approbation before completion of the period of
+service entitling him to a pension, Her Majesty may, if she thinks fit,
+grant to him such pension, not exceeding the pension to which he would on
+that completion have been entitled, as to Her Majesty seems meet.
+
+[Sidenote: As to persons holding Civil Service appointments.]
+
+=28.=--(1) All existing officers in the permanent Civil Service of the
+Crown, who are not above provided for, and are at the appointed day
+serving in Ireland, shall, after that day, continue to hold their offices
+by the same tenure, and to receive the same salaries, gratuities, and
+pensions, and to be liable to perform the same duties as heretofore, or
+such duties as the Treasury may declare to be analogous; and the said
+gratuities and pensions, and until three years after the passing of this
+Act, the salaries due to any of the said officers if remaining in his
+existing office, shall be paid to the payees by the Treasury out of the
+Exchequer of the United Kingdom.
+
+(2) Any such officer may, after _three years_ from the passing of this
+Act, retire from office, and shall, at any time during those three years,
+if required by the Irish Government, retire from office, and on any such
+retirement may be awarded by the Treasury a gratuity or pension in
+accordance with the Fifth Schedule to this Act: Provided that--
+
+    (_a_) Six months' written notice shall, unless it is otherwise agreed,
+    be given either by the said officer or by the Irish Government, as the
+    case requires; and
+
+    (_b_) Such number of officers only shall retire at one time, and at
+    such intervals of time as the Treasury, in communication with the
+    Irish Government, sanction.
+
+(3) If any such officer does not so retire, the Treasury may award him,
+after the said three years, a pension in accordance with the Fifth
+Schedule to this Act, which shall become payable to him on his ultimate
+retirement from the service of the Crown.
+
+(4) The gratuities and pensions awarded in accordance with the Fifth
+Schedule to this Act shall be paid by the Treasury to the payees out of
+the Exchequer of the United Kingdom.
+
+(5) All sums paid out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom in pursuance
+of this section shall be repaid to that Exchequer from the Irish
+Exchequer.
+
+(6) This section shall not apply to officers retained in the service of
+the Government of the United Kingdom.
+
+[Sidenote: As to existing pensions and superannuation allowances.]
+
+=29.= Any existing pension granted on account of service in Ireland as a
+judge of the Supreme Court or of any Court consolidated into that Court,
+or as a County Court judge, or in any other judicial position, or as an
+officer in the permanent Civil Service of the Crown other than in an
+office the holder of which is after the appointed day retained in the
+service of the Government of the United Kingdom, shall be charged on the
+Irish Consolidated Fund, and if and so far as not paid out of that fund,
+shall be paid out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom.
+
+_Police._
+
+[Sidenote: As to police.]
+
+=30.=--(1) The forces of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin
+Metropolitan Police shall, when and as local police forces are from time
+to time established in Ireland in accordance with the Sixth Schedule to
+this Act, be gradually reduced and ultimately cease to exist as mentioned
+in that Schedule; and after the passing of this Act, no officer or man
+shall be appointed to either of these forces; Provided that until the
+expiration of _six_ years from the appointed day, nothing in this Act
+shall require the Lord-Lieutenant to cause either of the said forces to
+cease to exist, if as representing Her Majesty the Queen he considers it
+inexpedient.
+
+(2) The said two forces shall, while they continue, be subject to the
+control of the Lord-Lieutenant as representing Her Majesty, and the
+members thereof shall continue to receive the same salaries, gratuities,
+and pensions, and hold their appointments on the same tenure as
+heretofore, and these salaries, gratuities, and pensions, and all the
+expenditure incidental to either force, shall be paid out of the Exchequer
+of the United Kingdom.
+
+(3) When any existing member of either force retires under the provisions
+of the Sixth Schedule to this Act, the Treasury may award to him a
+gratuity or pension in accordance with that Schedule.
+
+(4) Those gratuities and pensions and all existing pensions payable in
+respect of service in either force, shall be paid by the Treasury to the
+payees out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom.
+
+(5) Two-thirds of the net amount payable in pursuance of this section out
+of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom shall be repaid to that Exchequer
+from the Irish Exchequer.
+
+_Miscellaneous._
+
+[Sidenote: Irish Exchequer Consolidated Fund and Audit.]
+
+31. Save as may be otherwise provided by Irish Act--
+
+    (_a_) The existing law relating to the Exchequer and Consolidated Fund
+    of the United Kingdom shall apply with the necessary modifications to
+    the Exchequer and Consolidated Fund of Ireland, and an officer shall
+    be appointed by the Lord-Lieutenant to be the Irish Comptroller and
+    Auditor-General; and
+
+[Sidenote: 29 & 30 Vict. c. 39]
+
+    (_b_) The accounts of the Irish Consolidated Fund shall be audited as
+    appropriation accounts in manner provided by the Exchequer and Audit
+    Departments Act, 1866, by or under the direction of such officer.
+
+[Sidenote: Law applicable to both Houses of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=32.=--(1) Subject as in this Act mentioned and particularly to the
+Seventh Schedule to this Act (which Schedule shall have full effect), all
+existing election laws relating to the House of Commons and the members
+thereof shall, so far as applicable, extend to each of the two Houses of
+the Irish Legislature and the members thereof, but such election laws so
+far as hereby extended may be altered by Irish Act.
+
+(2) The privileges, rights, and immunities to be held and enjoyed by each
+House and the members thereof shall be such as may be defined by Irish
+Act, but so that the same shall never exceed those for the time being
+held and enjoyed by the House of Commons, and the members thereof.
+
+[Sidenote: Supplemental provisions as to powers of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=33.=--(1) The Irish Legislature may repeal or alter any provision of this
+Act which is by this Act expressly made alterable by that Legislature, and
+also any enactments in force in Ireland, except such as either relate to
+matters beyond the powers of the Irish Legislature, or being enacted by
+Parliament after the passing of this Act, may be expressly extended to
+Ireland. An Irish Act notwithstanding it is in any respect repugnant to
+any enactment excepted as aforesaid, shall, though read subject to that
+enactment, be, except to the extent of that repugnancy, valid.
+
+(2) An order, rule, or regulation, made in pursuance of, or having the
+force of, an Act of Parliament, shall be deemed to be an enactment within
+the meaning of this section.
+
+(3) Nothing in this Act shall affect Bills relating to the divorce or
+marriage of individuals, and any such Bill shall be introduced and proceed
+in Parliament in like manner as if this Act had not been passed.
+
+[Sidenote: Limitation of borrowing by local authorities.]
+
+=34.= The local authority for any county or borough or other area shall
+not borrow money without either--
+
+    (_a_) A special authority from the Irish Legislature, or
+
+    (_b_) The sanction of the proper department of the Irish Government;
+
+and shall not, without such special authority, borrow:
+
+    (i.) In the case of municipal borough or town or area less than a
+    county, any loan which together with the then outstanding debt of the
+    local authority, will exceed twice the annual rateable value of the
+    property, in the municipal borough, town, or area; or
+
+    (ii.) In the case of a county or larger area, any loan which together
+    with the then outstanding debt of the local authority, will exceed
+    one-tenth of the annual rateable value of the property in the county
+    or area; or
+
+    (iii.) In any case a loan exceeding one-half of the above limits
+    without a local inquiry held in the county, borough, or area by a
+    person appointed for the purpose by the said department.
+
+_Transitory Provisions._
+
+[Sidenote: Temporary restriction on powers of Irish Legislature and
+Executive.]
+
+=35.=--(1) During _three_ years from the passing of this Act, and if
+Parliament is then sitting until the end of that session of Parliament,
+the Irish Legislature shall not pass an Act respecting the relations of
+landlord and tenant, or the sale, purchase, or letting of land generally;
+Provided that nothing in this section shall prevent the passing of any
+Irish Act with a view to the purchase of land for railways, harbours,
+water-works, town improvements, or other local undertakings.
+
+(2) During _six_ years from the passing of this Act, the appointment of a
+judge of the Supreme Court or other Superior Courts in Ireland (other than
+one of the Exchequer judges) shall be made in pursuance of a warrant from
+Her Majesty countersigned as heretofore.
+
+[Sidenote: Transitory provisions.]
+
+=36.=--(1) Subject to the provisions of this Act Her Majesty the Queen in
+Council may make or direct such arrangements as seem necessary or proper
+for setting in motion the Irish Legislature and Government and for
+otherwise bringing this Act into operation.
+
+(2) The Irish Legislature shall be summoned to meet on the _first Tuesday
+in September, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four_, and the first
+election of members of the two Houses of the Irish Legislature shall be
+held at such time before that day as may be fixed by Her Majesty in
+Council.
+
+(3) Upon the first meeting of the Irish Legislature the members of the
+House of Commons then sitting for Irish constituencies, including the
+members for Dublin University, shall vacate their seats, and writs shall,
+as soon as conveniently may be, be issued by the Lord Chancellor of
+Ireland for the purpose of holding an election of members to serve in
+Parliament for the constituencies named in the Second Schedule of this
+Act.
+
+(4) The existing Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and the senior of the
+existing puisne judges of the Exchequer Division of the Supreme Court, or
+if they or either of them are or is dead or unable or unwilling to act,
+such other of the judges of the Supreme Court as Her Majesty may appoint,
+shall be the first Exchequer judges.
+
+(5) Where it appears to Her Majesty the Queen in Council, before the
+expiration of _one year_ after the appointed day, that any existing
+enactment respecting matters within the powers of the Irish Legislature
+requires adaptation to Ireland, whether--
+
+    (_a_) By the substitution of the Lord-Lieutenant in Council, or of any
+    departments or office of the Executive Government in Ireland, for Her
+    Majesty in Council, a Secretary of State, the Treasury, the
+    Postmaster-General, the Board of Inland Revenue, or other public
+    department or offices in Great Britain; or
+
+    (_b_) By the substitution of the Irish Consolidated Fund or moneys
+    provided by the Irish Legislature for the Consolidated Fund of the
+    United Kingdom, or moneys provided by Parliament, or
+
+    (_c_) By the substitution or confirmation by, or other act to be done
+    by or to, the Irish Legislature for confirmation by or other act to be
+    done by or to Parliament; or
+
+    (_d_) By any other adaptation; Her Majesty, by Order in Council, may
+    make that adaptation.
+
+(6) Her Majesty the Queen in Council may provide for the transfer of such
+property, rights, and liabilities, and the doing of such other things as
+may appear to Her Majesty necessary or proper for carrying into effect
+this Act or any Order in Council under this Act.
+
+(7) An Order in Council under this section may make an adaptation or
+provide for a transfer either unconditionally or subject to such
+exceptions, conditions, and restrictions as may seem expedient.
+
+(8) The draft of every Order in Council under this section shall be laid
+before both Houses of Parliament for not less than two months before it is
+made, and such order when made shall, subject as respects Ireland to the
+provisions of an Irish Act, have full effect, but shall not interfere with
+the continued application to any place, authority, person, or thing, not
+in Ireland, of the enactment to which the Order relates.
+
+[Sidenote: Continuance of existing laws, courts, offices, etc.]
+
+=37.=--Except as otherwise provided by this Act, all existing laws,
+institutions, authorities, and officers in Ireland, whether judicial,
+administrative, or ministerial, and all existing taxes in Ireland shall
+continue as if this Act had not passed, but with the modifications
+necessary for adapting the same to this Act, and subject to be repealed,
+abolished, altered, and adapted in the manner and to the extent authorised
+by this Act.
+
+[Sidenote: Appointed day.]
+
+=38.=--Subject as in this Act mentioned the appointed day for the purposes
+of this Act shall be the day of the first meeting of the Irish
+Legislature, or such other day not more than _seven_ months earlier or
+later as may be fixed by order of Her Majesty in Council either generally
+or with reference to any particular provision of this Act, and different
+days may be appointed for different purposes and different provisions of
+this Act, whether contained in the same section or in different sections.
+
+[Sidenote: Definitions.]
+
+=39.=--In this Act unless the context otherwise requires--
+
+    The expression 'existing' means existing at the passing of this Act.
+
+    The expression 'constituency' means a parliamentary constituency or a
+    county or borough returning a member or members to serve in either
+    House of the Irish Legislature, as the case requires, and the
+    expression 'parliamentary constituency' means any county, borough, or
+    university returning a member or members to serve in Parliament.
+
+    The expression 'parliamentary elector' means a person entitled to be
+    registered as a voter at a parliamentary election.
+
+    The expression 'parliamentary election' means the election of a member
+    to serve in Parliament.
+
+    The expression 'tax' includes duties and fees, and the expression
+    'duties of excise' does not include licence duties.
+
+    The expression 'foreign mails' means all postal packets, whether
+    letters, parcels, or other packets, posted in the United Kingdom and
+    sent to a place out of the United Kingdom, or posted in a place out of
+    the United Kingdom and sent to a place in the United Kingdom, or in
+    transit through the United Kingdom to a place out of the United
+    Kingdom.
+
+    The expression 'telegraphic line' has the same meaning as in the
+    Telegraphs Acts, 1863 to 1892.
+
+    The expression 'duties on postage' includes all rates and sums
+    chargeable for or in respect of postal packets, money orders, or
+    telegrams, or otherwise under the Post-office Acts or the Telegraph
+    Act, 1892.
+
+    The expression 'Irish Act' means a law made by the Irish Legislature.
+
+[Sidenote: 26 & 27 Vict. c. 112. 41 & 42 Vict. c. 76. 55 & 56 Vict. c. 59.
+7 Will. 4, and 1 Vict. c. 36. 32 & 33 Vict. c. 73. 48 & 49 Vict. c. 58.]
+
+    The expression 'election laws' means the laws relating to the election
+    of members to serve in Parliament, other than those relating to the
+    qualification of electors, and includes all the laws respecting the
+    registration of electors, the issue and execution of writs, the
+    creation of polling districts, the taking of the poll, the questioning
+    of elections, corrupt and illegal practices, the disqualification of
+    members, and the vacating of seats.
+
+    The expression 'rateable value' means the annual rateable value under
+    the Irish Valuation Acts.
+
+    The expression 'salary' includes remuneration, allowances, and
+    emoluments.
+
+    The expression 'pension' includes superannuation allowance.
+
+[Sidenote: Short title.]
+
+=40.=--This Act may be cited as the Irish Government Act, 1893.
+
+
+SCHEDULES.
+
+FIRST SCHEDULE: LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL--CONSTITUENCIES AND NUMBER OF
+COUNCILLORS.
+
+  ------------------------------------------
+  Constituencies.            | Councillors.
+  ---------------------------|--------------
+  Antrim County              |   Three
+  Armagh County              |    One
+  Belfast Borough            |    Two
+  Carlow County              |    One
+  Cavan County               |    One
+  Clare County               |    One
+  Cork County--              |
+    East Riding              |   Three
+    West Riding              |    One
+  Cork Borough               |    One
+  Donegal County             |    One
+  Down County                |   Three
+  Dublin County              |   Three
+    "    Borough             |    Two
+  Fermanagh County           |    One
+  Galway County              |    Two
+  Kerry County               |    One
+  Kildare County             |    One
+  Kilkenny County            |    One
+  King's County              |    One
+  Leitrim and Sligo Counties |    One
+  Limerick County            |    Two
+  Londonderry County         |    One
+  Longford County            |    One
+  Louth County               |    One
+  Mayo County                |    One
+  Meath County               |    One
+  Monaghan County            |    One
+  Queen's County             |    One
+  Roscommon County           |    One
+  Tipperary County           |    Two
+  Tyrone County              |    One
+  Waterford County           |    One
+  Westmeath County           |    One
+  Wexford County             |    One
+  Wicklow County             |    One
+  ---------------------------|--------------
+                             | Forty-eight
+  ------------------------------------------
+
+The expression 'borough' in this schedule means an existing parliamentary
+borough. Counties of cities and towns not named in this Schedule shall be
+combined with the county at large in which they are included for
+Parliamentary elections, and if not so included, then with the county at
+large bearing the same name.
+
+A borough named in this Schedule shall not for the purposes of this
+Schedule form part of any other constituency.
+
+SECOND SCHEDULE: IRISH MEMBERS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
+
+  ---------------------------------------------------
+                                |  Number of Members
+  Constituency.                 |     for House
+                                |    of Commons.
+  ------------------------------|--------------------
+  Antrim County                 |       Three
+  Armagh County                 |        Two
+  Belfast Borough (in divisions |}
+     as mentioned below)        |}      Four
+  Carlow County                 |        One
+  Cavan County                  |        Two
+  Clare County                  |        Two
+  Cork County (in divisions     |}
+     as mentioned below)        |}      Five
+  Cork Borough                  |        Two
+  Donegal County                |       Three
+  Down County                   |       Three
+  Dublin County                 |        Two
+     "   Borough (in divisions  |}
+     as mentioned below)        |}      Four
+  Fermanagh County              |        One
+  Galway County                 |       Three
+     "   Borough                |        One
+  Kerry County                  |       Three
+  Kildare County                |        One
+  Kilkenny County               |        One
+     "     Borough              |        One
+  King's County                 |        One
+  Leitrim County                |        Two
+  Limerick County               |        Two
+     "     Borough              |        One
+  Londonderry County            |        Two
+     "        Borough           |        One
+  Longford County               |        One
+  Louth County                  |        One
+  Mayo County                   |       Three
+  Meath County                  |        Two
+  Monaghan County               |        Two
+  Newry Borough                 |        One
+  Queen's County                |        One
+  Roscommon County              |        Two
+  Sligo County                  |        Two
+  Tipperary County              |       Three
+  Tyrone County                 |       Three
+  Waterford County              |        One
+     "      Borough             |        One
+  Westmeath County              |        One
+  Wexford County                |        Two
+  Wicklow County                |        One
+  ------------------------------|--------------------
+                                |       Eighty
+  ---------------------------------------------------
+
+(1) In this Schedule the expression 'borough' means an existing
+parliamentary borough.
+
+(2) In the parliamentary boroughs of Belfast and Dublin, one member shall
+be returned by each of the existing parliamentary divisions of those
+boroughs, and the law relating to the divisions of boroughs shall apply
+accordingly.
+
+(3) The county of Cork shall be divided into two divisions, consisting of
+the East Riding and the West Riding, and three members shall be elected by
+the East Riding, and two members shall be elected by the West Riding; and
+the law relating to divisions of counties shall apply to these divisions.
+
+THIRD SCHEDULE: FINANCE-IMPERIAL LIABILITIES, EXPENDITURE, AND
+MISCELLANEOUS REVENUE.
+
+_Liabilities._
+
+For the purposes of this Act, 'Imperial liabilities' consist of:--
+
+(1) The funded and unfunded debt of the United Kingdom, inclusive of
+terminable annuities paid out of the permanent annual charge for the
+National Debt, and inclusive of the cost of the management of the said
+funded and unfunded debt, but exclusive of the Local Loans Stock and
+Guaranteed Land Stock, and the cost of the management thereof; and
+
+(2) All other charges on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom for
+the repayment of borrowed money, or to fulfil a guarantee.
+
+_Expenditure._
+
+For the purpose of this Act Imperial expenditure consists of expenditure
+for the following services:--
+
+1. Naval and military expenditure (including Greenwich Hospital).
+
+2. Civil expenditure, that is to say--
+
+    (_a_) Civil list and Royal family.
+
+    (_b_) Salaries, pensions, allowances, and incidental expenses of--
+
+        (i.) Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.
+
+        (ii.) Exchequer judges in Ireland.
+
+    (_c_) Buildings, works, salaries, pensions, printing, stationery,
+    allowances, and incidental expenses of--
+
+        (i.) Parliament;
+
+        (ii.) National Debt Commissioners;
+
+        (iii.) Foreign Office and diplomatic and consular service,
+        including secret service, special services, and telegraph
+        subsidies;
+
+        (iv.) Colonial Office, including special services and telegraph
+        subsidies;
+
+        (v.) Privy Council;
+
+        (vi.) Board of Trade, including the Mercantile Marine Fund, Patent
+        Office, Railway Commission, and Wreck Commission, but excluding
+        Bankruptcy;
+
+        (vii.) Mint;
+
+        (viii.) Meteorological Society;
+
+        (ix.) Slave trade service.
+
+    (_d_) Foreign mails and telegraphic communication with places outside
+    the United Kingdom.
+
+_Revenue._
+
+For the purposes of this Act the public revenue to a portion of which
+Ireland may claim to be entitled consists of revenue from the following
+sources:--
+
+1. Suez Canal shares or payments on account thereof.
+
+2. Loans and advances to foreign countries.
+
+3. Annual payments by British possessions.
+
+4. Fees, stamps, and extra receipts received by departments, the expenses
+of which are part of the Imperial expenditure.
+
+5. Small branches of the hereditary revenues of the Crown.
+
+6. Foreshores.
+
+FOURTH SCHEDULE: PROVISIONS AS TO POST OFFICE.
+
+(1) The Postmaster-General shall pay to the Irish Post Office in respect
+of any foreign mails sent through Ireland and the Irish Post Office shall
+pay to the Postmaster-General in respect of any foreign mails sent through
+Great Britain, such sum as may be agreed upon for the carriage of those
+mails in Ireland or Great Britain, as the case may be.
+
+(2) The Irish Post Office shall pay to the Postmaster-General;
+
+    (i.) One-half of the expense of the packet service and submarine
+    telegraph lines between Great Britain and Ireland after deducting from
+    that expense of the sum fixed by the Postmaster-General as incurred on
+    account of foreign mails or telegraphic communication with a place out
+    of the United Kingdom, as the case may be; and
+
+    (ii.) Five per cent. of the expenses of the conveyance outside the
+    United Kingdom of foreign mails, and of the transmission of telegrams
+    to places outside the United Kingdom; and
+
+    (iii.) Such proportion of the receipts for telegrams to places out of
+    the United Kingdom as is due in respect of the transmission outside
+    the United Kingdom of such telegrams.
+
+(3) The Postmaster-General and the Irish Post Office respectively shall
+pay to the other of them on account of foreign money orders, of
+compensation in respect of postal packets, and of any matters not
+specifically provided for in this Schedule, such sums as may be agreed
+upon.
+
+(4) Of the existing debt incurred in respect of telegraphs, a sum of five
+hundred and fifty thousand pounds, two and three quarters per cent.
+Consolidated Stock shall be treated as debt of the Irish Post Office, and
+for paying the dividends on and redeeming such stock there shall be paid
+half-yearly by the Irish Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom
+an annuity of _eighteen_ thousand pounds for _sixty_ years, and such
+annuity when paid into the Exchequer shall be forthwith paid to the
+National Debt Commissioners and applied for the reduction of the National
+Debt.
+
+(5) The Postmaster-General and the Irish Post Office may agree on the
+facilities to be afforded by the Irish Post Office in Ireland in relation
+to any matters the administration of which by virtue of this Act remains
+with the Postmaster-General, and with respect to the use of the Irish
+telegraphic lines for through lines in connection with submarine
+telegraphs, or with telegraphic communication with any place out of the
+United Kingdom.
+
+FIFTH SCHEDULE: REGULATIONS AS TO GRATUITIES AND PENSIONS FOR CIVIL
+SERVANTS.
+
+SIXTH SCHEDULE:
+
+    PART I.--REGULATIONS AS TO ESTABLISHMENT OF POLICE FORCES AND AS TO
+    THE ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY AND DUBLIN METROPOLITAN POLICE CEASING TO
+    EXIST.
+
+(1) Such local police forces shall be established under such local
+authorities and for such counties, municipal boroughs, or other larger
+areas, as may be provided by Irish Act.
+
+(2) Whenever the Executive Committee of the Privy Council in Ireland
+certify to the Lord-Lieutenant that a police force, adequate for local
+purposes, has been established in any area, then, subject to the
+provisions of this Act, he shall within six months thereafter direct the
+Royal Irish Constabulary to be withdrawn from the performance of regular
+police duties in such area, and such order shall be forthwith carried into
+effect.
+
+(3) Upon any such withdrawal the Lord-Lieutenant shall order measures to
+be taken for a proportionate reduction of the numbers of the Royal Irish
+Constabulary, and such order shall be duly executed.
+
+(4) Upon the Executive Committee of the Privy Council in Ireland
+certifying to the Lord-Lieutenant that adequate local police forces have
+been established in every part of Ireland, then subject to the provisions
+of this Act, the Lord-Lieutenant shall within six months after such
+certificate, order measures to be taken for causing the whole of the Royal
+Irish Constabulary to cease to exist as a police force, and such order
+shall be duly executed.
+
+(5) Where the area in which a local police force is established is part of
+the Dublin Metropolitan Police District, the foregoing regulations shall
+apply to the Dublin Metropolitan Police in like manner as if that force
+were the Royal Irish Constabulary.
+
+
+PART II.--REGULATIONS AS TO GRATUITIES AND PENSIONS FOR THE ROYAL IRISH
+CONSTABULARY AND DUBLIN METROPOLITAN POLICE.
+
+SEVENTH SCHEDULE: REGULATIONS AS TO HOUSES OF THE LEGISLATURE AND THE
+MEMBERS THEREOF.
+
+_Legislative Council._
+
+(1) There shall be a separate register of electors of councillors of the
+Legislative Council which shall be made, until otherwise provided by Irish
+Act, in like manner as the Parliamentary register of electors.
+
+(2) Where, for the election of Councillors, any counties are combined so
+as to form one constituency, then until otherwise provided by Irish Act,
+
+    (_a_) The returning officer for the whole constituency shall be that
+    one of the returning officers for Parliamentary elections for those
+    counties to whom the writ is addressed, and the writ shall be
+    addressed to the returning officer for the constituency with the
+    largest population, according to the census of 1891.
+
+    (_b_) The returning officer shall have the same authority throughout
+    the whole constituency as a returning officer to a Parliamentary
+    election for a county has in the county.
+
+    (_c_) The registers of electors of each county shall jointly be the
+    register of electors for the constituency.
+
+    (_d_) For the purposes of this Schedule 'county' includes a county of
+    a city or town, and this Schedule, and the law relating to the
+    qualification of electors, shall apply, as if the county of a city or
+    town formed part of the county at large with which it is combined, and
+    the qualification in the county of a city or town shall be the same as
+    in such county at large.
+
+(3) Writs shall be issued for the election of councillors at such time not
+less than one or more than three months before the day for the periodical
+retirement of councillors as the Lord-Lieutenant in Council may fix.
+
+(4) The day for the periodical retirement of councillors shall, until
+otherwise provided by Irish Act, be the last day of August in every fourth
+year.
+
+(5) For the purposes of such retirement, the constituencies shall be
+divided into two equal divisions, and the constituencies in each province
+shall be divided as nearly as may be equally between those divisions, and
+constituencies returning two or more members shall be treated as two or
+more constituencies, and placed in both divisions.
+
+(6) Subject as aforesaid, the particular constituencies which are to be in
+each division shall be determined by lot.
+
+(7) The said division and lot shall be made and conducted before the
+appointed day in manner directed by the Lord-Lieutenant in Council.
+
+(8) The first councillors elected for the constituencies in the first
+division shall retire on the first day of retirement which occurs after
+the first meeting of the Irish Legislature, and the first councillors for
+the constituencies in the second division shall retire on the second day
+of retirement after that meeting.
+
+(9) Any casual vacancy among the councillors shall be filled by a new
+election, but the councillor filling the vacancy shall retire at the time
+at which the vacating councillor would have retired.
+
+_Legislative Assembly._
+
+(10) The Parliamentary register of electors for the time being shall,
+until otherwise provided by Irish Act, be the register of electors of the
+Legislative Assembly.
+
+_Both Houses._
+
+(11) Until otherwise provided by Irish Act, the Lord-Lieutenant in Council
+may make regulations for adapting the existing election laws to the
+election of members of the two Houses of the Legislature.
+
+(12) Annual sessions of the Legislature shall be held.
+
+(13) Any peer, whether of the United Kingdom, Great Britain, England,
+Scotland, or Ireland, shall be qualified to be a member of either House.
+
+(14) A member of either House may by writing under his hand resign his
+seat, and the same shall thereupon be vacant.
+
+(15) The same person shall not be a member of both Houses.
+
+(16) Until otherwise provided by Irish Act, if the same person is elected
+to a seat in each House, he shall, before the eighth day after the next
+sitting of either House, by written notice, elect in which House he will
+serve, and upon such election his seat in the other House shall be vacant,
+and if he does not so elect, his seat in both Houses shall be vacant.
+
+(17) Until otherwise provided by Irish Act, any such notice electing in
+which House a person will sit, or any notice of resignation, shall be
+given in manner directed by the Standing Orders of the Houses, and if
+there is no such direction, shall be given to the Lord-Lieutenant.
+
+(18) The powers of either House shall not be affected by any vacancy
+therein, or any defect in the election or qualification of any member
+thereof.
+
+(19) Until otherwise provided by Irish Act, the holders of such Irish
+offices as may be named by Order of the Queen in Council before the
+appointed day, shall be entitled to be elected to and sit in either House,
+notwithstanding that they hold offices under the Crown, but on acceptance
+of any such office the seat of any such person in either House shall be
+vacated unless he has accepted the office in succession to some other of
+the said offices.
+
+_Transitory._
+
+(20) The Lord-Lieutenant in Council may, before the appointed day, make
+regulations for the following purposes:--
+
+    (_a_) The making of a register of electors of councillors in time for
+    the election of the first councillors, and with that object for the
+    variation of the days relating to registration in the existing
+    election laws, and for prescribing the duties of officers, and for
+    making such adaptations of those laws as appear necessary or proper
+    for duly making a register;
+
+    (_b_) The summoning of the two Houses of the Legislature of Ireland,
+    the issue of writs and any other things appearing to be necessary or
+    proper for the election of members of the two Houses;
+
+    (_c_) The election of a chairman (whether called Speaker, President,
+    or by any other name) of each House, the quorum of each House, the
+    communications between the two Houses, and such adaptation to the
+    proceedings of the two Houses of the procedure of Parliament, as
+    appears expedient for facilitating the conduct of business by those
+    Houses on their first meeting;
+
+    (_d_) The adaptation to the two Houses and the members thereof of any
+    laws and customs relating to the House of Commons or the members
+    thereof;
+
+    (_e_) The deliberation and voting together of the two Houses in cases
+    provided by this Act.
+
+(21) The regulations maybe altered by Irish Act, and also in so far as
+they concern the procedure of either House alone, by Standing Orders of
+that House, but shall, until altered, have effect as if enacted in this
+Act.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE I
+
+FROM THE 'MEMOIRS OF THE LATE LORD SELBORNE'
+
+(Part ii. pp. 261-263).
+
+
+... Each new step Gladstone takes is, as it seems to me, more and more on
+the side of _moral_ as well as political evil. Much as I disapproved of
+his surrender of last year to Parnell, I disapprove very much more of his
+present endeavour to prevent the restoration in the present stage of the
+Home Rule question, of the reign of law in Ireland, and of the _means_ he
+is attempting to use for _that_ purpose. Deliberate and organised
+obstruction in the House of Commons, and an attempt to overrule a majority
+against him there, of more than one hundred, by violent appeals to popular
+passions outside,--those appeals being supported by representing the cause
+of anarchy and conspiring against law as the cause of liberty,--by denying
+the existence of any case for strengthening the law, in the face of a
+complete and manifest paralysis of law by the power of a seditious
+organisation, into whose scale he has now thrown his whole influence,--and
+by denouncing, in the most violent terms, the principle of measures for
+the protection of the loyal, and for securing the due administration of
+justice, which are the same (in their general character, for it is not
+necessary here to go into questions of detail) with those by means of
+which he himself governed Ireland for the last years of his power, and far
+more consistent with all real ideas of liberty than the suspension of the
+Habeas Corpus Act, which he introduced in 1881. It was quite open to him
+(of course) to contend that, by the acceptance of his Home Rule scheme,
+the necessity for any such measures might be prevented, and that he
+prefers and insists upon that alternative,--so much as _that_ was involved
+in his measures of last year; but it is quite a different thing to
+denounce the principle of maintaining law and government, and defending
+those who respect and obey law from the tyranny of conspirators against
+it, and making the ordinary criminal law of the country a reality and not
+a mere idle name,--'as coercion,' in the sense of an undue invasion of
+liberty. To do this, and to appeal _ad populum_ against it from an
+overwhelming majority in Parliament is _Acheronta movere_, with a
+vengeance.... For a man who, with his attainments, his experience, his
+professions, his fifty years' public service, his political education
+under some of the greatest and best men of the time, has three times
+filled the highest office in the State, and is now on the verge of the
+grave, so to end his career, seems to me more shocking and disheartening
+than anything else recorded in our history. It is only the old respect,
+and old attachment, which makes one search about for the possible
+explanations, in the workings of a very complex and intricate mind. If (as
+I trust) the Government and the House of Commons stand firm, all his
+efforts in the cause of anarchy will be in vain. The clause as to removing
+trials to England may have to be given up; but the _permanence_ of the
+Bill (its best feature of all) must remain, if any good is to be done.
+
+... I will spare you a long yarn about politics this time. The G.O.M.
+seems to be determined to pull the whole Irish house down, parliamentary
+government and all, unless he can have his own way. But I have no fear
+that he _will_ have his way, just at present, whatever harm he may do in
+the endeavour. But the struggle is very disagreeable, as well as sharp.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE II
+
+REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSION (Vol. iv. pp. 544, 545).
+
+_Conclusions of the Report of the Judges._
+
+
+We have now pursued our inquiry over a sufficiently extended period to
+enable us to report upon the several charges and allegations which have
+been made against the respondents, and we have indicated in the course of
+this statement our findings upon these charges and allegations, but it
+will be convenient to repeat _seriatim_ the conclusions we have arrived
+at upon the issues which have been raised for our consideration.
+
+I. We find that the respondent members of Parliament collectively were not
+members of a conspiracy having for its object to establish the absolute
+independence of Ireland, but we find that some of them, together with Mr.
+Davitt, established and joined in the Land League organisation with the
+intention by its means to bring about the absolute independence of Ireland
+as a separate nation. The names of these respondents are set out on a
+previous page.
+
+II. We find that the respondents did enter into a conspiracy by a system
+of coercion and intimidation to promote an agrarian agitation against the
+payment of agricultural rents, for the purpose of impoverishing and
+expelling from the country the Irish landlords who were styled the
+'English Garrison.'
+
+III. We find that the charge that 'when on certain occasions they thought
+it politic to denounce, and did denounce, certain crimes in public they
+afterwards led their supporters to believe such denunciations were not
+sincere' is not established. We entirely acquit Mr. Parnell and the other
+respondents of the charge of insincerity in their denunciation of the
+Phoenix Park murders, and find that the 'facsimile' letters on which
+this charge was chiefly based as against Mr. Parnell is a forgery.
+
+IV. We find that the respondents did disseminate the _Irish World_ and
+other newspapers tending to incite to sedition and the commission of other
+crime.
+
+V. We find that the respondents did not directly incite persons to the
+commission of crime other than intimidation, but that they did incite to
+intimidation, and that the consequence of that incitement was that crime
+and outrage were committed by the persons incited. We find that it has not
+been proved that the respondents made payments for the purpose of inciting
+persons to commit crime.
+
+VI. We find as to the allegation that the respondents did nothing to
+prevent crime and expressed no _bonâ fide_ disapproval, that some of the
+respondents, and in particular Mr. Davitt, did express _bonâ fide_
+disapproval of crime and outrage, but that the respondents did not
+denounce the system of intimidation which led to crime and outrage, but
+persisted in it with knowledge of its effect.
+
+VII. We find that the respondents did defend persons charged with agrarian
+crime, and supported their families, but that it has not been proved that
+they subscribed to testimonials for, or were intimately associated with,
+notorious criminals, or that they made payments to procure the escape of
+criminals from justice.
+
+VIII. We find, as to the allegation that the respondents made payments to
+compensate persons who had been injured in the commission of crime, that
+they did make such payments.
+
+IX. As to the allegation that the respondents invited the assistance and
+co-operation of and accepted subscriptions of money from known advocates
+of crime and the use of dynamite, we find that the respondents did invite
+the assistance and co-operation of and accepted subscriptions of money
+from Patrick Ford, a known advocate of crime and the use of dynamite, but
+that it has not been proved that the respondents, or any of them, knew
+that the Clan-na-Gael controlled the League or was collecting money for
+the Parliamentary Fund. It has been proved that the respondents invited
+and obtained the assistance and co-operation of the Physical Force Party
+in America, including the Clan-na-Gael, and in order to obtain that
+assistance, abstained from repudiating or condemning the action of that
+party.
+
+
+
+
+Index
+
+
+  A
+
+  Administration of the affairs of Ireland: its nature and defects, 28, 29.
+
+  Agrarian crime in Ireland, 12, 29, 128, 135, 146. _See_ Whiteboyism
+
+  Agriculture, state of, in Ireland, 3, 7, 204, 205, 206, 234
+
+
+  B
+
+  Balfour, Mr. Arthur: his successful policy when Chief Secretary for
+        Ireland, 58;
+    he establishes light railways in Ireland, and the Congested Districts
+        Board, 35, 36
+
+  Belfast, improvement in, within the last sixty years, 2
+
+  Bewley, Mr. Justice, the head of the Second Land Commission: his theory
+        of occupation right in the Irish land, 219, 220
+
+  Bureaucracy, the, of the Castle, 28, 29
+
+  Butt, Isaac: the true author of the conception of Home Rule, 41;
+    his work on Irish Federalism, 42
+
+
+  C
+
+  Chicago, the Convention at, in 1886: speeches of two of Parnell's
+        envoys, 57
+
+  Code, the Irish Penal: its effects on the Irish land, 99, 100. _See_ the
+        Question of the Irish Land, Chap. III., in several places
+
+  Commissions appointed for considering and administering Irish affairs:
+    (1) the Devon Commission and its Report--the mistake it made as to
+        Irish land tenure, 116;
+    (2) the Childers Commission and its Report on Irish finance, 288-291
+        (_see_ chapter on the Present Question of Irish Finance, _passim_);
+    (3) the Land Commission appointed to carry out the Land Act of 1881
+        and its supplements, 166, 190, 191. _See_ Chaps. IV., V., VI., on
+        the Question of the Irish Land, in many places
+
+  Confiscations of the Irish Land, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96. _See_ Chap.
+        III., on the Question of the Irish Land, in several places
+
+  Cork has not prospered within the last sixty years, 2
+
+  Cromwell, Irish policy of, especially as to the land, 93, 94
+
+
+  D
+
+  Davitt, Michael, inaugurates the Irish Land League, 44
+
+  Derby, the Administration of Lord, brings in Irish Land Bills in 1852,
+        which do not become law, 123
+
+  Dublin, improvements in, within sixty years, 2
+
+
+  E
+
+  Emancipation, Catholic: its effects on Irish landed relations, 113, 114
+
+  Encumbered Estates Act: an iniquitous measure of confiscation, and its
+        results, 121, 122
+
+  Exodus, the, of the Irish race after the Famine, 120. _See_ Chap. III.,
+        the Question of the Irish Land, in several places
+
+
+  F
+
+  Famine, the Great Irish, of 1845-47, 117, 118, 119;
+   and _see_ Chap. III., on the Irish land, in several places
+
+  Fenian outbreaks in Ireland, 128, 129;
+    the consequences, 129;
+    the influence of Fenianism in Ireland after 1870, 147
+
+  Finance, the question of Irish: the financial relations between Great
+        Britain and Ireland a subject of long controversy, 271;
+    what they were before 1782, 273,
+    and under Grattan's Parliament, 274;
+    increase of the debt and the taxation of Ireland by the close of the
+        eighteenth century, 274, 275;
+    the financial arrangements made at the Union, the work of Pitt, 275,
+        276;
+    his object was to 'assimilate Great Britain and Ireland in finance,'
+        but this was impossible, and why, ibid.;
+    the financial settlement effected at the Union--Ireland to pay a
+        contribution, but not to be taxed beyond her means, ibid.;
+    the seventh article of the Treaty of Union and its constitutional
+        meaning, 277, 278;
+    the settlement denounced in the Irish Parliament, especially by Foster
+        and Grattan, 279;
+    protest of the twenty peers, 279, 280;
+    the Union left Ireland financially a distinct country, 280;
+    the settlement made at the Union reduced her to bankruptcy, and how,
+        281, 282;
+    the compromise of 1816, 282, 283;
+    the real objects of this measure, 283, 284;
+    though theoretically to 'be assimilated' in finance, Ireland remained
+        for many years financially a completely distinct country, and the
+        reasons, 284;
+    this fully recognised by Peel in 1842, 285;
+    he refused to extend the income tax to Ireland, and permanently to
+        increase her spirit duties, ibid.;
+    Mr. Gladstone in 1853 suddenly disregards this policy, and imposes the
+        income tax on Ireland, and raises her spirit duties, 286;
+    gross injustice of this increase of taxation, especially under the
+        circumstances of Ireland, 286, 289;
+    Ireland to a considerable extent 'assimilated in finance' to Great
+        Britain, but not completely, even to the present day, a fact that
+        should be kept in mind, 287;
+    the Committee of 1863-64 on Irish finance, ibid.;
+    it fails to get Ireland justice, 288;
+    Mr. Goschen appoints a Committee to investigate the subject, ibid.;
+    this followed by the Childers Commission, appointed by Mr. Gladstone
+        in 1893, ibid.;
+    scope of the inquiry, 288, 289;
+    the work of the Childers Commission, 289;
+    it reports that Ireland has been overtaxed at the rate of between two
+        and three millions a year, and that for a very considerable space
+        of time, 290;
+    view of Sir R. Giffen that even this estimate falls short of the real
+        truth, 291, 292;
+    this overtaxation especially severe in the case of Ireland, a poor
+        country, 292-295;
+    the attempts that have been made to answer and refute the Report of
+        the Childers Commission have been grotesque failures, 295;
+    examination of these arguments and reply to them--they are either
+        fallacious, or mischievous and dangerous, 295-305;
+    question of a counterclaim against Ireland in finance, 306;
+    financial redress which Ireland has a right to demand, 307;
+    the question should be settled, 308
+
+  Foster, Mr., Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, opposes the
+        financial arrangements of the Union, 272
+
+
+  G
+
+  Galway in decay, 6
+
+  Gladstone, Mr.: he ridicules Butt's scheme of Home Rule, 44;
+    fall of his Administration in 1885, 46;
+    his attitude at the General Election of that year, ibid.;
+    he becomes a convert to Home Rule and the probable reasons, 47, 48;
+    the best members of the Liberal Party break away from him, 48;
+    he introduces his first Home Rule Bill, ibid.;
+    he dissolves Parliament after the rejection of that measure by the
+        House of Commons, 56;
+    he allies himself with the party of disorder in Ireland, 58, 59;
+    he negotiates with Parnell about Home Rule, 59;
+    he returns to office in 1892 with a small majority, 61;
+    he introduces his second Home Rule Bill in 1893, 62;
+    his Irish policy in 1868, 131;
+    he disestablishes and disendows the Protestant church in Ireland,
+        ibid.;
+    he makes no provision for the Irish Catholic clergy, a capital
+        mistake, 132;
+    he introduces the Land Act of 1870 for Ireland, 139, 140;
+    he declares against the Three F's, and announces that this measure is
+        to be final, ibid.;
+    he becomes Minister for the second time in 1880, 154;
+    he introduces the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, 155;
+    he surrenders to the Land League and introduces the Land Act of 1881,
+        169;
+    he makes the Kilmainham treaty with Parnell, 170;
+    the fiscal wrong he does to Ireland in 1853-60, 286;
+    he appoints the Childers Commission in 1893 to investigate the subject
+        of Irish finance, 288;
+    his scheme of Irish University Reform, 343, 344.
+    And _see_ Chap. VIII., on Other Irish Questions
+
+  Goschen, Mr., refers the question of the financial relations of Great
+        Britain and Ireland to a Committee, 288
+
+  Grattan: he denounces the financial settlement made at the Union for
+        Ireland, 279
+
+
+  H
+
+  Henry VII.: his Irish policy, 89
+
+  Henry VIII.: his wise policy for Ireland unhappily prevented, 89, 90
+
+  Home Rule, the question of: Home Rule not dead, 39;
+    the present attitude of the Liberal and the 'Nationalist' parties
+        towards Home Rule, 40;
+    it is a 'Present Irish Question,' 41;
+    Isaac Butt inaugurated this policy, ibid.;
+    his plan of Home Rule, 42;
+    the Irish Home Rule party, 43;
+    Butt's proposals powerfully attacked in Parliament, notably by Mr.
+        Gladstone, ibid.;
+    Butt is gradually supplanted by Parnell, 44;
+    Michael Davitt and the 'New Departure,' ibid.;
+    Parnell the head of the Land League, 44, 45;
+    Mr. Gladstone succumbs to it, 45;
+    Home Rule condemned by statesmen of all parties in 1880-84, ibid.;
+    Mr. Gladstone accepts Home Rule, 47;
+    the first Home Rule Bill of 1886, 48;
+    its characteristics and the objections to it, 48-50;
+    what its results would have been, 51-54;
+    the Bill is rejected in the House of Commons, 55;
+    attitude of the Fenians in America, 55, 56;
+    causes that promoted the Home Rule policy in Great Britain, 59, 60;
+    results of the General Election of 1892, 61;
+    the Home Rule Bill of 1893, 62;
+    its characteristics and vices, 62-64;
+    it is a much more objectionable measure than that of 1886, and why,
+        65;
+    strong opposition to it in the country, 68;
+    the in-and-out plan given up, 69;
+    the Bill passes the House of Commons by a small majority through the
+        expedient of 'closure by compartments' 69;
+    it is rejected in the House of Lords by an overwhelming majority, 70;
+    Home Rule is scattered to the winds at the General Election of 1895,
+        ibid.;
+    it is not a prominent question at that of 1900, ibid.;
+    the subject cannot be dismissed, 71;
+    different forms of Home Rule, 71-73;
+    separation a better policy than Home Rule, 73;
+    'Home Rule all round,' 73, 74;
+    conclusive objections to this scheme, 74-77;
+    the Union must be maintained, and Home Rule rejected by the nation, 78;
+    the rule of the Imperial Parliament has had some bad effects in Irish
+        affairs, and why, 79, 80;
+    proposal that the Imperial Parliament should occasionally sit in
+        Dublin, and the advantages of this, 81;
+    royalty should sometimes visit Ireland, 82;
+    necessity, in order to guard against Home Rule, and for other reasons,
+        to reduce the over-representation of Ireland in the House of
+        Commons, 82, 83
+
+
+  I
+
+  Ireland in 1901: a revolution has passed over Ireland, 2;
+    she has made some material progress, 2;
+    Dublin and Belfast, ibid.;
+    improvement in the habitations of the community and in Catholic places
+        of worship, 2, 3;
+    material progress of the community, 3-5;
+    the dark side of the picture, 5;
+    decline of several towns in Ireland, of manufactures, of fishing
+        industry, and of agriculture, 6, 7;
+    Ireland a poor country, 7;
+    excessive emigration, 8;
+    great increase of local and general taxation, 8;
+    the progress of Ireland as nothing compared to that of England and
+        Scotland, 9;
+    the Irish land system at the beginning of the reign of Victoria, 11;
+    sketch of it from that to the present time, 11-17 (and _see_ the
+        Question of the Irish Land, Chap. III., in many places);
+    Ireland and her three peoples, 18;
+    Catholic Ireland remains for the most part disaffected, despite the
+        great reforms effected in its interest, 19-21;
+    the Catholic democracy of Ireland, 21;
+    failure of the policy of conciliation, 22;
+    Presbyterian Ireland--its sentiments and demands, ibid.;
+    Protestant Ireland--its position in the community, 22, 23;
+    discontent of the landed gentry, 23;
+    character of the Irish legislation of the Imperial Parliament, 23-25,
+    and of its administration of Irish affairs, 28, 29;
+    the Anglican Church of Ireland, 30;
+    the Presbyterian Church, ibid.;
+    the Catholic Church, 31;
+    the administration of justice in Ireland, 31, 32;
+    Irish literature and education, 32, 33;
+    _resumé_ of the general condition of Ireland, 33-35;
+    the Irish policy of Lord Salisbury's Government during the last six
+        years, 35, 36;
+    Ireland still 'the vulnerable part near the heart of the Empire,' 37,
+        38
+
+
+  L
+
+  Lalor, John Finton, a rebel of 1848: his teaching with respect to the
+        Irish land, 148
+
+  Land, the question of the Irish: importance of the subject, 184, 185;
+    the Celtic tribal land system in Ireland, 86, 87;
+    the tribes, clans, and septs, 87;
+    the partial feudalisation of the land system, 87;
+    collective ownership of which traces still exist, 87;
+    the Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland and the Colony of the Pale, 88;
+    the land falls into the hands of great families, ibid.;
+    miserable state of Ireland at the close of the fifteenth century, 89;
+    Henry VII. and Poynings, ibid.;
+    sagacious policy of Henry VIII., especially as regards the land, 90;
+    this, unfortunately, was not carried out, ibid.;
+    the era of conquest begins, and of the confiscation of the Irish land,
+        ibid.;
+    confiscation of the territories of the O'Connors of Offaly, of Shane
+        O'Neill, and of the Earl of Desmond, 90, 91;
+    rebellion of Tyrone, 91;
+    all Ireland made shireland, and the old Celtic land system is effaced
+        by law, ibid.;
+    English modes of land tenure imposed on the people, 91, 92;
+    confiscation of the territories of Tyrone and of O'Donnell, 92;
+    the Plantation of Ulster, ibid.;
+    further confiscation in times of peace, ibid.;
+    Strafford marks out Connaught for confiscation, 92;
+    beginning of Protestant ascendency in the land, 93;
+    vast confiscations effected by Cromwell, 93;
+    his scheme of a general colonisation of Ireland fails, 93-95;
+    results of the Cromwellian conquest in the land, 95;
+    policy of Charles II. as regards the land, ibid.;
+    confiscations after the Boyne and the fall of Limerick, 96;
+    state of the Irish land system when the period of violent confiscation
+        ends, 97, 98;
+    the era of Protestant ascendency and of Catholic subjection in
+        Ireland, 98, 99;
+    the Penal Code and its effects on the land, 99, 100;
+    mournful period in Irish history, 100-102;
+    gradual improvement in Irish landed relations, 102-104;
+    evil traces of the past: Whiteboyism, 105;
+    traditions of the ancient land system survive, 106;
+    Edmund Burke on Irish land tenures--he indicates a grave economic vice
+        in the land system, 107;
+    progress of Ireland after 1782, ibid.;
+    its effects on the land, 108;
+    evil results of the Rebellion of 1798, 109;
+    the Union Speech of Lord Clare on Irish landed relations, 109;
+    revolution in the land system in the first years of the nineteenth
+        century, 110;
+    the important social and economic results, 110, 111;
+    want of a poor-law, 111;
+    the concurrent rights of tenants in the land not protected by the law,
+        ibid.;
+    period of distress after the Peace of 1815, 112, 113;
+    evictions and clearances of estates, 113;
+    agrarian disorder, 113;
+    Catholic Emancipation, ibid.;
+    its results as regards Irish landed relations, 114;
+    Peel and the Irish land, 115;
+    the Devon Commission and its Report, 115, 116;
+    its recommendations as to land tenure ill conceived and condemned in
+        Ireland, 117;
+    the Famine of 1845-47, and its effects on the Irish land, 118, 119;
+    the exodus, 120;
+    the Encumbered Estates Act, and the effects of this scheme of
+        confiscation, 121, 122;
+    agrarian agitation of 1852 in Ireland fails, 123;
+    false ideas of British statesmen as regards the land, 129;
+    partial prosperity in Ireland for some years, 125;
+    this largely deceptive, 126;
+    growth of Fenianism, 128;
+    the Fenian outbreak, 128, 129;
+    change of opinion in England as regards Ireland, 129;
+    Mr. Gladstone Prime Minister, 130;
+    state of the Irish land system before the Land Act of 1870, 132-138;
+    the Land Act of 1870 and its provisions, 141-143;
+    merits and defects of this measure, 144, 145;
+    state of Irish landed relations after the Act, 146, 147;
+    origin of the Land League, 151, 152;
+    distress in Ireland, and the Land League, 152-154;
+    the Compensation for Disturbance Bill rejected by the House of Lords,
+        155;
+    frightful state of Ireland and of landed relations in 1880-81, 155-161;
+    the Land Act of 1881, 165;
+    the provisions of the measure, 165, 166;
+    the Act is directly opposed to that of 1870, 168;
+    the no-rent movement, 179;
+    the National League replaces the Land League, 171, 172;
+    state of Irish landed relations in 1886 and 1887, 175;
+    the Land Act of 1887, 175;
+    the Land Act of 1891, 178, 179;
+    the land purchase section in the Irish Land Act, 183;
+    the principle of this system false and dangerous, ibid.;
+    the Land Purchase Act of 1891, 184;
+    recent legislation on the Irish land unjust and tending to
+        confiscation, 186, 187.
+    The administration of the Irish Land Acts, 188;
+    of the Act of 1870, 189;
+    of the Act of 1881, and its supplements, 190;
+    the first Land Commission--allowances to be made for it, 191;
+    principles it should have followed and course it should have pursued
+        in fixing 'fair rents,' 192-197;
+    the Sub-Commission--nature of these tribunals, 197, 198;
+    how they ought to have fixed 'fair rents,' 199, 203;
+    criticism of Mr. Lecky, 203, 204;
+    examples of injustice, 204, 209;
+    faulty methods of fixing 'fair rents,' 209, 213;
+    appeals to the Land Commission rendered almost nugatory, 215, 218;
+    the second Land Commission: Mr. Justice Bewley and his theory of
+        occupation right, 219, 221;
+    instance of a gross mistake, 222;
+    the Fry Commission--its Report a masked censure on the proceedings of
+        the Land Commission, 222, 224;
+    Mr. Justice Meredith head of the present Land Commission, 224;
+    conduct of the Government as regards the Report of the Fry Commission,
+        225;
+    results of the labours of the Land Commission and the Sub-Commission
+        in fixing 'fair rents,' 225, 227;
+    confiscation of the property of landlords, 227;
+    excuses made for this false, 228, 229;
+    results of the system of land purchase so far, ibid.;
+    mischievous and dangerous consequences of all this legislation on the
+        Irish land;
+    a retrospect of it on the side of occupation, 230-237;
+    judgment of Mr. Lecky, 237, 238;
+    retrospect of it on the side of ownership, especially with regard to
+        the subject of 'compulsive purchase,' which the system of
+        'voluntary purchase' has necessarily made a grave question,
+        238-256;
+    judgment of Mr. Lecky, 256, 257;
+    the Irish land system in a deplorable state, 257-259;
+    plan of the author for the reform of this system approved by Mr.
+        Gladstone and by Parnell, 259-266;
+    the compensation of the Irish landlords must be accomplished if public
+        faith is to be kept and common justice done, 266-270
+
+  Land League, the: Reign of Terror caused by, 14;
+    its teaching and that of the National League, 20;
+    ascendency of the Land League in ten or eleven Irish counties, 45;
+    frightful state of Ireland due to it, 158-162
+
+  Law, Mr., the Irish Attorney-General of Mr. Gladstone in 1881: his
+        definition of 'fair rent,' 192
+
+  Limerick in decay, 6
+
+  Litton, Mr. E. F., a member of the first Land Commission, 192
+
+  Local Government, sketch of, in Ireland, 309-329. _See_ Chap. VIII.,
+        Other Irish Questions, in several places
+
+
+  M
+
+  Macaulay, Lord: speech on the state of Ireland in 1844, 36
+
+  Meredith, Mr. Justice, head of the present Land Commission: a capable
+        lawyer, but bound by the precedents of his forerunners, 229
+
+
+  N
+
+  National League, the: it replaces the Land League, 47, 48;
+    its leaders set on foot 'The Plan of Campaign,' 57;
+    it was founded by Parnell, 171;
+    its character, 172;
+    agrarian side of the National League movement, 174, 175;
+    decline of the power of the National League in 1889, 177;
+    it is at its lowest ebb in 1895, ibid.
+
+  National system of education, 332-336. _See_ Chap. VIII., on Other
+        Present Irish Questions
+
+
+  O
+
+  O'Connell: his evidence on the state of Ireland in 1825, 5;
+    he wrings Catholic Emancipation from a reluctant Government, 113;
+    leader of the Repeal movement of 1843-44, 115
+
+  O'Hagan, Mr. Justice, head of the first Land Commission, 190
+
+  'Other Present Irish Questions,' Chap. VIII.
+    I. Local Government in Ireland, 309;
+    the grand juries, their composition and functions, 311-314;
+    the administration of the poor law and the Boards of Guardians,
+        314-315;
+    the administration of cities and towns--its history, 315-318;
+    character of, in recent times, 318-320;
+    how the reform of 1898 was brought about, 320, 321;
+    sketch of the Local Government Act of 1898, 321-326;
+    and of its working up to the present time, 326-329.
+    II. Education in Ireland, history of, 330 _seqq._:
+    primary education, 330-332;
+    the National system founded by Mr. Stanley--its principles and
+        history, 332-336.
+    Secondary education, diocesan schools, 336;
+    Royal schools, ibid.;
+    Erasmus Smith schools, 337;
+    other schools; the system has not been successful, and why, 337, 338.
+    University education, Trinity College, its history and the character
+        of the institution, 338-341;
+    Peel founds the Queen's Colleges and University, 341;
+    character of these institutions, 392;
+    the Catholic University, ibid.;
+    Mr. Gladstone's scheme of Irish University reform, 343, 344;
+    grave objections to it, 345, 346;
+    it is rejected by the House of Commons, 346;
+    Trinity College "opened," ibid.;
+    the Royal University, 347;
+    injustice of the present system of University education in Ireland,
+        347-351;
+    two plans of reform suggested, the second to be preferred, 351-360
+
+
+  P
+
+  Palmerston, Lord: he condemns Irish tenant right, 124
+
+  Parnell: supplants Butt, 44;
+    leader of the Land League, 44, 45;
+    he denounces the Conservative party in 1885, 46;
+    he pretends to accept the Home Rule Bill of 1886, 55;
+    the special commission and Parnell, 59;
+    he negotiates with Mr. Gladstone on Home Rule, ibid.;
+    his fall, 59
+
+  Peel: his remarks on the Constitution in Ireland, 32;
+    he appoints the Devon Commission, 115;
+    his policy during the famine, 117;
+    he refuses in 1842 to extend the income tax to Ireland, 285;
+    he founds the Queen's Colleges and the Queen's University in Ireland,
+        341
+
+  Pitt: the author of the financial arrangements made at the Union, 275
+
+  Primary education in Ireland, 330-336. _See_ Chap. VIII., on Other
+        Present Irish Questions
+
+
+  Q
+
+  Queen's Colleges and Queen's University: founded by Peel, 341. _See_
+        Chap. VIII., on Other Present Irish Questions
+
+
+  R
+
+  Rebellion of 1798: its effects on the Irish Land, 109
+
+
+  S
+
+  Salisbury, Lord: character of the Irish policy of his ministry, 35, 36
+
+  Stanley, Mr., founds the system of National Education in Ireland, 332
+
+  Strafford: his Irish policy, 92
+
+
+  T
+
+  Trinity College, 338-341. _See_ Chap. VIII., on Present Irish Questions
+
+
+  U
+
+  Ulster Custom, the, 111, 123, 137, 141
+
+  Union, The, 78, 79, 109
+
+  United Irish League, the: fills the place of the Land and the National
+        Leagues, 26;
+    speeches and conduct of its leaders, 26, 27
+
+
+  V
+
+  Vernon, Mr. I. E., one of the members of the first Land Commission, 190
+
+
+  W
+
+  Whiteboyism in Ireland, 12, 105, 160, 161
+
+
+  Y
+
+  Young, Arthur: his tour in Ireland, 109, 110
+
+
+  APPENDICES
+
+  I. The Irish Government Bill, 1886, 361-387
+
+  II. The Irish Government Bill, 1893, 388-424
+
+  III. Note I. From the 'Memoirs of the late Lord Selborne,' 425, 426
+
+  IV. Report of the Special Commission, vol. iv. pp. 544, 545. Conclusion
+      of the Report of the Judges, 426-428
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+  LONDON:
+
+  PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
+  STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] It considerably exceeds 300,000 by the figures of the census of 1901.
+
+[2]
+
+                                    1841         1891
+  Houses of the first class        40,080       70,740
+      "         second class      264,184      466,632
+      "         third class       533,297      312,589
+      "         fourth class      491,278       20,617
+
+These figures are taken from that most valuable publication, 'Thom's Irish
+Directory for 1901,' p. 631. It contains the statistics of Ireland
+carefully compiled from official sources.
+
+[3] There has been a small decrease since 1895.
+
+[4] Evidence taken before a Select Committee of the House of Commons,
+1824-25, vol. i. p. 49. The whole of O'Connell's evidence should be
+studied.
+
+[5]
+
+                                      1894             1900
+  Funded Debt held in Ireland      £22,917,530      £18,303,627
+
+  Government Funds and other securities:
+  India Stock, Land Stock,
+  War Stock, Joint Stock Banks,
+  Trustee Savings Banks, and Post
+  Office Savings Banks             £67,432,000      £77,494,000
+
+  'Thom's Directory, 1901,' p. 718.
+
+
+[6] See the remarkable evidence of Mr. Booth, a high authority, taken by
+the Childers Commission, 'Minutes of Evidence,' vol. ii. pp. 212, 213.
+This should all be studied.
+
+[7] 'Thom's Directory, 1901,' p. 699.
+
+[8] Report of Childers Commission, p. 43--
+
+                      1851-55         1889-93
+  Crops            £58,537,000      £34,643,000
+  Stock            £39,348,000      £53,312,000
+
+
+[9] 'Thom's Directory, 1901,' p. 684.
+
+[10] 'Thom's Directory, 1901,' p. 629.
+
+[11] See the striking observations of Mr. Childers, well worth serious
+attention: 'Report of the Childers Commission,' pp. 186, 187.
+
+[12] 'Thom's Directory, 1901,' p. 662. Number of paupers relieved in 1890,
+454,178; in 1898, 525,104. Charge in 1890, £856,008; in 1898, £981,333.
+These are the latest returns.
+
+[13] 'Thom's Directory, 1901,' p. 674. Assessment of lands, in 1890, under
+Schedule A, £12,736,967; in 1899, £11,664,453. Funded property at the same
+periods, £803,300 and £615,630. These, too, are the latest returns.
+
+[14] 'Report of the Childers Commission,' p. 72. I cite also the following
+from the Report, p. 43: 'The income-tax figures are, perhaps, the best and
+most complete test of the comparative growth of the wealth of the two
+countries. Taking the two years, 1854 and 1892, we find that the net
+assessment for Great Britain was, in 1854, £245,389,931; and in 1892,
+£570,971,740. The net assessment for Ireland was, in 1854, £21,334,448;
+and in 1892, £26,851,585. In these thirty-eight years the net assessment
+for Great Britain is more than two and a third times as great as it was in
+1854, whilst that for Ireland has only increased by one quarter. Put in
+percentage form, the figures are still more striking: In 1854 Great
+Britain was assessed at 92 per cent. of the whole; Ireland 8 per cent. In
+1892 Great Britain was assessed at 95.50 per cent, of the whole; Ireland
+4.50 per cent. In other words, Ireland's assessment was to that of Great
+Britain as 1 to 11 in 1854, and as 1 to 21 in 1892.'
+
+[15] See on this subject the true and indignant remarks of Mr. Lecky,
+'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. pp. 27, 28.
+
+[16] The tone of disaffected opinion in Ireland can only be thoroughly
+understood by a careful study of the conduct and the language of
+'Nationalist' leaders. I select a few specimens out of hundreds of
+instances. Mr. William O'Brien, the Corypheus of the United Irish League,
+spake thus at Letterkenny in January, 1900: 'If ten thousand Frenchmen, or
+Russians, or Germans were to land in Bantry Bay, with a supply of arms for
+the people, they would walk over the country and drive the English
+garrison into the sea.' The same worthy exclaimed at a monster meeting in
+Dublin in September, 'English rule in Ireland was so bad that they would
+be justified in chasing the English out of Ireland bag and baggage. What
+was wanting to them, unfortunately, were the guns and artillery to do it.'
+Mr. Michael Davitt, of Land League renown, speaking in the Queen's County
+about the same time, said, 'England is unquestionably the greatest empire
+of liars (loud cheers and laughter), of hypocrites, and of poltroons,
+judged by its achievements in South Africa, that has ever postured before
+mankind with a civilising mission.' Because the Corporation of Dublin
+voted, by a small majority, an address to Queen Victoria when she paid her
+last visit to Ireland, Mr. John Redmond, the chairman of the 'Irish
+Parliamentary Party,' said, in January, 1901, 'It rests with the people
+themselves to say whether they will redeem the reputation of Dublin from
+the stain that has been cast on it.' So Mr. John Dillon, M.P., spoke in
+the same sense, a few months ago, 'The voice of the capital will be the
+voice of the rest of Ireland (applause), that we will not tolerate in this
+old city that new type of politics which thinks it consistent with Irish
+nationality to cringe and crouch before a foreign queen.' At least two
+County Councils in Ireland, and more than one Local Board, refused to vote
+an expression of condolence when the Queen died. It is painful to contrast
+these sentiments with the loyalty of O'Connell when the Queen ascended the
+throne.
+
+[17] Since the above lines were written, there has been a serious outbreak
+of agrarian crime in Ireland in the form of incendiary fires, which may be
+distinctly traced to the operations of the United Irish League.
+
+[18] Speech in the House of Commons, February 19, 1844.
+
+[19] The figures were 1,238,342 against 1,316,327: Dicey, 'England's Case
+against Home Rule,' p. 35.
+
+[20] Butt maintained, in his place in Parliament (Hansard, March 20,
+1874), that this was the true import of his project.
+
+[21] Speech on receiving the freedom of Aberdeen, September 26, 1871.
+
+[22] See Mr. Gladstone's 'History of an Idea,' an apology for his attitude
+towards Home Rule at this time, which seems to me to be his condemnation.
+
+[23] For an admirable analysis of the Bill, see Dicey's 'England's Case
+against Home Rule,' pp. 223-273. The text of the Bill will be found in the
+Appendix to this volume.
+
+[24] For a full statement of Mr. Gladstone's 'conditions,' see his speech
+in the House of Commons, April 8, 1886.
+
+[25] 'Reflections on the Revolution in France,' vol. i. p. 384, ed. 1834.
+
+[26] Report of the Special Commission, vol. iv. p. 542.
+
+[27] 'The Queen's Enemies in America,' p. 24.
+
+[28] For a scathing condemnation of Mr. Gladstone's public conduct in
+these years, see several great speeches of Lord Hartington and Mr.
+Goschen. See also 'The Memoirs of Lord Selborne,' Part II. vol. ii. pp.
+261, _et seq._, and note in Appendix to this volume. See, too, Dicey's
+'Leap in the Dark,' p. 190. Lord Selborne's sketch of Mr. Gladstone's
+character as a statesman, 'Memoirs,' Part II. vol. ii. pp. 339-359,
+deserves careful study. Mr. Lecky's admirable account, 'Democracy and
+Liberty,' introduction to vol. i., second edition, is well known.
+
+[29] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. pp. 544, 545. See the note at the end
+of this volume in the Appendix.
+
+[30] For a very able analysis of and commentary on the Bill of 1893, see
+Professor Dicey's 'Leap in the Dark.' For the text of the Bill, see the
+Appendix to this volume.
+
+[31] Dicey's 'Leap in the Dark,' p. 57.
+
+[32] 'England's Case against Home Rule,' p. 168.
+
+[33] The German Empire, in which Prussia is the leading State, may seem an
+example to the contrary; but the German Empire is hardly a Federation
+properly so called; it is a great military monarchy ruling subject
+kingdoms.
+
+[34] I feel obliged to refer to these authorities; not in order to stir up
+resentment against England in Ireland, but to point out a most important,
+if unfortunate, fact in the relations between the two countries. Swift, in
+his 'View of the State of Ireland,' Works, vol. ii. 8vo ed. 1890, says,
+'We are in the condition of patients, who have physic sent them by doctors
+at a distance, strangers to their constitution and the nature of the
+disease.' Burke, 'Correspondence,' vol. iii. p. 438, has remarked, 'I have
+never known any of the successive Governments of my time influenced by any
+other feeling relative to Ireland than the wish that they should hear of
+it and of its concerns as little as possible.' So Grattan, cited by Mr.
+Lecky, vol. vii. p. 108, exclaimed, 'It is a matter of melancholy
+reflection to consider how little the Cabinet knows of anything relating
+to Ireland. Ireland is a subject it considers with a lazy contumely, and
+picks up here and there, by accident or design, interested and erroneous
+intelligence.' I quote this passage from one of the speeches of Lord
+Clare: 'The people of England know less of this country than of any other
+nation in Europe;' and this passage from one of the speeches of O'Connell:
+'We are governed by foreigners; foreigners make our laws.... As to
+Ireland, the Imperial Parliament has the additional disadvantage springing
+from want of interest and total ignorance. I do not exaggerate; the
+ministers are in total ignorance of this country.' This want of knowledge
+of Ireland, too often associated with indifference, has, I repeat, been
+distinctly made manifest of late years.
+
+[35] These figures are taken from the Irish census of 1891. By the census
+of 1901, the population of Antrim and Down has increased, and that of
+every other county in Ireland, except Dublin, has declined. The
+over-representation of Ireland has thus become more than ever an unjust
+anomaly.
+
+[36] For an admirable account of the ancient land system of Celtic
+Ireland, see Maine's 'Early History of Institutions.' I may be allowed to
+refer to an article on this work, from my pen, in the _Edinburgh Review_
+of July, 1875, and to the first chapter of my 'History of Ireland,' in the
+Cambridge 'Historical Series.'
+
+[37] In the case of this, as of all the chapters, a list of the principal
+authorities and sources of information will be found in the preface to
+this book. For the conquest and confiscations of the Irish land, from the
+Norman Conquest to the end of the reign of William III., see 'The Statute
+of Kilkenny,' edited by James Hardiman; 'The Discoverie of Sir John
+Davies;' 'The Carew Papers,' edited by J. S. Brewer and William Bullen;
+Spenser's 'View of the State of Ireland;' Holingshead's 'Chronicles of
+Ireland;' Carte's 'Life of Ormond;' Lord Clanricarde's 'Memoirs;' Sir
+William Petty's 'Political Anatomy of Ireland;' 'Macariæ Excidium;' and
+King's 'State of the Protestants of Ireland.' As regards modern
+authorities, numerous, and some very valuable, the reader may be referred
+to Froude's 'History of England,' vol. ii. ch. viii.; vol. v. ch. xxviii.;
+vol. viii. chs. vii., xi.; vol. x. ch. xxiv.; vol. xi. ch. xxvii.; to Mr.
+Lecky's 'History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' vol. ii. ch. vi.;
+and to the Irish chapters in Mr. Gardiner's 'History of England,' from the
+Accession of James I. to the outbreak of the Civil War; to his 'History of
+the Great Civil War,' vol. i. chs. vi., xi.; vol. ii. chs. xxvii.,
+xxxvii., xliv.; and to the Irish chapters of his 'History of the
+Commonwealth and Protectorate.' Other modern works on the subject are
+Sigerson's 'History of Land Tenure in Ireland;' 'An Historical Account of
+the Plantation of Ulster,' by the Rev. George Hill; 'The Cromwellian
+Settlement of Ireland,' by John P. Prendergast; and the 'Life of Sir
+William Petty,' by Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice. See a review by me of this
+last work in the _Edinburgh Review_ of July, 1895; and also chs. iii.,
+iv., and v. of my 'History of Ireland, 1494-1868,' referred to before.
+There are innumerable minor authorities; and Hallam's 'Chapter on
+Ireland,' vol. iii., may be studied.
+
+[38] 'Letter to Sir Hercules Langriche:' 'Works,' vol. i. p. 560, ed.
+1834.
+
+[39] For an account of the penal laws of Ireland, see Vincent Scully on
+'The Irish Penal Laws;' Howard's 'Popery Laws;' and Burke's 'Tracts on the
+Popery Laws,' a short but masterly work.
+
+[40] For the state of Ireland and of the Irish land at this period, see
+the Irish Statute Book from 1700 to about 1750, and especially the
+writings of Swift and Berkeley on Irish affairs. Swift, however, is not
+just to the Irish landed gentry, many as were their faults. See also the
+'Letters' of Archbishop Boulter, the virtual ruler of Ireland during a
+series of years, and of Archbishop Synge. Reference, too, may be made to
+Molyneux's 'Case of Ireland,' and to Hutchinson's and Caldwell's
+'Restraints on the Trade of Ireland.' For modern authorities, consult
+Lecky's 'History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' vol. ii. ch. vii.;
+vol. iv. chs. xvi., xvii. Froude's 'English in Ireland' is very inaccurate
+and one-sided for this period; but his fine romance, the 'Two Chiefs of
+Dunboy,' contains a brilliant, and, in the main, a true account of the
+state of Irish social life in those days.
+
+[41] By far the best account of the state of Ireland, at this period, is
+to be found in the celebrated 'Tour' of Arthur Young, who wrote in
+1776-78. See also Mr. Lecky's 'History of England in the Eighteenth
+Century,' vol. vi. chs. xxiv., xxv.; vol. vii. ch. xxvii. The 'Irlande,
+Sociale, Politique, et Religieuse' of Gustave de Beaumont may also be
+consulted; but though a very able work, it is that of a democratic
+doctrinaire. For the Whiteboy movements, see the Irish Statute Book, and
+Sir George Lewis on 'Irish Disturbances.'
+
+[42] See Burke's 'Tracts on the Popery Laws,' vol. ii. pp. 445, 446.
+Arthur Young, too, often dwells on this subject.
+
+[43] For an account of this period nothing can be compared to Mr. Lecky's
+'History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' vols. vii., viii. These
+contain all the information that can be obtained, collected from every
+available source. I may refer to my 'Ireland, 1798-1898,' chs. i., ii.
+
+[44] There is no complete history of Ireland from the Union to the present
+time, though the materials for such a work are abundant. I may refer to my
+'Ireland, 1798-1898,' from the second chapter to the end. An excellent and
+elaborate description of Ireland from 1800 to 1812 will be found in the
+volumes of Edward Wakefield.
+
+[45] The best account of this period--the forerunner of one even more
+calamitous--will be found in the proceedings of a Parliamentary Committee
+on the state of Ireland in 1824-25, and in the mass of evidence collected
+by it. The evidence of O'Connell is full of interest.
+
+[46] I perfectly recollect, though quite a boy, this strong and widespread
+expression of sentiment.
+
+[47] Mitchel's 'History of Ireland,' vol. ii. p. 213. Mitchel was a rebel,
+but an honourable man, superior to the falsehoods disseminated by later
+agitators against Irish landlords.
+
+[48] Every one acquainted with the history of Irish titles, from about
+1790 to 1820, knows that this was the case.
+
+[49] 'Clarendon,' wrote Greville, 'told me he expected the Encumbered
+Estates Act would prove the regeneration of Ireland.'
+
+[50] That great lawyer, Lord St. Leonards, protested. He had been Lord
+Chancellor of Ireland.
+
+[51] For the state of Ireland during the Famine and the years that
+followed, see 'The Irish Crisis,' by Sir Charles Trevelyan, reprinted from
+the _Edinburgh Review_; and the 'Letters' of Mr. Campbell Foster, the
+Commissioner of the _Times_. Valuable information will also be found in
+the Greville 'Memoirs,' vols. v., vi. I may refer to my 'Ireland,
+1798-1898,' chs. v. and part of vi.
+
+[52] For an account of these machinations of party, see Greville,
+'Memoirs,' vol. vii. p. 33.
+
+[53] I heard several of these most injudicious and ill-informed
+expressions of a false opinion.
+
+[54] For the state of Ireland from the end of the Famine to 1868,
+reference may be made to 'Two Centuries of Irish History,' edited by Mr.
+Bryce; to the Greville 'Memoirs,' vols. vii. and viii.; to Greville's
+'Policy of England towards Ireland;' to the 'Recollections and Suggestions
+of Earl Russell;' to parts of the 'Life of Lord Palmerston;' to 'Journals,
+Conversations, and Essays relating to Ireland,' by Nassau Senior; to the
+'Young Ireland,' the 'Four Years of Irish History,' and 'The League of the
+North and South,' by Sir C. G. Duffy; to the 'New Ireland' of Mr. A. M.
+Sullivan; and to the 'Parnell Movement' of Mr. T. P. O'Connor. Valuable
+information as to this period will also be found in Mr. Barry O'Brien's
+works, 'Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland' and 'Irish Wrongs and
+English Remedies;' and there are many other authorities. This period is
+dealt with in my 'Ireland, 1798-1898.' ch. vi.
+
+[55] From the mass of literature on this subject reference may especially
+be made to 'The Irish Land,' by the late Sir George Campbell; Judge
+Longfield's essay in 'Systems of Land Tenure;' the 'Irish Land and the
+Irish People,' by Butt; and the 'Ireland, Industrial, Political, and
+Social,' of the late Mr. J. N. Murphy. As Special Commissioner of the
+_Times_, I went into the Irish land question at length on the spot; and it
+would be affectation to deny that my letters, since republished,
+powerfully contributed to the legislation which ere long followed. See,
+for further information, 'The Irish Land Question' of John Stuart Mill;
+'Emigration and the Tenure of Irish Land,' by Lord Dufferin; 'The New
+Ireland' of the late Mr. A. M. Sullivan; parts of Mr. Barry O'Brien's
+'Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland'; 'Ireland in 1868,' by the late
+Mr. G. Fitzgibbon, a Master of the Court of Chancery in Ireland; and Mr.
+Lecky's 'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. ch. ii.
+
+[56] This fact has been established by conclusive and impartial evidence,
+which hardly admits of question. It should be steadily kept in the
+reader's mind; for an idea, largely countenanced by iniquitous legislation
+badly administered, has prevailed of late years, that rack-renting in
+Ireland was common, nay, general. Exactly the contrary has been the case
+during the last half century. Butt, in his 'The Irish People and the Irish
+Land,' published in 1867, hardly alludes to over-renting; he properly
+dwells on the insecurity of Irish land tenure. Master Fitzgibbon, a great
+authority on the subject, in his 'Ireland in 1868,' p. 268, pointedly
+remarked, '452 estates are under my jurisdiction, in the Court of
+Chancery, the rents of which amount to £330,809, paid by 18,287 tenants. I
+have been now nearly eight years in office, during which time the rents
+have been paid without murmuring or complaint worth noticing.... It is
+well known that my ears are open to any just complaint from any tenant.'
+The testimony of Judge Longfield, another great authority, is nearly to
+the same effect. In 'Systems of Land Tenure,' published in 1870, he wrote
+thus (p. 21): 'This complaint of high rents has been made without ceasing
+for more than three hundred years. There was never less ground for it than
+at the present day, although in some instances the rent demanded is still
+too high; but this chiefly occurs where the landlords are middlemen, or
+where the property is very small.' These views are fully confirmed by
+evidence of a later period, to which I shall refer. I may add that, in
+1869, I examined the rentals of many scores of Irish estates, and was
+convinced that over-renting was very rare. See my 'Letters on the Land
+Question of Ireland,' republished from the _Times_, _passim_. I quote a
+single instance, from many to the same purpose (p. 221): 'It may be
+asserted, too, without fear of contradiction, that if in some districts
+rents are too high, they are not so as a general rule.' I have managed an
+Irish estate for upwards of fifty years, and have some claim to be an
+agricultural expert.
+
+[57] For the characteristics of the Ulster tenant right, see Butt's
+'Landlord and Tenant Act, 1870,' ch. xv. pp. 296-310. As to the legal
+authorities on the subject, reference may be made to the learned treatise
+of Messrs. Cherry and Wakley, 'The Irish Land Law and Land Purchase Acts,'
+pp. 150-152. A popular account of the Ulster custom will be found in my
+'Letters on the Land Question of Ireland,' pp. 242-247, and a more
+technical account in a legal treatise from my pen on the Land Act of 1870,
+pp. 30-56. The best definition I have seen of the right is one made by the
+late P. J. Blake, Q.C., C.C.J. of a northern county, 'Cherry and Wakley,'
+p. 150: 'The right or custom in general of yearly tenants, or those
+deriving through them, to continue in undisturbed possession so long as
+they act properly as tenants and pay their rents. The correlative right of
+the landlord periodically to raise the rent, so as to give him a just,
+fair, and full participation in the increased value of the land, but not
+so as to extinguish the tenant's interest by paying a rack rent. The usage
+or custom of the yearly tenants to sell their interest, if they do not
+wish to continue in possession, or if they become unable to pay the rent.
+The correlative right of the landlord to be consulted, and to exercise a
+potential voice in the approval or disapproval of the proposed assignee.'
+
+[58] I quote a few passages from the speeches of Mr. Gladstone, and
+others, on this subject. Mr. Gladstone said, March 11, 1870, 'If you value
+rents you may as well, for every available purpose, adopt perpetuity of
+tenure at once. It is perpetuity of tenure only in a certain disguise....
+The man who becomes a mere annuitant loses all general interest in the
+prosperity of the land.' And again, February 15, 1870: 'Perpetuity of
+tenure on the part of the occupier is virtually expropriation of the
+landlord.... The mere readjustment of rent can by no means dispose of all
+contingencies the future may produce in his favour.' Sir Roundell Palmer,
+afterwards Lord Selborne, said, March 10, 1870, 'Fixity of tenure, in
+plain English, means taking away the property of one man and giving it to
+another.' So Lord Granville, June 14, 1870, said in the House of Lords,
+'They might have introduced a Bill--which they were determined not to
+do--adopting fixity of tenure, taking away his property from the landlord,
+and establishing a valuation rent.' Passages of this kind, at least as
+strong, might be multiplied a hundred-fold.
+
+[59] It is impossible, in a sketch like this, to describe in detail the
+agrarian legislation for Ireland, which Parliament has enacted from 1870
+to this time. The work of Butt referred to before is an admirable
+commentary on the Bill of 1870, which soon became law. A brief account of
+all this legislation will be found in Mr. Lecky's 'Democracy and Liberty,'
+vol. i. ch. ii. The legal treatises of Messrs. Cherry and Wakley, pp.
+149-448, and of Mr. Justice Barton, are elaborate and complete.
+
+[60] Judge Longfield and Mr. Lecky are much the most distinguished of
+these numerous censors.
+
+[61] By this time I was an Irish County Court Judge; and I had some
+experience of reprehensible acts of this kind, extremely few as they were.
+
+[62] It is very remarkable that the stringent provisions of the Act
+against exorbitant rents seem to have been almost unknown to the
+peasantry, though exorbitant rents were, no doubt, existing here and
+there.
+
+[63] Report of the Judges of the Special Commission, vol. iv. pp. 478-480.
+
+[64] By many degrees the best account of the Land League movement will be
+found in the 'Report of the Proceedings of the Special Commission of
+1888-89,' republished by the _Times_ in four volumes. Reference may also
+be made to 'Parnellism and Crime,' a series of essays in the _Times_; to
+the 'Truth about the Land League,' by Mr. Arnold Foster; to 'The
+Continuity of the Irish Revolutionary Movement,' by Professor Brougham
+Leech; and to a pamphlet called 'The Queen's Enemies in America.' A kind
+of apology for the conspiracy will be found in 'The Parnell Movement,' by
+Mr. T. P. O'Connor, M.P.; but the Irish 'Nationalists' have judiciously
+been reticent on the subject. I may refer to my 'Ireland, 1798-1898,' ch.
+viii.
+
+[65] These infamous speeches, worthy of Marat and Hébert, were continued
+for years, and fill a large part of the evidence in the proceedings of the
+Special Commission. I select a sample or two taken at random. Mr. M.
+Harris said, 'If the tenant farmers of Ireland shoot down landlords as
+partridges are shot in September, Mat Harris would never say a word
+against them' (vol. ii. p. 38). The same worthy, afterwards an M.P.,
+exclaimed on another occasion (vol. i. p. 26), 'Mrs. Blake of Keenoyle is
+no better than a she-devil.... Mr. Robinson called the people of Connemara
+vermin; the people of Connemara ought to treat him as vermin. Leonard of
+Tuam I will say nothing about. I will denounce him at his own door.' So,
+too, a Mr. Boyton said (vol. iv. p. 277), 'We have seen plenty of them,
+landlords and agents, that deserve to be shot at any man's hand. I have
+always denounced the commission of outrages by night, but meet him in the
+broad daylight, and if you must blow his brains out, blow them out in the
+daytime.' Multiply such speeches addressed to an excitable peasantry, and
+the results which followed can easily be understood.
+
+[66] This has been established by conclusive evidence, and should be
+carefully borne in mind. Mr. Egan, one of the treasurers of the League,
+said, 'On my own behalf, and on behalf of my friends of the League, both
+in prison and outside, I can say that we regard the land question only in
+the light of a step towards national independence, which is, and shall
+continue to be, the goal of all our efforts.' Mr. Healy, M.P., said, 'This
+is a movement to win back from England the land of Ireland, which was
+robbed from the people by the confiscating armies of Elizabeth and
+Cromwell.... But I would remind you that Mr. Parnell ... explained the
+basis of the movement when he told the Galway farmers that he would never
+have taken off his coat in this movement were it not with Irish
+nationality as its object.' Parnell occasionally let out the truth; he
+said, 'Let every farmer, while he keeps a firm grip of his holding,
+recognise also the great truth that he is serving his country and the
+people at large, and helping to break down English misrule in Ireland'
+(Report of the Proceedings of the Special Commission, vol. iv. pp. 203,
+204). These speeches were, in hundreds, imitated and followed by other
+speakers.
+
+[67] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 486.
+
+[68] I was at this time judge of the County Kerry; these demands increased
+more than twofold at a single Quarter Sessions.
+
+[69] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. pp. 522-525.
+
+[70] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522.
+
+[71] Some of the cynical and wicked utterances of Parnell in proclaiming
+and expounding the new policy of 'boycotting' must be quoted. These, it is
+needless to say, were exaggerated in scores of speeches by orators of the
+League. In view almost of the corpse of a land agent who had been foully
+murdered, the arch-conspirator coolly remarked (Proceedings of the Special
+Commission, vol. iv. p. 257): 'I had wished in referring to a sad
+occurrence which took place lately, the shooting or attempted shooting of
+a land agent in the neighbourhood (uproar)--I had wished to point out that
+recourse to such measures of procedure is entirely unnecessary and
+absolutely prejudicial where there is a suitable organisation amongst the
+tenants themselves.' The methods to be adopted in 'boycotting'--the word
+was so named from a Captain Boycott, who was one of the first
+sufferers--were those set forth by Parnell (Report of the Judges, vol. iv.
+p. 498): 'Now, what are you to do to a tenant who bids for a farm from
+which his neighbour has been evicted? (Various shouts, among which, "Kill
+him!" "Shoot him!") Now, I think I heard somebody say "Shoot him" ("Shoot
+him!"); but I wish to point out to you a very much better way, a more
+Christian and charitable way, which will give the lost sinner an
+opportunity of repenting. (Hear, hear.) When a man takes a farm from which
+another has been evicted, you must show[A] him on the roadside when you
+meet him, you must show him in the streets of the town, you must show him
+at the shop counter, you must show him in the fair and in the
+market-place, and even in the house of worship, by leaving him severely
+alone, by putting him into a moral Coventry, by isolating him from the
+rest of his kind as if he was a leper of old. You must show him your
+detestation of the crime he has committed, and you may depend upon it, if
+the population of a county in Ireland carry out this doctrine, that there
+will be no man so full of avarice, so lost to shame, as to dare the public
+opinion of all right-thinking men within the county, and to transgress
+your unwritten code of laws.'
+
+    [A] In other, possibly more correct, reports, the word is 'shun,' not
+    'show.'
+
+[72] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522.
+
+[73] It is very important to bear this in mind, regard being had to the
+circumstances of the time, which have been shamefully misrepresented, and
+to subsequent legislation and its administration. I quote a few words from
+the Report, p. 3: 'It was unusual in Ireland to exact what in England
+would have been considered as a full or fair commercial rent. Such a rent
+over many of the larger estates, the owners of which were resident, and
+took an interest in the welfare of their tenants, it has never been the
+custom to demand. The example has been largely followed, and is, to the
+present day, rather the rule than the exception in Ireland.' M. de
+Molinari, a very competent foreign observer, wrote to the same effect in
+1881: 'Le taux général des rentes est modéré; autant que j'ai pu en juger,
+il est à qualité égale de terrain de moitié plus bas que celui des terres
+des Flandres' ('L'Irlande, le Canada, Jersey,' p. 138). See for further
+authorities, Mr. Lecky's 'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. p. 179.
+
+[74] Mr. Gladstone, speeches in the House of Commons, July 22, 1881, and
+May 10, 1881. Lord Carlingford, and notably Lord Selborne, said nearly the
+same.
+
+[75] This I know to be the fact on the very best authority.
+
+[76] A good popular account of the law of 1881 will be found in Mr.
+Lecky's 'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. pp. 182-197. See for an elaborate
+and technical description, 'Cherry and Wakley,' pp. 217-343.
+
+[77] 'Systems of Land Tenure,' p. 59.
+
+[78] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522.
+
+[79] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 532: 'We consider that the National
+League, like the Ladies' Land League, was substantially the old Land
+League under another name.'
+
+[80] I quote a few words from hundreds of these detestable writings, which
+should be studied. Mr. William O'Brien, the editor of one of Parnell's
+newspapers, and now the leader of the 'United Irish League,' published
+this in _United Ireland_, April 18, 1885: 'It would be still more
+gratifying if the Irish millions, scattered over the globe, should wake up
+one of these mornings to hear the war chimes joyfully ringing the
+declaration that would drive England on to downfall and destruction.' And
+again, September 19, 1885: 'We cannot fight England in the open. We can
+keep her in hot water. We cannot evict our rulers neck and crop. We can
+make their rule more insupportable for them than for us.... It is no fault
+of ours if we cannot organise Waterloos to decide our quarrels.' As to
+personalities, I quote two passages. December 15, 1883: 'Monstrous and
+incredible, surely, six hundred Irish gentlemen could not eat their dinner
+without pouring out libations to the adoration of an old lady who is only
+known in Ireland by her scarcely decently disguised hatred of this
+country, and by the inordinate amount of her salary.' Again, June 13,
+1885: 'With all the stubborn force of a cruel, narrow, dogged nature, Lord
+Spencer struck murderous blow after blow at the people under his rod. He
+stopped at nothing; not at subsidising red-handed murderers, not at
+knighting jury-packers, not at sheltering black official villainy with a
+coat of darkness, not at police quarterings, blood taxes, the bludgeoning
+of peaceful meetings, the clapping of handcuffs and convict jackets on
+M.P.'s, mayors, and editors, not at wholesale battues of hangings and
+transportations by hook or crook.'
+
+[81] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522. Mr. Gladstone in the House of
+Commons, April 8, 1886.
+
+[82] For an elaborate account of the Act of 1887, see 'Cherry and Wakley,'
+pp. 367-420. Reference, too, may be made to Mr. Lecky's 'Democracy and
+Liberty,' vol. i. pp. 198-200.
+
+[83] For an account of this legislation, which has not received the
+attention it deserves, as it is limited in its scope, see 'Cherry and
+Wakley,' pp. 468-472, and 'Barton,' pp. 104-106.
+
+[84] Upwards of thirty years ago, when the question of compensating Irish
+tenants for their improvements was coming fully to the front, a wealthy
+middleman, who held a large demesne in perpetuity, at a rather high rent,
+and had built a valuable mansion on it, in addition to planting hundreds
+of acres of woodland, asked me 'if I thought Parliament would compensate
+him, for, in that case, he could make his landlord pay him £30,000.' My
+reply was that 'Parliament would not be so insane.' I should be sorry to
+make such a reply now, having regard to recent legislation.
+
+[85] I believe I may claim some credit for having contributed to this
+provision. I had had large experience of the injustice of keeping tenants
+subject to long-standing arrears; and, as a judge, had taken strong
+measures to prevent and defeat the practice.
+
+[86] For an elaborate account of the Act which was the result of this
+Bill, see the work of Mr. Justice Barton, 'The Land Law (Ireland) Act,
+1896.'
+
+[87] 'Letter to a Member of the National Assembly,' vol. i. p. 478.
+
+[88] A Committee of the House of Lords sate, in 1872, to consider the
+administration of the Land Act of 1870. The report and the evidence were,
+in the main, in favour of the judges.
+
+[89] Rushe _v._ Whitney, Roscommon Quarter Sessions, October, 1895.
+
+[90] Lord Salisbury in the House of Lords, August 1, 1881: 'They are all
+three strong Liberals, with strong views of tenant right.... There is no
+doubt that all three are appointed with a strong prepossession in favour
+of views which are advocated by the representatives of the tenantry in
+Ireland, and which are deprecated by the landlords.... It is not the
+relegation of landlord and tenant to an impartial tribunal.'
+
+[91] Mr. Gladstone, July 22, 1881: 'I shall be bitterly disappointed with
+the operation of the Act if the property of the landlords of Ireland does
+not come to be worth more than twenty years' purchase on the judicial
+rent.' Mr. W. E. Forster, same date: 'I think the final result of the
+measure will be, within a few years, that the landowners of Ireland, small
+and large, will be better off than they are at this moment.' Lord
+Carlingford, August 1, 1881: 'My Lords, I maintain that the provisions of
+this Bill will cause the landlords no money loss whatever. I believe that
+it will inflict upon them no loss of income, except in those cases in
+which a certain number of landlords may have imposed upon their tenants
+excessive and inequitable rents.'
+
+[92] Hansard, vol. 260, p. 1399.
+
+[93] The nature and character of these two classes of evidence has been
+thus well described in the Report of the Edward Fry's Commission, p. 18:
+'If the matter were perfectly open, it appears to us that two independent
+lines of evidence might be pursued by a person inquiring what is the fair
+rent to be fixed for a holding. One class of evidence may for shortness be
+called the popular evidence; the other the technical. The popular evidence
+would comprise the prices obtained by the tenant for a sale of his
+interest or _bonâ fide_ offers which he had received for it, evidence of
+the letting value or judicial rents of similar holdings, evidence of the
+sums paid for conacre or agistment, evidence of the long and punctual
+payment of a real rent, or of the long arrears of a nominal rent, and
+evidence of the prosperity or poverty of the persons who had successively
+lived off the produce of the holding. The technical evidence would be that
+more familiar to professional valuators. They would inspect the land,
+ascertain the acreages of the different classes of land on the farm, and
+what they would produce or carry; they would consider the quantity and
+value of the produce and the cost of production, and the shares of the
+surplus remaining after the cost of production divisible between landlord
+and tenant respectively. The popular evidence would be affected by all the
+motives which make men in Ireland desirous to occupy land; the technical
+evidence would assume the desire of making a money profit out of the
+occupation of land as the sole motive of such occupation. The eighth
+section of the Act of 1881 seems to admit of both lines of evidence with a
+single exception. It provided that in fixing the fair rent consideration
+should be given not to some but to all the circumstances of the case, the
+holding and the district, with the single exception that (sub-sec. 10) the
+price paid for the tenancy otherwise than to the landlord or his
+predecessors was not of itself, apart from other considerations, to be
+taken into account; though, conjoined with other considerations, it still
+remains admissible.'
+
+[94] Report of the Fry Commission, p. 13.
+
+[95] Ibid., p. 14: 'Some specific charges of misconduct or negligence have
+been made against lay Assistant Commissioners and Court valuers; as _e.g._
+visiting the land without due notice to the landlord; visiting the holding
+when lying under snow or water, or when suffering from prolonged drought,
+and refusing to wait whilst a trench was dug to show the condition of the
+alleged drainage. We have investigated many of these cases, and the
+explanations given have generally been satisfactory to us.'
+
+[96] Evidence taken by Mr. Morley's Commission on the Irish Land Acts, p.
+236.
+
+[97] Ibid., p. 397.
+
+[98] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 131.
+
+[99] Ibid., p. 208.
+
+[100] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission: Mr. Campbell, p. 41.
+
+[101] Ibid., p. 682.
+
+[102] 'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. pp. 205, 206.
+
+[103] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 692. As a County Court
+judge I have a concurrent jurisdiction, happily seldom exercised, in
+fixing 'fair rents.' I had a somewhat similar case before me some
+seventeen or eighteen years ago, and I adjourned the hearing for four
+years to allow the land to recover. I believe I am the only official who
+did anything of the kind until quite recently.
+
+[104] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 836.
+
+[105] Evidence taken by the Morley Commission, 1894-95, p. 333.
+
+[106] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 952.
+
+[107] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 607. The procedure of the
+Sub-Commissions has, since 1896, been somewhat improved with respect to
+deterioration and waste, but many years too late.
+
+[108] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 677.
+
+[109] Ibid., p. 842.
+
+[110] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, pp. 478, 476.
+
+[111] Ibid., p. 476.
+
+[112] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 129.
+
+[113] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 339.
+
+[114] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission: Mr. Campbell, p. 25.
+
+[115] Mr. Vernon, the Lay Commissioner, was, of course, not responsible
+for this.
+
+[116] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 156.
+
+[117] Ibid., p. 615.
+
+[118] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 33.
+
+[119] Ibid., p. 30.
+
+[120] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission: Mr. Campbell, p. 30.
+
+[121] Report of the Fry Commission, p. 18. I entirely dissent from the
+above opinion of the head Commissioner.
+
+[122] Evidence taken by the Morley Commission, p. 507.
+
+[123] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 461.
+
+[124] Ibid., p. 616.
+
+[125] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 628.
+
+[126] Ibid., p. 631.
+
+[127] Ibid., p. 941.
+
+[128] Report of the Fry Commission, p. 22.
+
+[129] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 676.
+
+[130] Report of the Fry Commission, p. 20.
+
+[131] Ibid., p. 21.
+
+[132] Ibid., p. 9.
+
+[133] Ibid., p. 14.
+
+[134] Report of the Fry Commission, pp. 18, 19.
+
+[135] Ibid., pp. 12-26.
+
+[136] Ibid., p. 15.
+
+[137] Report of the Irish Land Commission to March, 1900, p. 64.
+
+[138] It is but just to the Land Commission to state that the reductions
+of rent made by the County Courts were somewhat higher than those it made.
+But this was notoriously because rack-rented tenants, for the sake of
+expedition, rushed first to these tribunals.
+
+[139] Report of the Irish Land Commission, p. 64.
+
+[140] Report of the Irish Land Commission, p. 3.
+
+[141] See a remarkable instance in the Evidence taken by the Fry
+Commission, p. 683: 'The holding was let in 1771 at 30_s._ the Irish acre,
+equal to about £1 per statute acre. The Sub-Commissioners have now cut it
+down to less than 12_s._ 6_d._ per acre.'
+
+[142] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, pp. 496, 609, 670.
+
+[143] 'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. pp. 202, 203.
+
+[144] Letters to the _Manchester Guardian_, written in 1890, and since
+republished. This little work was much noticed at the time; attempts to
+answer it were made to no purpose. The facts now speak for themselves.
+
+[145] Swift's 'Works,' vol. ii. p. 82, ed. 1870.
+
+[146] 'Reflections on the Revolution in France,' vol. i. p. 440.
+
+[147] The _Manchester Guardian_, 1890. I quote this passage, for I think
+its substance was referred to by the late Mr. Rathbone, member for
+Liverpool.
+
+[148] Mr. Lecky, 'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. ii. pp. 487-489, rather
+favours the policy of creating and extending peasant ownership in Ireland,
+and, to a certain extent, approves of the so-called 'Land Purchase' Acts,
+but only as a doubtful experiment, to endeavour to escape from a
+hopelessly bad land system. The distinguished historian and thinker, in my
+opinion, is not sufficiently alive to the iniquity of these measures as
+they affect landlords who wish to retain their estates, or, rather, what
+remains of them; but he clearly perceives some of the objections to this
+vicious legislation. I quote his remarks at some length: 'In Ireland, as
+is well known, great efforts are made to create such a proprietary; but
+the conditions of Ireland are unlike those of any other part of the
+civilised globe. It has been the deliberate policy of the Government to
+break down, by almost annual Acts, the obligation of contracts, and the
+existing ownership of land has been rendered so insecure, the political
+power attached to it has been so effectually destroyed, and the influences
+tending to anarchy and confiscation have been made so powerful, that most
+good judges have come to the conclusion that it is necessary to force into
+existence by strong legislative measures a new social type, which may,
+perhaps, possess some elements of stability and conservatism. In order to
+effect this object, the national credit has been made use of in such a way
+that a tenant is enabled to purchase his farm without making the smallest
+sacrifice for that object, the whole sum being advanced by the Government,
+and advanced on such terms that the tenant is only obliged to pay for a
+limited number of years a sum from 20 to 30 per cent. less than his
+present rent. In other words, a man whose rent has been fixed by the Land
+Court at £100 a year, can purchase his farm by paying, instead of that
+sum, £70 or £80 a year for forty-nine years. The arrangement sounds more
+like burlesque than serious legislation; but the belief that political
+pressure can obtain still better terms for the tenant, and that further
+confiscatory legislation may still more depreciate the value of land to
+the owner who has inherited it, or purchased it in the open market, has
+taken such deep root in Ireland that the tenants have shown little
+alacrity to avail themselves of their new privilege. What may be the
+ultimate issue of the attempt to govern a country in complete defiance of
+all received economical principles remains to be seen. The future must
+show whether a large peasant proprietary can be not only called into
+existence, but permanently maintained, under these conditions, and whether
+it will prove the loyal and conservative element that English politicians
+believe. According to all past experience, peasant proprietors rarely
+succeed, except when they possess something more than an average measure
+of industrial qualities, and the Irish purchase laws give no preference to
+the energetic, the industrious, and the thrifty. On the contrary, it is
+very often the farmer who is on the verge of bankruptcy who is most eager
+to buy, in order to reduce his annual charge. The tendency of the new
+proprietors to mortgage, to sublet, and to subdivide, is already manifest,
+and some of the best judges of Irish affairs, who look beyond the present
+generation, are very despondent about the future. They believe that a
+peasant proprietary, called into existence suddenly and artificially, with
+no discrimination in favour of the better class, in a country where
+industrial qualities are very low, and where the strongest wish of the
+farmer is either to divide his farm among his children, or to burden it
+with equal mortgages for their benefit, must eventually lead to economic
+ruin, to fatal subdivision, to crushing charges on land. The new policy
+must also, they contend, almost wholly withdraw from the country life,
+where it is peculiarly needed, the civilising and guiding influence of a
+resident gentry. Whether or not these apprehensions are exaggerated time
+only can show. Two predictions may, I think, with some confidence be made.
+The one is, that the transformation is likely to be most successful if it
+is gradually effected. The other is, that a great part of the influence
+once possessed by the landlord will, under the new conditions, pass to the
+money-lender.'
+
+[149] I quote these remarks of Burke, a striking instance of his political
+wisdom ('Tracts on the Popery Laws,' vol. ii. p. 446): 'It is on this
+principle (to get rid of short and unprofitable tenures) that the Romans
+established their _emphyteusis_, or fee-farm. For though they extended the
+ordinary term of their creation to nine years only, yet they encouraged a
+more permanent letting to farm, with the condition of improvement, as well
+as of annual payment where the land had lain rough and neglected.' So John
+Stuart Mill ('Irish Land Question,' p. 31, ed. 1870): 'The idea of
+property does not, however, necessarily imply that there should be no
+rent, any more than that there should be no taxes. It merely implies that
+the rent should be a fixed charge, not liable to be raised against the
+farmer by his own improvements, or by the will of a landlord. A tenant at
+a quit rent is, to all intents and purposes, a proprietor; a copyholder is
+not less so than a freeholder. What is wanted is permanent possession on
+fixed terms.' Mr. Morley said not long ago, in his place in Parliament,
+that, as things now stand in Ireland, the landlord must become a
+rent-charger and the tenant a copyholder, a true utterance.
+
+[150] 'Principles of Political Economy,' book ii. chap. ii. p. 6. I may
+refer, too, to these pregnant remarks of Bentham ('Theory of Legislation,'
+chap, xv.): 'The principle of security requires that reform should be
+attended with complete indemnity.... I cannot yet quit the subject, for
+the establishment of the principle of security demands that error should
+be pursued in all its retreats.... The interest of individuals, it is
+said, ought to yield to the public interest; but what does that mean? Is
+not one individual as much a part of the public as another? The public
+interest which you introduce as a person is only an abstract term; it
+represents nothing but the mass of individual interests.... Individual
+interests are the only real interests. Take care of the individuals; never
+molest them, never suffer any one to molest them, and you will have done
+enough for the public.... I shall conclude by a general observation of
+great importance. The more the principle of property is respected, the
+stronger hold it takes on the popular mind. Slight attacks on this
+principle prepare the way for heavier ones. A long time has been necessary
+to carry property to the point where we now see it in civilised societies;
+but a fatal experience has shown with what facility it may be shaken, and
+how easily the savage instinct of plunder gets the better of the laws.'
+
+[151] For the constitutional position of the British and Irish Parliaments
+before the Union, see Hallam's 'Constitutional History,' vol. iii.,
+chapter on Ireland, and Ball's 'Legislative Irish System,' chaps. v., xv.
+See also Lecky's 'History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' vol. ii.
+chap. vii.; vol. iv. chaps. xvi., xvii. As to the financial position of
+the two countries, see the opening pages of each of the Reports of the
+Childers Commission.
+
+[152] Grattan described this vicious state of things in his inimitable
+style ('Speeches,' p. 258, ed. published by Duffy): 'The Union is not an
+identification of the two nations; it is merely a merger of the parliament
+of one nation in that of another.... There is no identification in
+anything save in legislature, in which there is complete and absolute
+absorption. It follows that the two nations are not identified, though the
+Irish legislature be absorbed, and by that act of absorption the feeling
+of one of the nations is not identified, but alienated. The petitions on
+our table bespeak that alienation.'
+
+[153] Report of the Childers Commission, p. 20.
+
+[154] I transcribe this part of the seventh article of the Treaty of
+Union; I believe that I have fairly described its purport (Report of
+Childers Commission, p. 140): 'That if at any future day the separate debt
+of each country respectively shall have been liquidated, or if the values
+of their respective debts ... shall be to each other in the same
+proportion with the respective contributions of each country
+respectively.... And if it shall appear to the Parliament of the United
+Kingdom that the respective circumstances of the two countries will
+thenceforth admit of their contributing indiscriminately by equal taxes
+imposed on the same articles in each, to the future expenditure of the
+United Kingdom to declare that all future expense thenceforth to be
+incurred, together with the interest and charges of all joint debts
+contracted previous to such declaration, shall be so defrayed
+indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed on the same articles in each
+country, and thenceforth from time to time, as circumstances may require,
+to impose and apply such taxes accordingly, subject only to such
+particular exemptions or abatements in Ireland, and in that part of Great
+Britain called Scotland, as circumstances may appear, from time to time,
+to demand.'
+
+[155] Grattan's speeches, quoted in a memorandum supplied to the Childers
+Commission by Sir Edward Hamilton, p. 9.
+
+[156] 'Minutes of Evidence,' Childers Commission, vol. i. p. 329.
+
+[157] Memorandum of Sir Edward Hamilton, p. 9.
+
+[158] Report of the Childers Commission, p. 143.
+
+[159] Ibid., p. 32.
+
+[160] Report of the Childers Commission, pp. 147, 148.
+
+[161] Ibid., p. 33.
+
+[162] Report of the Childers Commission, p. 158.
+
+[163] I think it necessary to set out verbatim the terms of reference to
+the Commission; I have for the sake of clearness changed their order: 'To
+inquire into the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland,
+and their relative taxable capacity, and to report: I. Upon what
+principles of comparison, and by the application of what specific
+standards, the relative capacity of Great Britain and Ireland to bear
+taxation may be most equitably determined. II. What, so far as can be
+ascertained, is the true proportion, under the principles and specific
+standards so determined, between the taxable capacity of Great Britain and
+Ireland. III. The history of the financial relations between Great Britain
+and Ireland, at and after the Legislative Union, the charge for Irish
+purposes on the Imperial Exchequer during that period, and the amount of
+Irish taxation remaining available for contribution to Imperial
+expenditure; also the Imperial expenditure to which it is considered
+equitable that Ireland should contribute.'
+
+[164] Report of the Childers Commission, p. 26.
+
+[165] Since 1896, when the Childers Commission made its report, the
+overtaxation of Ireland has increased.
+
+[166] Report of Childers Commission: 'Minutes of Evidence,' vol. i. p. 17.
+
+[167] Report of the Childers Commission, p. 16.
+
+[168] Report of the Childers Commission, p. 89.
+
+[169] Report of the Childers Commission, pp. 159, 160.
+
+[170] 'Minutes of Evidence,' Childers Commission, vol. ii. p. 218.
+
+[171] I quote from the Report of the Childers Commission, p. 68, these
+valuable remarks on the subject: 'Neither can there then be any question
+that a system of equal rates of taxes on the same subjects is compatible
+with the utmost inequality of burdens between two countries contributing
+to one exchequer. All that need be done in order to exact an undue
+proportion--unlimited in extent--of the means of either of the countries
+is to tax the commodities most consumed in that country, and in fixing the
+rate of the tax on each commodity, to fix the higher rates on the
+particular commodities most generally in use in that country, and the
+lower rates on those most consumed in the other. The same kind of effect,
+of course, may be produced, and the same discrimination exercised, by
+totally exempting some commodities and taxing others, however lightly. In
+fact, a system of equal rates of taxes may thus be rendered more easily
+unjust and burdensome to the country discriminated against than one of
+differential taxes, because in the latter case, the unequal treatment, and
+the mode of it being manifest, are more liable to criticism and
+limitation; whilst in the former, the true effect of the system is
+disguised by the circumstances that each particular head of tax is at the
+same rate in both countries.'
+
+[172] Report of the Childers Commission, p. 39.
+
+[173] Ibid., p. 166.
+
+[174] Report of the Childers Commission, p. 11.
+
+[175] Ibid.: Evidence of Mr. Munough O'Brien, pp. 12, 13: 'The system of
+Imperial loans for temporary emergencies and charity tends to increase the
+poverty of Ireland, whose future income is mortgaged to pay interest on
+expenditure from which there is no return. There is no surer road to ruin
+for an individual than borrowing money to live upon, and most of these
+Imperial loans are practically made from time to time to enable the Irish
+people to live or relieve acute distress and disorder. Loans are almost
+annually made to keep the people quiet or to keep them alive. Yet this
+expenditure does not prevent the recurrence of famine, distress, and
+discontent; it rather tends to cause their recurrence.'
+
+[176] Report of the Childers Commission: Report of Mr. Sexton and others,
+pp. 102, 103.
+
+[177] Report of the Childers Commission: 'Evidence,' vol. ii. p. 18.
+
+[178] Report of the Childers Commission, pp. 194, 195.
+
+[179] 6 & 7 Will. IV. c. 116. The works of Messrs. Vanston and Foote on
+the grand juries of Ireland may be referred to.
+
+[180] The reader may be referred to Mr. Moore's work on the Irish poor
+law.
+
+[181] See the Report of a Committee of the House of Lords, and especially
+of the Evidence, taken in 1884-85, with respect to the administration of
+the Irish poor law at the time.
+
+[182] For a further account of local government in Ireland, a reader may
+consult the Report of Mr. W. P. O'Brien on Local Government, 1878, and
+reports on the towns of Ireland and their taxation about the same date. An
+excellent tract on the subject was published by Mr. William J. Bailey in
+1888, called 'Local and Centralised Government in Ireland.' With respect
+to the system of municipal government in Ireland as it existed before
+1840, nothing is so valuable as the Reports of the Commissioners, very
+able men, charged to inquire into the subject in 1834-35. A useful and
+well-informed account will also be found in Mr. Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty
+Years of Concessions to Ireland,' vol. i. book v.
+
+[183] I have only been able to sketch the outlines of the measure, the
+Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, p. 1, 62 Vict. cap. 37. A good
+commentary on it has been written by Mr. Brett of the Irish Bar.
+
+[184] Mr. Lecky, 'Democracy and Liberty,' Cabinet Edition, Introduction,
+p. 13, has well described this vaunted reform: 'It was a measure
+introduced in fulfilment of distinct pledges, and it contains very skilful
+provisions intended to protect existing interests. But, after all is said,
+it means a great transfer of power and influence from the loyal to the
+disloyal, and it goes in the direction of democracy far beyond anything
+that a few years ago would have been accepted by the Conservatives, or by
+the moderate Liberals.'
+
+[185] For a description of elementary education in Ireland up to 1812, see
+passages in Wakefield's 'Account of Ireland;' and for a description in
+earlier and later times, see Mr. Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty Years of
+Concessions to Ireland,' book i. chs. i.-xiv.; Mr. Graham Balfour's
+'Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland,' pp. 80-128; the Report
+of the Commissioners of Irish Education, 1810-21; the important Report of
+the Powis Commission, 1870-71; and the Reports of the Commissioners of
+National Education in Ireland. Mr. Froude, in his 'English in Ireland,'
+vol. i. p. 514; vol. ii. p. 491, has characteristically eulogised the
+Charter Schools; but he stands alone; Mr. Lecky, 'History of England in
+the Eighteenth Century,' vol. ii. pp. 200-304, has commented on this
+odious system as it deserved.
+
+[186] Barry O'Brien, 'Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,' vol. ii. p.
+322.
+
+[187] See Wakefield's 'Account of Ireland' for the state of her secondary
+schools in 1812; Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,'
+book x. chs. i., ii., iii.; Graham Balfour's 'The Educational System of
+Great Britain and Ireland,' pp. 203-218; and the Reports of the two
+Commissions of 1854-57 and of 1878-80, of which the heads were Lord
+Kildare and the Earl of Rosse.
+
+[188] See the resolutions in Duffy's 'Young Ireland,' pp. 713, 714. There
+has been much misrepresentation on this subject.
+
+[189] See 'The Problem of Irish Education,' by Butt, a masterly and
+impartial tract.
+
+[190] See for the figures 'The Irish University Question,' by Archbishop
+Walsh, _passim_.
+
+[191] For further information on the history and the present state of the
+University system in Ireland, see 'The History of the University of
+Dublin,' by the Rev. J. W. Stubbs, and 'The Constitutional History of the
+University of Dublin,' by D. C. Heron; Howley on 'Universities;' 'What is
+meant by Freedom of Education,' by the O'Conor Don; 'University
+Education,' by an Irish Protestant Celt; and especially 'The Problem of
+Irish Education,' by Butt. See also the Irish University Debates in
+Hansard for 1873, and the very able debate in Trinity College. The reader,
+too, may be referred to Mr. Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty Years of Concessions to
+Ireland,' book xi.; to Mr. Graham Balfour's 'Educational Systems of Great
+Britain and Ireland,' pp. 273-288; to Mr. Godkin's 'Education in Ireland;'
+and to Archbishop Walsh's 'The Irish University Question.'
+
+[192] Too much is not to be made of 'Nationalist' clamour; but these
+remarks of Mr. Dillon, M.P., are significant (_Freeman's Journal_, April
+13, 1901): 'I do not believe that these movements will ever succeed ...
+until that fortress of English domination and anti-Irish bigotry, Trinity
+College, is for ever swept away, or there is placed opposite to it a truly
+National University, where the most honoured classes will be the classes
+of Irish literature and Irish history.' Archbishop Walsh, a much abler
+man, has written in the same sense in his work, 'The Irish University
+Question.' The question, he contends, in many passages, must be settled by
+levelling up or by levelling down, that is, by raising the Catholic
+University to the position of Trinity College, or by disestablishing and
+disendowing Trinity College. The evil precedent of the Act disestablishing
+the Anglican Church in Ireland, will, it is hoped, be eschewed.
+
+[193] See on this subject Mr. Lough's 'England's Wealth, Ireland's
+Poverty,' pp. 88-94.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
+
+Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=.
+
+The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these
+letters have been replaced with transliterations.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Present Irish Questions, by William O'Connor Morris
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Present Irish Questions, by William O'Connor Morris.
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+Project Gutenberg's Present Irish Questions, by William O'Connor Morris
+
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+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
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+
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+Title: Present Irish Questions
+
+Author: William O'Connor Morris
+
+Release Date: October 26, 2011 [EBook #37853]
+
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+
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS ***
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+
+
+<h1>Present Irish Questions</h1>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="verts">
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">Publisher&#8217;s Announcement</span></p>
+<p class="center"><i>By the Same Author</i></p>
+
+<p class="center"><strong>The Campaign of 1815: Ligny, Quatre Bras, Waterloo.</strong><br />
+Demy 8vo, cloth, with Maps, 12<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> net.</p>
+
+<p>M. Houssaye, in a letter to the author, says, &#8220;J&#8217;ai lu avec beaucoup de
+plaisir votre livre sur La Campagna de 1815. C&#8217;est un excellent r&eacute;sum&eacute;,
+copieux et critique, tres judicieux, tres pr&eacute;cis, et tres clair.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Captain Mahan, in a letter to the author, says, &#8220;Your narrative is very
+clear, and to me quite convincing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><i>The Times</i>: &#8220;We can recommend this book as a painstaking and instructive
+survey of the campaign.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><i>The Spectator</i>: &#8220;Provides what has long been wanted&mdash;a study of the
+campaign by one well qualified to sift evidence dispassionately.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><i>Pall Mail Gazette</i>: &#8220;Will fill a high place in the all too scanty library
+of British Military literature.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">London: Grant Richards</span><br />
+9 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, W.C.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="giant">Present<br />
+Irish Questions</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><small>BY</small><br />
+<span class="large">WILLIAM O&#8217;CONNOR MORRIS</span><br />
+<small><span class="smcap">County Court Judge and Chairman of Quarter Sessions of Roscommon</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">and Sligo, and</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Sometime Scholar of Oriel College, Oxford</span></small></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<ins class="correction" title="Nosei de moi propas stolos, oud' eni phrontidos egchos h&ocirc; tis alexetai.">&#925;&#959;&#963;&#949;&#953;
+&#948;&#8051; &#956;&#959;&#953; &#960;&#961;&#8057;&#960;&#945;&#962; &#963;&#964;&#8057;&#955;&#959;&#962;, &#959;&#8016;&#948;&#8125;
+&#7956;&#957;&#953; &#966;&#961;&#959;&#957;&#964;&#8055;&#948;&#959;&#962; &#7954;&#947;&#967;&#959;&#962; &#8033;
+&#964;&#953;&#962; &#7936;&#955;&#8051;&#958;&#949;&#964;&#945;&#953;.</ins><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 14em;">&mdash;<span class="smcap">Sophocles.</span></span><br />
+<br />
+&#8216;Blessed is the Amending Hand.&#8217;&mdash;<i>Old Proverb.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">London<br />
+Grant Richards<br />
+New York: E. P. Dutton &amp; Co.<br />
+1901</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">I DEDICATE THIS BOOK<br />
+<small>A TRIBUTE OF ADMIRATION AND ESTEEM</small><br />
+<small>TO</small><br />
+THE MARQUIS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA, K.P.<br />
+<small>THE MOST DISTINGUISHED IRISHMAN OF HIS TIME</small></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><small>LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,<br />
+STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.</small></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Preface</h2>
+
+<p>I have written much on Ireland from early youth, especially in the
+<i>Edinburgh Review</i> and the <i>Times</i>; and two works of mine, &#8216;Ireland,
+1494-1868&#8217; published in &#8216;The Cambridge Historical Series,&#8217; and &#8216;Ireland,
+1798-1898,&#8217; have been received with more than ordinary favour. I have
+ventured to think that the opinions of a veteran inquirer into Irish
+affairs, with respect to &#8216;Present Irish Questions&#8217; just now of much
+importance, and certain to be ere long fully discussed in Parliament and
+elsewhere, may be of some use to a younger generation, that will have to
+examine and must be affected by them. I am not unaware of the cynical
+remarks of Swift on the disregard shown to authors who may be said to have
+had their day; and I do not pretend that, in the instance of myself, &#8216;old
+experience&#8217; has given something of a &#8216;prophetic strain&#8217; to what is
+contained in this volume. But I can say, with truth, that few living men
+have had such opportunities as have fallen to my lot, during a long series
+of years, to understand Ireland in its different parts, and the feelings
+and sentiments of the Irish community; to form sound and moderate views on
+the many and perplexing phenomena called &#8216;Irish Questions;&#8217; to deal
+reasonably with Irish political and social problems, free from the
+influences of party prejudice and passion; in short, to do my subject
+complete and impartial justice. How the accidents and associations of a
+life already protracted beyond the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span> ordinary span, have, as I hope, given
+me these qualifications, I have explained at some length in my &#8216;Ireland,
+1798-1898;&#8217; I shall not repeat what I have already written. But Ireland
+has constantly been uppermost in my thoughts; and as regards the
+conclusions I have come to in these pages, I may say, with the Roman
+historian, &#8216;h&aelig;c senectuti seposui.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>The examination of &#8216;Present Irish Questions,&#8217; in this work, shows the
+views I entertain with regard to the actual condition of Ireland in its
+various aspects, and to her probable future destinies. These views may be
+censured as too gloomy, and even paradoxical; but Ireland remains, as she
+was when Macaulay wrote of her, &#8216;A member indeed of the Empire, but a
+withered and distorted member;&#8217; the revolution which has passed, nay, is
+still passing, over her, has destroyed a great deal that ought to have
+been preserved, and has put little that is solid and stable in its place;
+there is much that is threatening and even dangerous in her political and
+social order, and in the sentiments of the mass of her community. In the
+case of Ireland, indeed, as in that of any other people, I have faith in
+the effect of salutary legislation on wise and just principles, and of
+consistent good government steadily carried out, of both of which there
+has been but too little evidence, during the last twenty years, in Irish
+affairs; above all, my trust is large in the healing influences of Time.
+But I have not forgotten that the vision of &#8216;Pacata Hibernia,&#8217; which
+flitted even before the majestic understanding of Bacon, three centuries
+ago, has not been realised; the thoughtless optimism, which, during the
+last two generations, has represented Ireland to be in a state of
+continual &#8216;progress,&#8217; nay, as &#8216;contented and happy,&#8217; whenever she has not
+been convulsed by disorder and trouble, or racked by poverty and distress,
+has been completely falsified; and with nations, as with individuals, the
+profound remark of Butler is true; a life of repentance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span> often fails to
+redeem the errors of the past. I proceed to indicate some at least of the
+authorities which relate to the different parts of my subject. The
+material condition of Ireland of late years may, perhaps, be best
+ascertained by studying, over some length of time, the large body of
+statistics compiled by the Government, and contained in that valuable
+publication, &#8216;Thom&#8217;s Directory,&#8217; and by a perusal of the Irish debates in
+Hansard. Reference, too, should be made to the important papers of Mr.
+Childers, of Lord Farrer, and of Mr. Sexton in the Report of the Childers
+Commission, and especially to the evidence of Sir Robert Giffen, and even
+of Sir Edward Hamilton, in the Blue Books appended to that inquiry.
+&#8216;England&#8217;s Wealth, Ireland&#8217;s Poverty,&#8217; by Thomas Lough, M.P., though a
+one-sided book, also deserves attention; and useful information may be
+obtained from &#8216;The Five Years in Ireland, 1895-1900,&#8217; of Mr. Michael J. F.
+McCarthy, too much a eulogy, however, of things as they are, and marked by
+a spirit of aversion to, and distrust of, the Irish priesthood, which are
+a characteristic of a small section of the Irish Catholics.</p>
+
+<p>The sources of our knowledge respecting the moral, social, and political
+state of Ireland are numerous and ample; I shall confine myself, as much
+as I can, to those which relate to what may be called her recent
+revolutionary period, though Irish history in the past, even in the
+distant past, is anything but an &#8216;old almanack.&#8217; This mass of evidence
+faithfully represents the disturbances and the troubles that have
+prevailed in Ireland, with intervals of time between, during the last
+twenty years and upwards, and the fierce animosities and conflicts which
+have been the consequence. Here a reader should again consult Hansard,
+notably the debates on Ireland, during the agitated period from 1880 to
+1889; of course he should only study the great speeches. The publications
+on this subject are very many, and some of real importance; as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span> regards
+the policy and conduct of the Land, and even of the National Leagues, and
+the frightful outbreak of disorder and crime which was the result, nothing
+is equal in value to the Report of the Judges of the &#8216;Special Commission,&#8217;
+and to the immense body of evidence brought before them; &#8216;The Verdict,&#8217; by
+Professor Dicey, sums up well the conclusions at which they arrived. The
+utterances of the so-called Irish &#8216;Nationalist&#8217; Press, throughout these
+years, fully verify the facts disclosed in the Report, and its findings;
+they have, indeed, been continued in a less ferocious and violent, but in
+a significant, strain ever since; a collection of them will be found in
+the volumes published by the Irish Unionist Alliance. On this subject, and
+also on the state of opinion existing among a large majority, probably, of
+the Irish people, see &#8216;The Continuity of the Irish Revolutionary
+Movement,&#8217; by Professor Brougham Leech; &#8216;The Truth about the Land League,&#8217;
+by Mr. Arnold Foster, M.P.; &#8216;Parnellism and Crime,&#8217; republished from the
+<i>Times</i>; &#8216;Incipient Irish Revolution,&#8217; anonymous but able; some valuable
+articles on Ireland by the late Lord Grey that appeared in the <i>Nineteenth
+Century</i>; &#8216;Disturbed Ireland,&#8217; by Mr. T. W. Russell, M.P.; &#8216;The Plan of
+Campaign Illustrated;&#8217; and &#8216;About Ireland,&#8217; by Mrs. E. Lynn Lynton. The
+recent revolutionary and agrarian movements in Ireland have not found many
+to vindicate them, or even fully to explain their causes; but reference
+may be made to &#8216;The Parnell Movement,&#8217; by T. P. O&#8217;Connor, M.P.; to the
+&#8216;New Ireland&#8217; of Mr. A. M. Sullivan; to Mr. Barry O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s &#8216;Irish Wrongs
+and English Remedies;&#8217; and to a series of articles called &#8216;Ungrateful
+Ireland,&#8217; in the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, from the pen of Sir G. Duffy. A
+host of papers in quarterly, monthly, and other reviews and magazines on
+the political and social condition of Ireland of late years has, also,
+been published from time to time. Attempts have been made, quite recently,
+to show that the troubles of Ireland have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span> become things of the past, and
+that she is a prosperous and happy land; but though real improvement has
+certainly taken place, these are mere repetitions of the optimistic
+fancies that have so often proved delusions.</p>
+
+<p>The great question of Home Rule, &#8216;present&#8217; if for a time postponed, was
+first put forward formally by the late Isaac Butt. His &#8216;Irish Federalism&#8217;
+is a thoughtful and able treatise that ought to be studied. The speeches
+in Parliament, from 1874 to 1885, on this subject, collected in Hansard,
+deserve attention; notably the violent attacks on this policy made during
+many years by Mr. Gladstone. Hansard, too, should be perused, after that
+statesman became a convert to Home Rule, for the speeches on both sides,
+on the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893; some are of marked power and
+insight, though few rise to the heights of great constitutional
+principles. Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s defence of his sudden change of front will be
+found in his &#8216;History of an Idea,&#8217; a tract published soon after his defeat
+at the polls in 1886; he has endeavoured to vindicate his later Irish
+policy, in many pamphlets and speeches, in volumes collected by himself.
+For a masterly examination of his public conduct on matters relating to
+Ireland, and in some other passages in his career, I would especially
+direct the reader to the &#8216;Memoirs of the late Lord Selborne,&#8217; part ii.
+vol. ii. pp. 339-360; Mr. Lecky&#8217;s brilliant sketch in his &#8216;Democracy and
+Liberty,&#8217; Cabinet Edition, Introduction, pp. 19-56, is a composition of
+rare excellence. Nothing is to be compared to Professor Dicey&#8217;s &#8216;England&#8217;s
+Case against Home Rule,&#8217; and his &#8216;Leap in the Dark,&#8217; for a thorough
+investigation, from the Unionist point of view, of the natural and the
+probable consequences of the Gladstonian Irish policy, and for an analysis
+of the two Home Rule Bills; few political works have attracted equal
+attention. There have also been many publications, on the side of the
+Union, of more or less merit; see &#8216;Home Rule,&#8217; reprinted from the <i>Times</i>,
+containing several very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span> able letters and papers; &#8216;The Truth about Home
+Rule;&#8217; &#8216;A Sketch of Unionist Policy;&#8217; and a number of articles in the
+<i>Edinburgh</i> and the <i>Quarterly Review</i>, and in other reviews and
+magazines. The publications which advocate Home Rule have not been
+numerous; a reader may consult the &#8216;Hand Book of Home Rule,&#8217; edited by Mr.
+Bryce, M.P.; &#8216;Irish Members and English Gaolers,&#8217; and &#8216;Combination and
+Coercion,&#8217; by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre; and some contributions to a few reviews
+and other serials.</p>
+
+<p>The &#8216;Present Question&#8217; of the Irish land, and of Irish landed relations,
+goes back to even remote antiquity, and is connected with the whole course
+of Irish history. The characteristics and peculiarities of tribal land
+tenure in Ireland, before the Anglo-Norman Conquest, have been admirably
+explained in Sir Henry Maine&#8217;s &#8216;Early History of Institutions,&#8217; a very
+valuable work. I may refer to an article on this book, from my pen, in the
+<i>Edinburgh Review</i> of July, 1875. See, also, the &#8216;Senchus Mor,&#8217; and the
+&#8216;Book of Aicile,&#8217; fragments of the Brehon Laws, well annotated by the late
+Professor Richey. The state of the Irish land, from the Anglo-Norman
+Conquest to the beginning of the Tudor period, has been fully illustrated
+in the &#8216;Statute of Kilkenny,&#8217; edited by James Hardiman, whose learned
+commentary is useful and important; in the &#8216;Discovery&#8217; of Sir John Davies;
+in Spenser&#8217;s &#8216;View of the State of Ireland;&#8217; in the &#8216;O&#8217;Conors of
+Connaught,&#8217; by the O&#8217;Conor Don; in Hallam&#8217;s &#8216;Constitutional History,&#8217; vol.
+iii. chapter on Ireland; and in Professor Richey&#8217;s &#8216;Lectures.&#8217; I have
+glanced at the state of Irish land tenure during the tribal and the feudal
+ages, in the introductory chapters to my &#8216;Ireland, 1494-1868,&#8217; in the
+&#8216;Cambridge Historical Series.&#8217; The most complete account, perhaps, of the
+confiscations of the Irish land, from the reign of Henry VIII. to that of
+Charles I., will be found in the &#8216;Carew Papers,&#8217; edited by J. S. Brewer
+and William Bullen; valuable information abounds in the &#8216;State Papers
+relating to the reign of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span> Henry VIII.,&#8217; edited by Hans Claude Hamilton; in
+&#8216;The Life of Sir John Perrott and his Letters;&#8217; in the &#8216;Earls of Kildare,&#8217;
+edited by the Marquis of Kildare; in the &#8216;State Papers,&#8217; edited by
+Hamilton, <i>ante</i>, &#8216;relating to the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and
+Elizabeth;&#8217; in the &#8216;Annals of the Four Masters;&#8217; and see Davies and
+Spenser, <i>ante</i>. Several modern writers have treated this subject in their
+narratives of Irish history; Froude&#8217;s &#8216;History of England,&#8217; vol. ii. ch.
+viii.; vol. iv. ch. xix.; vol. v. ch. xxviii.; vol. viii. chs. vii.-xi.;
+vol. x. ch. xxiv.; vol. xi. ch. xxvii., may be consulted; but a reader
+should be put on his guard against the brilliant but partisan historian.
+There is a valuable chapter also, in a very different work, Mr. Lecky&#8217;s
+&#8216;History of England in the Eighteenth Century,&#8217; vol. ii. ch. vi. pp. 92
+<i>seqq.</i>; and a great deal may be learned from the &#8216;O&#8217;Conors of Connaught,&#8217;
+and Richey&#8217;s &#8216;Lectures,&#8217; <i>ante</i>; and especially from an &#8216;Historical
+Account of the Plantation of Ulster,&#8217; by the Rev. George Hill, and from
+Sigerson&#8217;s &#8216;History of Irish Land Tenure.&#8217; In the momentous period of
+confiscation, from the beginning of the reign of Charles I. to that of
+William III., a reader should study &#8216;Strafford&#8217;s Letters;&#8217; Carte&#8217;s &#8216;Life
+of Ormond;&#8217; Lord Clanricarde&#8217;s &#8216;Memoirs;&#8217; the &#8216;Letters of Cromwell,&#8217;
+edited by Carlyle; the &#8216;Acts of Settlement and Explanation;&#8217; the &#8216;Articles
+of the Treaty of Limerick;&#8217; Sir William Petty&#8217;s &#8216;Political Anatomy of
+Ireland;&#8217; &#8216;Macari&aelig; Excidium;&#8217; and the Abbe MacGeoghegan&#8217;s &#8216;History of
+Ireland.&#8217; The modern authorities on this period are numerous and some of
+great value; see Gardiner&#8217;s &#8216;History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate&#8217;
+(the Irish chapters), notably vol. iii. ch. xliv.; &#8216;The Cromwellian
+Settlement of Ireland,&#8217; by John P. Prendergast; &#8216;The Life of Sir William
+Petty,&#8217; by Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice, with an article by me in the
+<i>Edinburgh Review</i> of July, 1895; &#8216;The Patriot Parliament,&#8217; by Thomas
+Davis; Macaulay&#8217;s &#8216;History of England&#8217; (the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span> Irish chapters), vol. iv. ch.
+xxii.; vol. v. ch. xiv.-xvi.; vol. vi. ch. xvii.; and Mr. Lecky&#8217;s
+&#8216;History,&#8217; <i>ante</i>, vol. ii. ch. ix. Many instructive and philosophic
+passages on all these confiscations and their results, will be found
+scattered among the writings of Burke; they are admirable.</p>
+
+<p>The era of violent confiscation closed with the reign of William III.; the
+modern history of the Irish land system begins from this period. For an
+account of the penal code, as it affected Irish landed relations,
+reference may be made to Vincent Scully, &#8216;On the Penal Laws;&#8217; to Howard&#8217;s
+&#8216;Popery Cases;&#8217; and especially to Burke&#8217;s &#8216;Tracts on the Popery Laws.&#8217;
+Much, too, can be gathered from Curry&#8217;s &#8216;State of the Irish Catholics;&#8217;
+from Primate Boulter&#8217;s and Archbishop Synge&#8217;s &#8216;Letters;&#8217; from the writings
+on Ireland of Swift and Berkeley; and from various passages in the &#8216;Works
+and Correspondence of Burke.&#8217; For the state of the Irish land from the
+beginning of the reign of George III. to the Rebellion of 1798, study the
+celebrated &#8216;Tour&#8217; of Arthur Young, written in 1776-78; Crumpe&#8217;s &#8216;Essay;&#8217;
+an admirable sketch by Mr. Lecky in his &#8216;History,&#8217; <i>ante</i>, vol. vii. ch.
+xxvii.; and Sir George Lewis on &#8216;Irish Disturbances,&#8217; a book which gives
+an account of the rise and progress of the Whiteboy movement, and carries
+the narrative down to 1836. Froude has illustrated this subject very
+skilfully in his &#8216;Two Chiefs of Dunboy;&#8217; but his account, in his &#8216;The
+English in Ireland,&#8217; is very inaccurate and one-sided. The nature of Irish
+landed relations during the troubled period before the Union is fully
+explained in many passages of Mr. Lecky&#8217;s &#8216;History,&#8217; <i>ante</i>, vols. vii.
+and viii.; and the reader should peruse Lord Clare&#8217;s speech in the Irish
+House of Lords during the debates on the Union. From the Union to the
+present time, the authorities on the Irish land system are very numerous;
+it is not easy to make compendious selection. For the period of the Great
+War, Edward Wakefield&#8217;s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span> &#8216;Account of Ireland&#8217; is valuable, and so is, for
+the immediately subsequent period, the evidence on the state of Ireland
+taken by a Committee of the House of Commons in 1825. The nature and the
+characteristics of the Irish land system, in 1843-44, are fully explained
+and commented upon in the well-known Report of the Devon Commission, and
+the voluminous evidence; and for the revolution wrought in the Irish land
+by the Famine of 1845-47, see the &#8216;Irish Crisis,&#8217; by Sir Charles
+Trevelyan, republished from the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>; and a &#8216;History of the
+Great Irish Famine,&#8217; by the Rev. John O&#8217;Rorke. Much information, too, on
+the subject, as a whole, may be obtained from &#8216;L&#8217;Irlande, Sociale,
+Politique, et Religieuse,&#8217; of Gustave de Beaumont; from &#8216;Ireland from the
+Treaty of Limerick to 1851,&#8217; by John Mitchell; from parts of &#8216;Two
+Centuries of Irish History,&#8217; edited by James Bryce, M.P.; from several
+&#8216;Reports&#8217; of the Loyal National Repeal Association; and from parts of Mr.
+Barry O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s &#8216;Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,&#8217; and &#8216;Irish Wrongs
+and English Remedies.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>The Irish land question has given birth to a literature of its own in the
+last half-century; legislation on the Irish land system has been
+extraordinarily active. With respect to the first, reference may be made
+to &#8216;Two Centuries of Irish History,&#8217; <i>ante</i>, and to Mr. Barry O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s
+works, <i>ante</i>; to &#8216;Emigration and the Tenure of Irish Land,&#8217; by Lord
+Dufferin; to John Stuart Mill&#8217;s &#8216;The Irish Land Question;&#8217; to &#8216;The Irish
+People and the Irish Land,&#8217; by Butt; to Sir George Campbell&#8217;s &#8216;The Irish
+Land,&#8217; a very good little book; to Judge Longfield&#8217;s essay on the Irish
+land in &#8216;Systems of Land Tenure;&#8217; and to my own &#8216;Letters on the Land
+Question of Ireland,&#8217; republished from the <i>Times</i>. I am happy to think
+that, on this subject, I have always &#8216;pitched my Whiggery low;&#8217; my first
+essay was on the Encumbered Estates Act; when fresh from Oxford I
+condemned that scheme of confiscation as unequivocally<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span> as, in the present
+and other works, I have condemned Irish agrarian legislation since
+1880-81. Other books contain passages on the Irish land system that may be
+read with profit; see the &#8216;Recollections and Suggestions&#8217; of Earl Russell;
+&#8216;Ireland in 1868,&#8217; by Gerald Fitzgibbon; &#8216;Ireland,&#8217; by Lord Grey;
+&#8216;Journals, Conversations, and Essays relating to Ireland,&#8217; by Nassau
+Senior; and &#8216;New Views on Ireland,&#8217; by Lord Russell of Killowen. As
+regards recent legislation on the Irish Land, from 1870 to 1896, the Acts
+passed by Parliament must of course be studied, and also the important
+debates reported in Hansard. Butt wrote a very able volume on the Land Act
+of 1870; I contributed a short treatise; an exhaustive and technical work
+of great value, on all the Irish Land Acts, has been produced by Messrs.
+Cherry and Wakely; this, with the Irish Reports, supplies ample
+professional, and even general, information. With respect to the
+administration of the Irish Land Acts, see the Report of the Committee of
+the House of Lords, and the evidence published in 1872; the Report of, and
+the evidence collected by, the Bessborough Commission of 1880-81; the
+Report of a Committee of the House of Lords on the working of the Land Act
+of 1881, published, with the evidence, in 1882; the Report, with the
+evidence, of the Cowper Commission, 1888-89; the Report, with the
+evidence, of the Morley Commission, 1894-1895; and, especially, the Report
+of Sir Edward Fry&#8217;s Commission of 1897, with the important evidence it has
+put together. Mr. Lecky, in his &#8216;Democracy and Liberty,&#8217; vol. i. ch. ii.,
+has criticised, almost as severely as I have done, recent Irish agrarian
+legislation; no serious defence of it has ever been made or attempted.</p>
+
+<p>To understand the real state of the financial relations between Great
+Britain and Ireland, it is necessary to go back to the times of the Union;
+those who resist the Irish demand avoid an appeal to history. The debates<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span>
+in the Irish Parliament in 1800 should be carefully studied, especially
+the speeches of Castlereagh, Grattan, and Foster. The Seventh Article of
+the Treaty of Union, set forth in this work, should also be diligently
+scanned and perused. See, too, the debates in the Imperial Parliament in
+1816; the resolutions passed by the House of Commons in that year; and the
+Act abolishing the separate Exchequer of Ireland. Reference, moreover,
+should be made to the evidence taken before General Dunne&#8217;s Committee in
+1864, in which sophistry triumphed for the moment over truth. All these
+sources of information, however, are scanty and imperfect compared to the
+celebrated Report of the Childers Commission, with the valuable evidence
+annexed to it; this for the first time completely brings out the whole
+facts on the subject. The debates in Hansard on the financial claims of
+Ireland may also be looked at; but they are not of peculiar importance;
+the same remark applies to nearly all the articles in reviews, magazines,
+and journals, in which endeavours have been made to answer the Report. I
+may be allowed to say that I have some claim to have a distinct opinion in
+this matter; when still quite a boy I often heard my grand-uncle, the late
+Sir John Newport, one of the ablest and last of the Chancellors of the
+Irish Exchequer, condemn the financial treatment of Ireland from 1800
+onwards; many years afterwards I was intimately acquainted with several of
+the independent Irish gentlemen, survivors of the great school of Grattan,
+who protested against Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s fiscal Irish measures from 1853 to a
+later date; Butt and Judge Longfield, both very able economists, fully
+concurred. With respect to local government and administration in Ireland,
+see Mr. Barry O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s &#8216;Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,&#8217; vol. i.
+books iv. and v.; the Report of the Commissioners on Irish Corporate
+Reform issued in 1833-34, and the Irish Municipal Corporation Reform Act
+of 1840; the Irish Towns Commissioners Acts; a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span> report made by Mr. W. P.
+O&#8217;Brien in 1878; a good treatise by Mr. Bailey published in 1888; and the
+recent Irish Local Government Act of 1898, with the debates in Hansard on
+this measure, should be perused. The authorities on Irish education of all
+kinds are numerous, and some valuable. Froude has glanced at the subject,
+with characteristic unfairness, in his &#8216;The English in Ireland;&#8217; the
+refutation of Mr. Lecky, in his &#8216;England in the Eighteenth Century,&#8217; is
+complete. A good description of education in Ireland, in all its branches,
+as it existed in 1812, will be found in Edward Wakefield&#8217;s &#8216;Account of
+Ireland,&#8217; vol. ii. ch. xxiv.; another in Mr. Barry O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s &#8216;Fifty Years
+of Concessions to Ireland,&#8217; vol. i. book i.; vol ii. book x.; the author
+brings the narrative down to 1881. As regards high education in Ireland,
+reference may be made to &#8216;The History of the University of Dublin,&#8217; by the
+Rev. W. Stubbs; to &#8216;The Constitutional History of the University of
+Dublin,&#8217; by D. C. Heron; to the Report of Archbishop Whateley&#8217;s
+Commission, in 1853, on the University of Dublin; to Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s Irish
+University Bill of 1873, and the able debates on the subject in Trinity
+College and the House of Commons; to Mr. Fawcett&#8217;s Act of 1873; to a
+masterly pamphlet by Butt, on the whole question, published in 1875; and
+to the &#8216;Irish University Question,&#8217; by Archbishop Walsh, with recent
+debates in Parliament on Irish University reform. For the nature,
+constitution, and working of the Queen&#8217;s Colleges and the Queen&#8217;s
+University, see the debates in Parliament when Peel introduced this
+policy; many Reports; the work of Archbishop Walsh, <i>ante</i>; and the Act
+creating the Royal University in Ireland may be examined. As regards
+primary and secondary education in Ireland, see the Reports of the
+Education Commissioners from 1810 to 1825; the Reports of the National
+Education Board; the Reports of the Kildare, Rosse, and Powis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</a></span>
+Commissions, noticed in this work; and Mr. Godkin&#8217;s &#8216;Education in
+Ireland.&#8217; An excellent synopsis of the subject, as a whole, will be found
+in &#8216;The Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland,&#8217; by Mr. Graham
+Balfour.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 12em;">WILLIAM O&#8217;CONNOR MORRIS.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gartnamona, Tullamore</span>,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>14th May, 1901</i>.</span></span></p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[Pg xix]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table width="65%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><small>PAGES</small></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">IRELAND IN 1901</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Ireland has passed through a revolution in the Victorian age&mdash;Material progress&mdash;Dublin&mdash;Belfast&mdash;Improvement in
+Catholic places of worship and in the habitations of the people&mdash;State of the Irish community&mdash;Symptoms of retrogression&mdash;Decline
+of agriculture&mdash;The progress of Ireland much less than that of England and Scotland, and why&mdash;State of the Irish land system&mdash;Recent
+legislation has done some good, but it has been unjust, and has had pernicious effects&mdash;Ireland divided into three peoples&mdash;Notwithstanding
+great reforms Catholic Ireland is still, in the main, disaffected&mdash;Presbyterian Ireland&mdash;Cry for the confiscation of the
+Irish land&mdash;Protestant Ireland&mdash;Fall of its old ascendency&mdash;Discontent among the landed gentry&mdash;Nature of the government
+of Ireland by the Imperial Parliament&mdash;Its merits and defects&mdash;Attitude of the greater part of Ireland towards it&mdash;The
+administration of Irish affairs&mdash;The bureaucracy of the Castle&mdash;The Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic Irish
+Churches&mdash;The administration of justice in Ireland&mdash;Irish literature and public opinion&mdash;General survey of the present
+state of Ireland&mdash;Irish policy of Lord Salisbury&#8217;s Ministry&mdash;&#8216;Present Irish Questions&#8217; to be discussed in this work</td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1-38</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE</td></tr>
+<tr><td>The question of Home Rule not extinct&mdash;The reasons&mdash;Butt&#8217;s scheme of Home Rule&mdash;It is denounced and ridiculed by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[Pg xx]</a></span>Mr. Gladstone, and defeated in the House of Commons&mdash;Death
+of Butt&mdash;The Home Rule movement becomes allied with a foreign conspiracy&mdash;Davitt and Parnell&mdash;The Land
+League&mdash;Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s surrender to it&mdash;The movement makes no progress in the Parliament of 1880-85&mdash;The
+General Election of 1885&mdash;Mr. Gladstone suddenly adopts the policy of Home Rule&mdash;The probable reasons&mdash;The
+Home Rule Bill of 1886&mdash;Its nature and tendencies&mdash;Decisive objections to the measure&mdash;It is rejected at the General
+Election of 1886, having been previously rejected in the House of Commons&mdash;Policy and conduct of Mr. Gladstone&mdash;The
+Home Rule movement makes some progress in England, and why&mdash;The Home Rule Bill of 1893&mdash;It is
+much worse than that of 1886&mdash;The reasons&mdash;It is rejected by the House of Lords&mdash;Home Rule under different forms&mdash;The
+Union must be maintained&mdash;Proposal that Parliament should occasionally sit in Dublin&mdash;The over-representation of Ireland should be redressed</td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_39">39-83</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND&mdash;SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE LAND SYSTEM OF IRELAND TO THE YEAR 1870</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Great importance in the history of Ireland of the conditions of land tenure&mdash;The ancient Celtic land system and its characteristics&mdash;The
+Norman conquest of Ireland&mdash;Norman feudalism in the Irish land&mdash;The policy of Henry VII., and especially of Henry VIII.&mdash;The era of the
+conquest and confiscation of the Irish land&mdash;The possessions of the O&#8217;Connors of Offaly wrested from them&mdash;Forfeiture of the domains of
+Shane O&#8217;Neill, and of the Earl of Desmond&mdash;Attempts at colonisation&mdash;All Ireland made shire land&mdash;The extinction of the old Celtic
+land system&mdash;The Plantation of Ulster&mdash;Progress of confiscation during the reigns of the two first Stuarts&mdash;The Civil War&mdash;Immense
+confiscations made by Cromwell&mdash;His scheme of colonisation a failure&mdash;The era of confiscation closes after the battle of the Boyne and the fall
+of Limerick&mdash;The Penal Code of Ireland&mdash;Its fatal effects on the Irish land&mdash;Dismal period in Irish landed relations&mdash;Gradual
+improvement&mdash;The period described by Arthur Young&mdash;Evil traces of the past remain&mdash;Whiteboyism and agrarian disorder&mdash;State of Irish
+landed relations up to the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxi" id="Page_xxi">[Pg xxi]</a></span>rebellion of 1798, and after the Union&mdash;Over-population
+and the results&mdash;Distress after the Peace&mdash;State of Irish landed relations up to 1844&mdash;The Report of the Devon Commission&mdash;The
+Famine and its effects on the Irish land&mdash;The Encumbered Estates Acts&mdash;State of Irish landed relations from 1848 to 1868</td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_84">84-129</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (<i>continued</i>)&mdash;THE IRISH LAND ACT OF 1870&mdash;THE LAND LEAGUE AND
+THE NATIONAL LEAGUE&mdash;THE LAND ACT OF 1881&mdash;SUBSEQUENT LEGISLATION AS REGARDS THE LAND SYSTEM OF IRELAND</td></tr>
+<tr><td>State of landed relations in Ireland in 1869-70&mdash;Mr. Gladstone Prime Minister&mdash;The Land Act of 1870&mdash;Its merits and
+defects&mdash;A short period of prosperity in Ireland&mdash;Ominous symptoms&mdash;Michael Davitt&mdash;The teaching of John Finton
+Lalor in 1848&mdash;The &#8216;New Departure&#8217; in Fenianism arranged in America&mdash;Foundation of the Land League&mdash;It was a
+foreign rebellious conspiracy, with an agrarian side, under a constitutional mask&mdash;Parnell the master spirit of the League&mdash;His
+visit to America and the results&mdash;A short period of distress in Ireland&mdash;Conduct of the Irish landlords&mdash;Progress
+of the Land League&mdash;Mr. Gladstone again Prime Minister in 1880&mdash;The Compensation for Disturbance Bill rejected
+by the House of Lords&mdash;Outburst of agrarian crime, as the Land League increases in power&mdash;Rents at Griffith&#8217;s valuation&mdash;Boycotting&mdash;Frightful
+state of Ireland in 1881&mdash;After a short attempt to repress it, Mr. Gladstone surrenders to the Land League&mdash;The Land Act of 1881&mdash;Mr.
+Gladstone breaks the pledges he had made in 1870&mdash;His promise of compensating the Irish landlords&mdash;The Land Act of 1881 a
+bad and unjust measure directly inconsistent with that of 1870&mdash;The &#8216;No Rent Manifesto&#8217;&mdash;The Kilmainham Treaty&mdash;The
+Ph&oelig;nix Park tragedy&mdash;Coercion&mdash;Parnell founds the National League, the successor of the Land League&mdash;Renewal
+of agitation in 1886&mdash;Struggle with law and the Government&mdash;Subsequent agrarian legislation for Ireland&mdash;This is really
+a concession to agitation, for the benefit of Irish tenants, and to the injury of Irish landlords</td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_130">130-187</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxii" id="Page_xxii">[Pg xxii]</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (<i>continued</i>)&mdash;THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE IRISH LAND ACTS</td></tr>
+<tr><td>The administration of the Land Act of 1870 in the main good&mdash;Difficulty about claims for tenants&#8217; improvements&mdash;The administration
+of the Land Act of 1881, and of its supplements&mdash;The Land Commission and its Sub-Commissions&mdash;Allowances
+to be made for these tribunals&mdash;Principles which the Land Commission should have adopted in fixing &#8216;fair rents&#8217;&mdash;The
+procedure and practice it ought to have established&mdash;It made mistakes as to both&mdash;The nature of the Sub-Commission Courts&mdash;This was
+objectionable in the highest degree&mdash;These Courts have, however unconsciously, done grave wrong to Irish landlords&mdash;Causes of this&mdash;Characteristics
+of their proceedings&mdash;They disregarded the principles they ought to have followed, and adopted faulty and erroneous
+methods&mdash;Different illustrations of these grave mistakes&mdash;The Land Commission and appeals as to &#8216;fair rent&#8217;&mdash;Importance
+of this subject&mdash;Faulty procedure of the Land Commission in appeals&mdash;Valuers&mdash;The second Land Commission&mdash;Its
+procedure worse than that of the first&mdash;Theory of occupation right&mdash;This another wrong done to landlords&mdash;The
+Fry Commission and its report&mdash;Confiscation of the property of Irish landlords&mdash;The proofs of this&mdash;Apologies
+made for the Land Commission&mdash;The administration of the Land Purchase Acts</td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_188">188-229</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (<i>continued</i>)&mdash;PROPOSED REFORM OF THE IRISH LAND SYSTEM</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Retrospect of the present Irish land system&mdash;Position of the Irish landlords&mdash;Position of the Irish tenant class&mdash;This not as
+advantageous as might be supposed&mdash;The effects of the land code on Irish agriculture injurious&mdash;The effects on the general Irish
+community&mdash;Confiscation, violation of contracts, shock given to credit, increased alienation of classes, and demoralisation&mdash;The land system
+considered on the side of ownership&mdash;&#8216;Voluntary purchase&#8217;&mdash;Mischief of this policy&mdash;It sets up a false standard against rent,
+and creates <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxiii" id="Page_xxiii">[Pg xxiii]</a></span>unjust distinctions between different classes of tenants&mdash;The
+results it has produced already&mdash;An instance of the system&mdash;The demand for the compulsory purchase of the Irish land caused by &#8216;voluntary
+purchase&#8217;&mdash;Compulsory purchase has some hold on opinion, but is an impossible, and would be a disgraceful and ruinous policy&mdash;It would
+ruin Irish landlords as a class&mdash;Instances&mdash;It would ultimately bring Ireland into the state in which she was before the Great Famine&mdash;Proposed
+plan for the reform of Irish land tenure&mdash;Questions as to the means of compensating Irish landlords, a deeply wronged order of men</td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_230">230-270</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">THE QUESTION OF THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND</td></tr>
+<tr><td>The subject briefly considered&mdash;Financial position of Ireland before 1782, and under Grattan&#8217;s Parliament&mdash;Her taxation
+and debt small before 1798&mdash;Ireland financially a distinct country&mdash;At the Union, Pitt wished to &#8216;assimilate her in
+finance&#8217; with Great Britain, but this impossible, and why&mdash;Ireland&#8217;s contribution after the Union&mdash;This was unjust, but
+it left her financially a distinct country&mdash;Ireland made nearly bankrupt&mdash;The compromise of 1816&mdash;The Irish Exchequer
+closed, and the Irish and British debts consolidated&mdash;The object of the compromise was rather to relieve Ireland from
+her burdens than to assimilate her in finance with Great Britain&mdash;She still remained for many years financially distinct
+from Great Britain, and is so still to some extent&mdash;The conduct of Peel a striking proof of this&mdash;Mr. Gladstone
+imposes the income tax on Ireland, and her spirit duties are largely raised&mdash;Injustice of this policy&mdash;The Committee
+of 1863-64&mdash;Ireland does not obtain financial justice&mdash;The Report of the Childers Commission made upon a reference
+by Mr. Gladstone following Mr. Goschen&mdash;The Commission declares that Ireland has been greatly overtaxed for many years&mdash;Evidence
+on which it has founded this conclusion&mdash;Examination of arguments to the contrary&mdash;Another
+Commission promised, but the promise not fulfilled&mdash;Importance of settling this question</td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_271">271-308</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxiv" id="Page_xxiv">[Pg xxiv]</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">THE QUESTIONS OF IRISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND EDUCATION&mdash;OTHER QUESTIONS&mdash;CONCLUSION</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Irish county government&mdash;The grand jury system in the eighteenth century&mdash;Its merits and defects&mdash;The grand jury
+system in the nineteenth century, and especially since 1836&mdash;The Irish poor law system&mdash;Elected and <i>ex-officio</i> guardians&mdash;The
+local government of cities and towns in Ireland&mdash;Municipal institutions founded in Ireland by the Norman kings&mdash;Why
+they did not prosper&mdash;Boroughs and municipalities founded by James I. and the Stuarts&mdash;Their condition in the eighteenth and nineteenth
+centuries&mdash;The Municipal Reform Act of 1840&mdash;The Towns Commissioners Acts&mdash;Attempts to reform the municipal system of local
+government in Ireland&mdash;The Local Government of Ireland Act, 1898&mdash;Complete change in Irish local government&mdash;The
+County Councils&mdash;The County Borough Councils&mdash;The District, Rural, and the Urban District Councils&mdash;Their
+functions, rights, and duties&mdash;All these bodies placed on a democratic basis&mdash;Attitude of the County Councils in the
+southern provinces&mdash;Education in Ireland&mdash;History of primary education&mdash;The National system of education&mdash;The
+principles on which it is founded&mdash;How it has worked, and what its results have been&mdash;Secondary education in Ireland&mdash;Its
+history&mdash;Its present condition very imperfect&mdash;The Intermediate Education Act&mdash;University education in
+Ireland&mdash;Its history&mdash;Trinity College&mdash;The Queen&#8217;s Colleges and the Queen&#8217;s University founded by Peel&mdash;Their comparative
+failure&mdash;Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s Bill to reform University education in Ireland&mdash;Its glaring errors and failures&mdash;Trinity
+College thrown open in 1873&mdash;The Royal University founded in 1879&mdash;Present state of University education
+in Ireland&mdash;The true principles of reform&mdash;Other Irish questions&mdash;Conclusion</td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_309">309-360</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Appendix</span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_361">361-428</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Index</span></td>
+    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_429">429</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">Present Irish Questions</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<p class="center"><span class="large">IRELAND IN 1901</span></p>
+
+<div class="note"><p class="hang">Ireland has passed through a revolution in the Victorian age&mdash;Material
+progress&mdash;Dublin&mdash;Belfast&mdash;Improvement in Catholic places of worship
+and in the habitations of the people&mdash;State of the Irish
+community&mdash;Symptoms of retrogression&mdash;Decline of agriculture&mdash;The
+progress of Ireland much less than that of England and Scotland, and
+why&mdash;State of the Irish land system&mdash;Recent legislation has done some
+good, but it has been unjust, and has had pernicious effects&mdash;Ireland
+divided into three peoples&mdash;Notwithstanding great reforms Catholic
+Ireland is still, in the main, disaffected&mdash;Presbyterian Ireland&mdash;Cry
+for the confiscation of the Irish land&mdash;Protestant Ireland&mdash;Fall of
+its old ascendency&mdash;Discontent among the landed gentry&mdash;Nature of the
+government of Ireland by the Imperial Parliament&mdash;Its merits and
+defects&mdash;Attitude of the greater part of Ireland towards it&mdash;The
+administration of Irish affairs&mdash;The bureaucracy of the Castle&mdash;The
+Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic Irish Churches&mdash;The
+administration of justice in Ireland&mdash;Irish literature and public
+opinion&mdash;General survey of the present state of Ireland&mdash;Irish policy
+of Lord Salisbury&#8217;s ministry&mdash;&#8216;Present Irish Questions&#8217; to be
+discussed in this work.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>To understand thoroughly the Ireland of the present day, it is necessary
+to have studied her history in the past. Nevertheless, if we go back to a
+comparatively recent period, say to the beginning of the reign of
+Victoria, we can obtain a reasonably clear idea of her existing
+condition.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> A revolution has passed over her in this space of time almost
+as complete as the revolution which has transformed France; the results
+have not yet been fully developed, but in nearly all respects they have
+been immense. The community has, for the most part, made material
+progress; but this has been far from great or decisive; it has been
+interrupted by seasons of distress, one culminating in a dire catastrophe,
+and has been retarded by many causes of trouble. Taking the external
+aspect of Ireland first, Dublin has certainly advanced in the last sixty
+years; the capital has been surrounded by fine and increasing suburbs; the
+squares, the streets, the shops have improved; above all, though much
+remains yet to be done, the contrast between the dwellings of the rich and
+the poor is much less painful than it was within living memory. No city,
+however, has made such progress as Belfast: its population, which, in
+1841, was not more than 75,000 souls, was, in 1891, upwards of 255,000;<a name='fna_1' id='fna_1' href='#f_1'><small>[1]</small></a>
+its opulence has probably grown tenfold; it is the centre of the great
+manufacture of Ulster; its building-yards are renowned for its magnificent
+ships; its estuary is crowded with the thronging fleets of commerce. The
+towns dependent on it, too, and the whole adjoining region, are
+flourishing from the great trade in linen, which has been aggregated
+within a comparatively small space; indeed, this prosperity has extended
+over all the north-east of Ireland, and Londonderry has long been a
+thriving seaport. Few of the towns of the rest of Ulster and of the
+southern provinces have improved; but signs of augmented wealth appear in
+other directions; in this respect they are striking in the extreme. The
+places of worship and the religious houses of the Catholic Church of
+Ireland have been transformed; the mean &#8216;chapels&#8217; of the past have largely
+disappeared; most parishes have a suitable church; fine cathedrals
+dominate many towns;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> we often admire monasteries and convents in
+architectural splendour. The most remarkable phenomenon, however, of this
+description is the great and fortunate change which has taken place in the
+habitations of the community throughout the country. The dense and
+wretched hovels which, sixty years ago, barely sheltered the millions of
+Irish indigence, if still too frequent, have been, for the most part,
+effaced; the houses of the better class have greatly increased in numbers,
+though the population has enormously declined.<a name='fna_2' id='fna_2' href='#f_2'><small>[2]</small></a> And the face of the
+landscape in most counties bears witness, on the whole, to a still
+perceptible progress. The chief industry of Ireland, indeed, as I shall
+show afterwards, has certainly retrograded within the last twenty years;
+her agricultural area and resources have much diminished. The advance,
+too, which, from about 1853 to 1876, was manifest and rapid in most of her
+rural districts, has been, to a considerable extent, checked; capital has,
+for some time, been avoiding her soil. But if the process was stern, nay,
+appalling, the land has, within the last half century, been thrown open to
+husbandry, infinitely better and more fruitful than had existed before;
+the exertions which were made, for a long space of time, to improve
+cultivation have left far-spreading traces; we still behold the beneficent
+results. The land over the greater part of its surface is not &#8216;puckered
+up&#8217; in thousands of squalid patches, the holdings of masses of cottar
+paupers; it has been made more available for real farming; and it has been
+largely drained, enclosed, and covered with woodland&mdash;at least, up to a
+recent period.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>The material condition of the Irish community has, also, improved since
+the late Queen ascended the throne. This, no doubt, is to be largely
+ascribed to the effects of the great Famine of 1845-47, and of the immense
+emigration that followed in its train. The resources of Ireland, before
+that calamity, were unable to support, in anything like comfort, the
+teeming multitudes crowded on her soil; an official report, made in 1838,
+proved that two millions and a half of the poor in Ireland were for months
+in the year on the brink of starvation; this huge mass of indigence, which
+forced up rent, beat down wages, and was most injurious to good husbandry,
+was almost incompatible with real social progress. The great and
+continuing exodus of the Irish race, which has gone on for more than half
+a century, has not been without untoward results; but it has relieved the
+country from a destructive incubus; and this has certainly wrought a
+beneficent change, though the population has declined from about eight
+millions in 1837 to about four and a half millions in 1895.<a name='fna_3' id='fna_3' href='#f_3'><small>[3]</small></a> Ireland,
+indeed, is still, mainly, a poor country&mdash;in some districts she is
+exceedingly poor; but the disappearance of overwhelmingly redundant
+millions has enabled her to maintain the millions that have remained much
+better than of old, and has distinctly raised the standard of living among
+all the humbler classes. The wages of agricultural labour, seldom more
+than six or seven shillings a week before the Famine, and then paid in
+potatoes by a vile truck system, have risen to ten and even twelve
+shillings, usually paid in cash; and they have not fallen, though Irish
+agriculture is very far from prosperous. The wages of the higher kinds of
+labour have also greatly increased; this is apparent in nearly all trades,
+and is especially apparent in the trades of Ulster. At the same time, the
+potato has long ceased to be the sole food of the poor; their dwellings,
+though still too often mean and bad, are infinitely better than they once
+were; their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> attire, and even their appearance, has greatly improved. I do
+not think, indeed, that O&#8217;Connell&#8217;s description of the peasantry of
+Munster in 1825 could now be fairly applied to even the worst parts of
+Ireland, the impoverished tracts on the seacoast of Connaught: &#8216;They have
+no clothes to change, they have none but what they wear at the moment....
+Their food consists of potatoes and water during the greater part of the
+year; potatoes and sour milk during another portion; they use some salt
+with their potatoes when they have nothing but water.&#8217;<a name='fna_4' id='fna_4' href='#f_4'><small>[4]</small></a> There is
+evidence, also, that, even of late years, the wealth of Ireland has, in
+some measure, increased, especially in the middle and lower middle
+classes. The landed gentry, indeed, owing partly to the effects of Free
+Trade, and partly to those of legislation I shall describe afterwards,
+have been impoverished in many instances, and in many ruined; and the
+Irish tenant farmer, if gorged by the spoil of his landlord, has not
+gained all that an agrarian revolution was expected to give him. But the
+commerce of Ireland has made progress, within the last two decades, if
+this has not been by any means great; and though the capital she holds in
+the best securities has perceptibly diminished of late years, there has
+been a very large increase in most kinds of other investments.<a name='fna_5' id='fna_5' href='#f_5'><small>[5]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>This picture of Ireland, however, has dark features; her welfare has been,
+at best, partial; considerable deductions must be made from it. The
+progress of the capital, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> has been the case in London, is largely to be
+ascribed to the depletion of many country districts, a change that has
+been going on for a long period, and has been accelerated by the decline
+of the landed gentry in wealth. The enormous advance of Belfast, and of
+the adjoining neighbourhood, has been, to a great extent, caused by the
+concentration of the linen manufacture within a small area; the hand-loom
+has disappeared from Ireland; this has been injurious to many petty towns
+and villages. The population and the trade of nearly all the chief towns
+in the southern provinces have diminished; Cork, with its immense natural
+advantages, has not prospered; Limerick and, notably, Galway are in decay;
+most of the inland towns show few signs of improvement; the outskirts of
+almost all are defaced by lines of ruined hovels, the wrecks of abodes a
+dwindling tale of indwellers has left. Many of these urban centres were,
+sixty years ago, seats of manufactures and of other industries, which, to
+a certain extent, were flourishing; but these sources of wealth have, for
+the most part, been dried up; they have been blotted out by the gigantic
+manufactures of England and Scotland poured into Ireland, everywhere,
+within a few hours, by steam. The collapse, indeed, of Irish manufactures
+in the last half century has been striking and mournful; 696,000 persons
+were employed in textile and dyeing industries in 1841; in 1881 there were
+only 130,000; and though the growth of machinery may in part account for
+this difference, it assuredly cannot fully explain it.<a name='fna_6' id='fna_6' href='#f_6'><small>[6]</small></a> The same remark
+applies to Irish fishing industry; the small craft which once swarmed
+along the coast, and, rearing a breed of hardy mariners, gathered in the
+prolific harvests of the sea, have been vanishing year after year; in
+1867, 9332 boats, and 38,444 men and boys were engaged in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> this calling;
+the numbers were 5646 and 21,940 in 1891.<a name='fna_7' id='fna_7' href='#f_7'><small>[7]</small></a> Turning to the face of the
+country, agriculture, we have seen, has improved, if we look back to the
+period before the Famine; but it is still centuries behind that of England
+and Scotland, and of late years it has markedly declined. It is not only
+that the prices of agricultural produce are much less than they were, in
+the last generation, and that its total value has fallen from &pound;97,885,000
+in 1851-55, to &pound;88,955,000 in 1889-93.<a name='fna_8' id='fna_8' href='#f_8'><small>[8]</small></a> The agricultural area of Ireland
+has diminished from 1879 to 1899 by rather more than 400,000 acres;<a name='fna_9' id='fna_9' href='#f_9'><small>[9]</small></a> and
+it is absolutely certain that within these decreasing limits, as I shall
+point out in subsequent chapters, agriculture has made little or no
+progress, and in some districts has distinctly become worse; we see the
+results of the vicious legislation of the last twenty years in
+deteriorated farms, in hundreds of cases, in a most injurious neglect of
+arterial drainage, and in the destruction of thousands of acres of
+woodland. And the ruin which has overtaken many of the landed gentry has
+been made only too manifest in the desolate aspect of scores of country
+seats, once happy homes, that now know their owners no more.</p>
+
+<p>It must be borne in mind, too, as we examine the present state of Ireland,
+that if, on the whole, she has made some progress, she is still, as I have
+said, a poor country, and that a considerable part of Connaught, her
+western province, has, for years, been in so poor a condition, that the
+Government of late has laudably made a great effort to raise it out of the
+depths of indigence. Other considerations, moreover, must be taken into
+account, if we would form a just conclusion as to the material<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> position
+of Ireland, and, especially, as to her material prospects. The reduction
+of her population, up to a certain point, was an essential condition of
+her social progress; but that limit appears to have been far surpassed;
+this continuous decline, during more than half a century, has become an
+ominous symptom. More than 3,700,000 of souls have emigrated from Ireland
+since 1851;<a name='fna_10' id='fna_10' href='#f_10'><small>[10]</small></a> and this number does not include the masses which fled
+from the catastrophe of 1845-47. This immense drain on the life of a
+nation has, for years, had a pernicious effect; in large parts of the
+country labourers have become so scarce that it is often difficult to save
+the harvest, which should be quickly gathered in, in a wet climate; and
+hands are wanting to industry in many places. Emigration, too, has taken
+away the best part of the people, men and women in the flower of
+existence; the reproductive power of the community has, accordingly,
+declined; the birth-rate of Ireland is less than it was; infirmity,
+disease, and, notably, insanity have increased; the population of the
+towns is seldom active and thriving.<a name='fna_11' id='fna_11' href='#f_11'><small>[11]</small></a> At the same time, the taxation of
+Ireland has become many degrees more excessive in the last sixty years;
+the local rates have advanced from about &pound;1,000,000 to nearly &pound;4,000,000;
+the general taxation has been well-nigh doubled; and a tribunal of the
+very highest authority has recently declared that Ireland is immensely
+overtaxed, and has been for upwards of forty years. Nor can there be a
+real question but that large interests connected with the land have
+suffered greatly in the period that has now extended from 1878-79. It is
+unnecessary to refer to the condition of the landed gentry; I shall notice
+it at some length afterwards; but, much as the Irish people dislike the
+Poor-law, pauperism has distinctly increased<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> during the last ten years,
+though the population has fallen off in numbers, and the charge of
+pauperism shows a corresponding increase.<a name='fna_12' id='fna_12' href='#f_12'><small>[12]</small></a> The Income Tax returns, too,
+as regards the land, are of sinister omen; those under Schedule A have
+greatly diminished since 1890; and there is a considerable decline of
+property in the Funds.<a name='fna_13' id='fna_13' href='#f_13'><small>[13]</small></a> As to the argument that the Tenant Right of the
+Irish farmer has risen in value, and that this proves Irish agriculture to
+be in a prosperous state, this is a complete, nay, a grotesque, fallacy.
+The rise in the value of Tenant Right is simply one of the many signs that
+a huge confiscation has taken place in the Irish land.</p>
+
+<p>If Ireland, therefore, has made material progress, this has been slow,
+partial, and with large drawbacks; such as it is, it must be mainly
+ascribed to the results of the Famine, which liberated the soil from a
+destructive burden. The whole country, it has truly been said, has still
+too much the look of a &#8216;great neglected estate,&#8217; requiring development in
+most of its parts; large sections of the population are poor, feeble in
+health, and backward. Any advance, moreover, which Ireland has made in
+well being, since 1837-38, is as nothing compared with the extraordinary
+growth of the prosperity of England and Scotland, within the same period.
+True-hearted Irishmen grieve as they pass from the lesser to the greater
+island, and contrast the husbandry of Galway and Mayo with that of the
+Lothians and Kent; as they gaze on the Shannon, with scarcely a sail on
+its waters, and the Clyde teeming with its fleets of commerce; above all,
+as they turn from the decaying towns of their own country to such centres
+of wealth and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> of gigantic trade, as some even of the provincial cities of
+Britain, not to speak of the mighty world of London. The causes, indeed,
+of this contrast may be easily found; the mineral resources of Ireland are
+scanty; her commerce and manufactures are small; she is essentially an
+agricultural land, which has lost much from the effects of Free Trade; she
+has suffered greatly from misgovernment, agitation, and social disorder;
+all this has kept her back in the national race. The mineral products, on
+the other hand, of England and Scotland are immense, and of the first
+importance in an age of invention; they have decisively contributed to the
+huge development of the opulence and the trade of Great Britain; the
+policy of Free Trade, carried out for years, has had marvellous results in
+the same direction; if British agriculture is not progressing, British
+commerce and manufactures are still supreme; and Great Britain has been
+for ages a law-abiding land, in which order has been happily combined with
+liberty. These considerations fully explain the wide and ever-increasing
+distinction between Ireland and England and Scotland, only too manifest;
+they have been amply verified by unerring statistics. Two figures may
+suffice for a general reader; the resources of Ireland were estimated, a
+few years ago, at a sum of about four hundred millions sterling, that of
+Great Britain at not less than ten thousand millions.<a name='fna_14' id='fna_14' href='#f_14'><small>[14]</small></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>The social structure of Ireland springs from the soil; it is most apparent
+in the relations that have been formed in the land. I shall dwell, at some
+length, in other chapters of this work, on the history and the
+characteristics of the Irish land system, and on the revolution through
+which it has passed; I can here only briefly glance at the subject. That
+system, at the beginning of the late reign, still represented, in many
+respects, the features it had borne in the eighteenth century, though
+these had been, in a great degree, modified. The land, over four-fifths of
+its surface, was still in the ownership of a small class of men, divided
+in race and faith from its occupants; the conquests and confiscations
+which had drawn deep lines of distinction between the Anglo-Protestant
+landlord and the Catholic and even the Presbyterian peasant, had still
+left their indelible traces, if these had been, to a considerable extent,
+effaced. Absenteeism had increased since the Union, though absentee
+estates were showing signs of improvement; middleman tenures, with their
+manifold and complex mischiefs, were disappearing, but were still
+numerous; various causes, to operate for many years, were diminishing the
+security of the peasants&#8217; tenure. The power of the dominant landlord class
+was declining; it was being weakened by the Castle bureaucracy, and by the
+emancipation of Catholic Ireland; but it was still nearly supreme in
+landed relations; this class was all but the absolute lords of the tillers
+of the soil. It is untrue that it was oppressive and unjust as a rule; but
+some of its members abused their excessive power; it had too much in
+common with an exclusive caste; and a whole train of economic causes were
+aggravating the evils of a land system from its origin placed on unsound
+foundations. Agriculture was advancing in not a few counties; many of the
+landed gentry were improving<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> men, who were making a beginning in the
+scientific farming, which, before long, was to be more fully developed.
+But the population, we have seen, had increased by millions Ireland could
+not support; over whole districts, especially in Munster and Connaught,
+the land had been split up into petty holdings, the seats of a huge
+multitude of human misery. Rents, therefore, were being unnaturally forced
+up, and the wages of labour unnaturally cut down; the land system was
+disorganised, and filled with dangerous elements. The worst vice of the
+system, however, has yet to be noticed; from different causes which I
+shall point out afterwards, the occupiers of the soil in Ireland had, as a
+general rule, made even the permanent improvements on their farms, and
+large sums had repeatedly been paid on the transfer of these; they had
+thus gradually acquired concurrent rights in the land, in tens of
+thousands of instances; and yet these were outside the pale of the law,
+and could be annihilated by eviction, or even the raising of rent. These
+rights had the support, in parts of Ulster, of a long-established custom,
+and were usually respected in the southern provinces; but they ought long
+before to have had full legal protection; and they were sometimes violated
+or disregarded by unscrupulous landlords. The results were seen in the
+White Boy and the agrarian disorders which had disturbed Ireland for more
+than a century, and even ran back to the confiscations of the past.</p>
+
+<p>This land system, essentially bad as it was, marked by evil distinctions
+and pregnant with wrong, scarcely attracted the attention of British
+statesmen, until nearly the middle of the nineteenth century. Peel was the
+first minister who, even dimly, perceived its vices; he appointed a
+Commission to report on the subject. The labours of this body were, in
+part, laudable; but the Commissioners, filled with prejudice as to the
+excellence of British land tenure, and without experience of that of
+Ireland, made a capital mistake in the suggestions they offered. Instead<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+of recommending that the concurrent rights of the Irish tenant in the
+land, often equivalent to a real joint ownership, should receive, as was
+but just, the sanction of law, they proposed to restrict these in many
+ways; they put forward a plan of &#8216;compensation,&#8217; as they called it, that
+was worse than useless. Legislation to this effect was withdrawn from
+Parliament; the terrible visitation of 1845-47 had ere long shattered the
+Irish land system, bringing ruin on hundreds of the landed gentry, making
+thousands of farmers of the better classes bankrupt, forcing the petty
+holders of the land&mdash;the cottar population, as it was named&mdash;to fly from
+the country in despairing multitudes. The land was largely set free from a
+dense mass of wretchedness; it was the general belief of the public men of
+the day, that what was most required, at this conjuncture, was to attract
+men of capital to it to do it justice, and to get rid, as quickly as
+possible, of the large body of Irish landlords, who, even before deeply
+involved in debt, had been made hopelessly insolvent by recent events. The
+Encumbered Estates Act became law, with scarcely an opposing protest; it
+was to &#8216;regenerate Ireland,&#8217; its authors proclaimed; its results were to
+develop a bad class of landlords, to annihilate the rights of the Irish
+peasant wholesale, and to cause an iniquitous confiscation on an enormous
+scale. The Irish Land Question, as was the phrase, was now raised once
+more; in 1852 the occupiers of the Irish soil set on foot an agitation to
+vindicate their rights, destroyed or endangered by what had lately
+occurred; the Government of Lord Derby lent a favourable ear; but it was
+defeated in the House of Commons by intrigue; the land system remained in
+the state in which it had been left; no real attempt to improve it was
+made. A series of years followed in which Ireland made distinct progress,
+and her agriculture advanced; it became a fixed idea with British
+statesmen, that there was nothing radically bad in Irish land tenure, and
+that its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> defects would gradually disappear; the grievances of the Irish
+peasant were ignored; his claims to what was now known as his Tenant
+Right, urged feebly by his advocates, were voted down in Parliament; and a
+general belief prevailed that what Ireland most needed was a still further
+and steady removal of what was deemed &#8216;her surplus population&#8217; from her
+soil.</p>
+
+<p>As has so often happened in the affairs of Ireland, her real condition at
+this period was not understood; and the reform in her land system, which
+had become essential, was indefinitely delayed with disastrous results.
+Meanwhile, though things were serene on the surface, the inherent vices in
+Irish landed relations were not really changed, and, in some respects,
+were made worse. The Fenian troubles and outbreak of 1865-67 showed how
+much there was still peccant in the state of Ireland; Mr. Gladstone
+addressed himself, in 1870, to the task of effecting a reform in her land
+system. The measure he carried through Parliament was bold, and, in the
+main, statesmanlike; but it was injured by the predilection for English
+land tenure its author avowed, a general misconception of British
+statesmen; it was not without marked and even grave defects; and though
+unquestionably it did real good, it did not satisfy the tenant class&mdash;at
+least, the men who had become its leaders. In a few years the frightful
+period of the Land League had begun; a Reign of Terror prevailed in about
+a third part of Ireland, accompanied by far-spreading and atrocious crime.
+The movement was really a huge conspiracy, formed in America to overthrow
+British rule in Ireland; but Mr. Gladstone, now minister for the second
+time, resolved to deal with it only on its agrarian side; he wrought a
+complete revolution in the Irish land system, on principles wholly
+different from those of his measure of 1870. This legislation was prepared
+without reflection; it passed through Parliament when that assembly was
+almost in a state of panic; its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> author professed that his only object was
+to secure the occupier of the Irish soil in his legitimate rights; but the
+methods he adopted to attain this end have never been heard of in modern
+times, and have never been employed before in civilised lands. The
+principle of the medi&aelig;val statutes, which endeavoured to fix the price of
+bread, and the rate of wages, was extended to the Irish land system; rents
+were to be adjusted through the agency of the State, by tribunals to which
+no parallel can be found; tenants&#8217; improvements were declared exempted
+from rent; and a mode of land tenure, hitherto condemned by Mr. Gladstone,
+and known as the &#8216;theory of the Three F&#8217;s,&#8217; was applied to the great
+majority of Irish tenancies, in an exaggerated, crude, and dangerous form.
+This legislation, revolutionary and socialistic alike, has been given more
+ample scope in the last twenty years; it probably affects four-fifths of
+the rented lands in Ireland; it has fashioned the type of land tenure over
+nearly all the country. The successors of Mr. Gladstone, who, indeed, had
+boasted that it set the doctrines of Adam Smith at nought, were not blind
+to the evils it soon developed; but it is questionable if their attempts
+to mitigate these, and to place the Irish land system on a better basis,
+have not been at least as open to censure. With the ignorance of Irish
+land tenure common in British statesmen, they proclaimed, what assuredly
+was not the fact, that Mr. Gladstone had &#8216;created a dual ownership&#8217; in the
+Irish land, and that, in order to get rid of this intolerable thing, it
+was necessary, in accord with English ideas, to bring Ireland, as far as
+possible, under &#8216;single ownership,&#8217; and to make the occupiers of the Irish
+soil, to a large extent, its owners. The system of &#8216;Land Purchase&#8217; in
+Ireland, begun in 1870, was freed from the limitations which made it safe
+and just, and widely enlarged under new conditions; Irish tenants were
+encouraged to acquire the fee in their holdings, by a process never
+contemplated before; instead of having to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> pay any part of the price, the
+State advanced them the whole purchase moneys, repayable by an annual
+charge much less than any true rent. About a tenth part of the tenant
+class of Ireland have become owners of their farms by these means; the
+transaction has been in no sense a &#8216;purchase;&#8217; though given the name, it
+is really the exact opposite.</p>
+
+<p>I shall describe all this legislation, in detail, afterwards, and shall
+indicate its far-reaching effects; here I can only take a cursory survey.
+The attempts that have been made to reform the Irish land system, in the
+last sixty years, have been, with scarcely an exception, failures; the
+Irish land, it has truly been said, is strewn with the wrecks of repeated
+errors. The Land Act of 1870 was, on the whole, a well-conceived measure;
+but the recommendations made by the Devon Commission, the iniquitous and
+destructive Encumbered Estates Act, the agrarian revolution wrought by Mr.
+Gladstone, and the &#8216;Land Purchase&#8217; Acts, as they are falsely called, have
+been monuments of want of insight and knowledge. And, what is even worse,
+legislation on the Irish land has, over and over again, been too long
+delayed, and has been inconsistent, fitful, founded on no principle; the
+results have been in a high degree disastrous. Reforms that would have
+been gladly welcomed if made years before, have been treated with contempt
+when made too late; and reforms have more than once been hasty
+experiments, carried out under the stress of menacing troubles. The fable
+of the Sibylline books has been realised in this matter; and not a few of
+the efforts to improve Irish land tenures have been little better than
+sudden leaps in the dark. As to recent legislation in this province, its
+consequences and tendencies have become manifest. That it has effected
+some good may be admitted; it has removed grievances that no doubt
+existed; it has made the government of Ireland more easy for the time; it
+has allayed discontent for a moment; but the good is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> far outweighed by
+the evil. It is not only that the nostrum of the &#8216;Three F&#8217;s,&#8217; and the
+adjustment of rent by the intervention of the State, have cut down the
+rental of Ireland to an extent that cannot be justified, and have
+transferred to the occupier of the Irish soil a large part of what was the
+owner&#8217;s property by a process of confiscation concealed, but certain. It
+is not only that the status of the Irish landlord has been iniquitously
+transformed to his extreme injury, and that the status of the Irish tenant
+has been changed to his extreme advantage, in both instances without a
+pretence to right. The Irish land system has been reduced to an almost
+hopeless state; it presents some of the worst features of the past; its
+conditions discourage the improvement of the land, promote its
+deterioration in many ways, and banish capital away from it; and its plain
+tendency has been to make agriculture decline. And the revolution, which
+has been thus accomplished, has aggravated the divisions of classes in
+Ireland, and has been attended with ruinous litigation on a huge scale;
+and it has produced demoralisation far-reaching and profound, a sense of
+insecurity in all landed relations, and a far too general disregard of the
+respect due to contract. The policy, too, of so-called &#8216;Land Purchase&#8217; has
+been accompanied with a train of evils on the increase. It is not
+creating, as its authors fondly hoped, a class of loyal and thriving
+freeholders; it is not even creating a body of industrious and improving
+farmers. It is, on the contrary, developing, in some of its parts, the bad
+land system of the eighteenth century; it has proved injurious to
+agriculture in one important respect. Above all, from the very nature of
+the case, it has drawn harsh, nay, unjust, distinctions between the landed
+classes, which necessarily have been a cause of much discontent; and it
+has inevitably provoked a demand for a universal confiscation of the Irish
+land even worse than any of those which have been the curse of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>I pass from the material and general state of Ireland to that of the Irish
+community, in its different parts. That community is still divided, as it
+has been for ages, into three separate and distinct peoples, marked off
+from each other in race and faith; whatever &#8216;Nationalist&#8217; leaders may
+assert, it is not, and has never been, in a real sense, a nation. The
+lines of demarcation between Catholic, Presbyterian, and Protestant
+Ireland are at least as clearly defined as they have always been; they
+have probably been widened by the troubles of late years, and by the
+legislation which has been a consequence. Catholic Ireland has a
+population of some three millions and a half of souls; it is in the main a
+Celtic race, but with a considerable admixture of other elements; it has
+passed through a revolution remarkable and immense. Sixty years ago, the
+worst parts of the Penal Code had long been things of the past; but the
+Irish Catholics had only recently thrown off the last remains of that
+thraldom, under O&#8217;Connell&#8217;s guidance; and their emancipation had only been
+effected by a great and very threatening movement. They were still
+comparatively an alien and a subject people; they had not many owners of
+land; they were not numerous in the upper trading and the professional
+classes; education was greatly wanting among them; they were for the most
+part a backward and poor peasantry, almost serfs of landlords distinct in
+creed and in blood; and they formed the bulk of the teeming millions that
+vegetated on the soil in indigent misery. The Irish Catholics, too, had
+still many and real grievances; the tithe of the Established Church had
+long been an unjust burden on the petty husbandman; it had recently given
+rise to a frightful war of classes, and had only been commuted a short
+time; the Established Church itself was a moral wrong, felt acutely by the
+Irish priesthood at least. Catholic Ireland, besides, was deeply sunk in
+ignorance; the system of national education had only begun to flourish;
+and the Irish Catholic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> was still all but wholly excluded from county
+administration and municipal government. The worst of these grievances,
+however, was the state of the tenure of the land; this was especially
+harsh on the Catholic peasant; if oppression was not general or even
+common, he was too often subjected to excessive rent and unfair eviction.
+This order of things has all but completely passed away; the position of
+Catholic Ireland in the State has almost wholly been changed. Catholic
+emancipation has long been an accomplished fact; Irish Catholics and
+Protestants are equal before the law; and have really equal chances in
+fighting the battle of life. Though still not numerous, the Catholic
+owners of land have multiplied; the Irish Catholic middle classes have
+made a marked advance; they have grown in knowledge and increased in
+wealth; they have risen to a higher plane of existence. At the same time,
+the grievances of the past have nearly all been removed by law, often
+indeed very late, and by questionable means; but the Established Church
+has fallen from its high estate; education has been diffused through the
+Catholic masses; the Irish Catholics have obtained more than a just share
+in local government and administration of all kinds; their ascendency in
+this province is well-nigh assured. The most important, however, of these
+changes is that which has taken place in the state of the Irish Catholic
+peasantry. The process which lifted up millions of these from the land and
+sent them into exile was, no doubt, terrible; but it was the condition of
+the welfare and the progress of the population which remained. A great
+deal of the legislation, besides, which has revolutionised the tenure of
+land in Ireland, and has had a special effect on the Catholic occupiers of
+the soil, has been essentially ill designed and unjust; above all, it has
+been much too long delayed. But the Irish Catholic peasantry have long ago
+ceased to be serfs; they are more the owners of their own holdings than
+their former landlords; their rights in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> the land have been more than
+protected; they have acquired the fee in their farms in thousands of
+instances; the days of rack rents and harsh evictions have passed away for
+ever. If the lines of the old Irish land system may still be traced, they
+rather resemble, it has truly been said, the lineaments of a phantom than
+of a living being.</p>
+
+<p>The attitude, however, of Catholic Ireland, and the sentiments of the
+immense majority of the Irish Catholics, must cause painful misgivings in
+reflecting minds. Their aristocracy, indeed, and their landed gentry have
+always been loyal and true subjects; they can scarcely be distinguished
+from their Protestant fellows. The Irish Catholics, too, of the upper
+middle classes are generally attached to the institutions under which they
+live; and Catholic Ireland has produced many eminent public servants, and
+has given splendid ornaments to the Bench and the Bar. But the spirit that
+prevails among the Irish Catholic lower middle classes, and notably among
+the masses of the peasantry, and the opinions and feelings they
+ostentatiously avow, are deeply to be regretted in many respects.
+Notwithstanding all that has been done for it, and the immense reforms
+made in its interest, this part of Catholic Ireland is, beyond question,
+more disaffected and disloyal to the State than it was when O&#8217;Connell was
+its master spirit; it is more hostile to government, law, and the existing
+order of things. The teaching of the Land and the National Leagues, and of
+the successor which has taken their place, has penetrated into the
+Corporations and Local Boards, in which the Catholic Irish are supreme;
+these assemblies echo with revolutionary and socialistic cries, and
+denounce the whole system of British rule in Ireland, aiming especially at
+the Sovereign and those in the highest places. The Irish Catholics, too,
+in the three provinces of the south, have gained a complete ascendency in
+county and municipal affairs; their first object has been to exclude the
+landed gentry from them, and to destroy the influence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> which belongs to
+property; and they have exhibited tendencies absolutely opposed to the
+Constitution to which they owe their authority. The worst symptoms,
+however, appear in the state of the peasantry; they have obtained
+advantages of which their fathers never even dreamed; the land system has
+been turned upside down for their behoof; they have no grievance in landed
+relations; and yet they remain unfriendly to the State, and show no sign
+of gratitude. This class contains the multitudes, who for more than twenty
+years, have allied themselves with a conspiracy against our power in
+Ireland, and who, at the bidding of designing men, shout treasonable
+utterances at mob gatherings, and denounce the &#8216;Saxon&#8217; and &#8216;landlordism&#8217;
+with one voice; and though they are a timid and somewhat inert mass, and
+they would not rise like their fathers in 1798, they would not lift a hand
+to support our rule were foreign invaders to descend on our shores. This
+state of opinion, no doubt, is intelligible to the real student of Irish
+history; the Irish Catholics are a people who have been cruelly wronged;
+they have only slowly risen out of serf-like thraldom; above all, they
+have only attained the position they hold in the State after long years of
+trials, and by giving trouble; they treasure the Celtic traditions of the
+past; we may regret that they are what they are, but can hardly feel
+surprise. In other respects, the Irish Catholic masses, especially in a
+democratic age, must arouse the solicitude of thinkers worthy of the name.
+Many thousands of them are still illiterate; they are too generally the
+mere followers of priests and demagogues, tossed hither and thither as
+their masters direct; they are animated by crude and wild ideas, like the
+peasantry of France before the Revolution; they have scarcely anything in
+common with the corresponding class in England, trained for centuries in
+habits of well-ordered liberty. They form, in a word, a dangerous and
+easily led democracy; and yet, owing to recent legislation, ever to be
+deplored, they possess<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> almost a monopoly of political power in Ireland,
+and have sent representatives to Parliament whose acts are a byword.</p>
+
+<p>Conciliation, therefore, as the phrase is, has failed in the case of the
+greatest part of Catholic Ireland; this remains an alien, even a perilous,
+element in the State; it is worse than useless to shut our eyes to the
+truth; the time is still apparently distant when it will become contented
+and loyal. Presbyterian Ireland is a people of rather more than half a
+million of souls, almost concentrated within a nook of Ulster; it was
+rebellious in sentiment a hundred years ago; it is now devotedly attached
+to the British connection, and has firmly supported the Union during a
+period of trouble. This community, nevertheless, of artisans and farmers
+is rather widely separated from the aristocracy in their midst, for the
+most part English in blood, and of the Anglican faith; and though the
+Presbyterian farmer has obtained the benefit of the late reforms of land
+tenure, and has received advantages far in excess of justice, he declares
+himself to be discontented with his lot, and is clamouring for a vast
+confiscation of the Irish land in his selfish interest. The Irish
+Protestants are a population rather larger than the Presbyterians; but
+they are scattered over all parts of the country; they do not possess the
+political influence of their distant kinsmen in Ulster. They comprise at
+least three-fourths of the leading landed gentry, and a considerable
+number of the better class of farmers; they predominate in the learned
+professions, and in the higher walks of commerce. But their lower orders
+feel the loss of the ascendency which was once their birthright; they have
+been thrust out from corporate and local government; they are isolated
+amidst a population not in sympathy with them; as a people they can hardly
+be described as prosperous. As to the Protestant landed gentry, they have
+for centuries been the most loyal of subjects; it is significant that they
+have been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> called the British garrison by the conspirators who seek to
+overthrow our rule in Ireland; they have given many eminent worthies to
+the State, and proved their devotion to it at the gravest crises; what
+they are has been shown in the war in South Africa. At present, however,
+profound and just discontent has sunk deep into the hearts of this order
+of men. They are the heirs of conquest and confiscation, it is said; but
+they were placed in the position they hold by English kings and
+Parliaments; is that any reason that, within the last half-century, the
+Nemesis of conquest and confiscation should have been invoked against
+them, in the Encumbered Estates Act and predatory agrarian laws? They were
+too much of an exclusive caste, separated from their dependents, and
+possessing powers over the occupiers of the soil, which were sometimes
+abused; is that any reason that they should have been deprived of
+political influence, supplanted by the bureaucratic Castle, changed from
+owners of their estates into mere pensioners, shut out by the force of law
+from local and county government? What, however, the Irish landed gentry
+most deeply feel is that, in the course of the last sixty years, they have
+been deceived, nay, betrayed, by British statesmen, who, having repeatedly
+assured them that their position was secure, have sacrificed them when it
+seemed to suit their purpose.</p>
+
+<p>The Imperial Parliament has, during the last century, had absolute control
+over the affairs of Ireland. No impartial student of history will deny
+that it has governed Ireland very much better than her old Parliament
+could possibly have done, after the dreadful rising of 1798 had literally
+torn the country to pieces. The large majority of thinking persons have
+long ago been convinced that the policy of Home Rule, that is, the
+substitution for the Houses at Westminster of a statutory legislature
+seated in Dublin, would be disastrous to the Empire and Ireland alike; and
+that the evils attendant on the present system<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> would be aggravated a
+hundred-fold by the revolution Mr. Gladstone tried to effect. Nor can it
+be questioned that the Imperial Parliament has, for a long period,
+sincerely desired to legislate and rule for the good of Ireland, and has
+accomplished important Irish reforms, whatever legitimate exceptions may
+be taken to them. Protestant ascendency and the Established Church have
+fallen; the law has long been indifferent to Irishmen of all classes;
+education has been brought home to the mass of the people; the tenure of
+land has been transformed, unwisely no doubt, but wholly in the interest
+of the occupiers of the soil. Nevertheless, much that the Imperial
+Parliament has done, and left undone, in the Victorian era, remains matter
+of censure and regret; and its Irish administration has been in many
+respects unfortunate. The neglect to make a provision for the Irish
+Catholic priesthood, a main object of Pitt and of our best statesmen, when
+the Anglican Church was disestablished in 1869, was a grave and a
+calamitous mistake; the attempts that have been made to reform the Irish
+land system have, with scarcely an exception, been sorry failures; the
+results have been, in no doubtful sense, deplorable. Few, too, will
+justify such measures as the establishment in Ireland of household
+suffrage, that is, giving a monopoly of political power to an ignorant and
+priest-ridden democracy,<a name='fna_15' id='fna_15' href='#f_15'><small>[15]</small></a> and depriving property and intelligence of
+all influence, or as the handing over county and city government, in
+three-fourths of Ireland, to much the same classes. Nor are even positive
+errors such as these the worst, perhaps, that can be laid to the charge of
+the Imperial Parliament in the conduct of Irish affairs. With rare
+exceptions, the reforms it has made have been, unhappily, too late, and
+have been obtained only through menacing popular movements; it has over
+and over again<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> made Irish questions the mere subjects of the selfish
+strife of party, with evil consequences for Irish interests; it has
+occasionally, and even for large spaces of time, shown a marked
+indifference to reasonable Irish demands; and its administration of
+Ireland has repeatedly been inconsistent, even contradictory,
+shortsighted, and feeble. It must be acknowledged, indeed, that the rule
+of the Imperial Parliament, in the circumstances in which Ireland has been
+placed, is, from the nature of the case, faulty in many respects; it is
+that of a dominant assembly practically controlling a subject dependency;
+and, as we see in the striking instances of Athens and Rome, this kind of
+government has never been free from great and real objections. This, no
+doubt, is no reason that we should fly from less to unbearable evils, and
+adopt the fatal scheme of Home Rule; and the causes that have made our
+Parliamentary <i>r&eacute;gime</i> in Ireland as defective as it is are evident, and,
+as I shall point out afterwards, may probably be removed, to some extent
+at least, without subverting the constitution of these realms. But the
+broad fact remains, and cannot be concealed; the Imperial Parliament, much
+as it has done, has not reached the hearts or gained, in any degree, the
+sympathy of an immense majority of the Irish people.</p>
+
+<p>This conclusion, indeed, has been made only too manifest, if we look back
+at the history of Ireland within living memory. The Catholic Association
+defied the Imperial Parliament, and was supreme in four-fifths of Ireland,
+from 1824 to 1829; O&#8217;Connell, in 1843, rallied the Irish Catholic millions
+to the cause of the Repeal of the Union, that is, to the subversion of
+British rule from the Giant&#8217;s Causeway to Cape Clear. Home Rule became a
+popular cry when proclaimed by Butt; Parnell soon rose to the head of an
+Irish faction, which deliberately tried to paralyse and cross Parliament,
+and to make its sway in Ireland of no avail and contemptible. The Land
+League and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> National League were essentially conspiracies of foreign
+origin, and they appealed to socialistic greed in a season of distress;
+but their chief object was to annihilate British power in Ireland; they
+had the support of huge Catholic masses; they returned to Parliament a
+band of more than eighty men, one of whose purposes was to checkmate its
+authority. Too much is not to be made of these movements; three-fourths at
+least of the Irish community have repeatedly been led away by able but
+unscrupulous leaders, and rush into courses to which they are not
+earnestly inclined; but these unquestionable facts assuredly prove that
+the institutions under which they exist are not acceptable to the great
+body of the people of Ireland. This attitude has been displayed with
+marked and too plain significance, within a period, as it were, of
+yesterday. The United Irish League fills the place of the Land and the
+National Leagues; it is a conspiracy against the State, like its
+forerunners; it aims ultimately at the same objects; its organisation and
+machinery are the same; it seeks to establish its domination by similar
+methods. It is, no doubt, less formidable than the Land and the National
+Leagues; it has received little support from America, and has no one to
+compare with Parnell at its head; but it has sent more than three-fourths
+of the representatives of Ireland into the House of Commons; and these
+have combined to put in force the arts of obstruction with an audacity, a
+perseverance, and a measure of success, perhaps never so conspicuous
+before. Its authority is less far-reaching than that of its predecessors;
+but it has established a reign of tyranny in not a few counties; it is
+largely backed by the Irish priesthood and by much the greatest part of
+Catholic Ireland; and its leaders boast, not without truth, that, disloyal
+as many of their utterances are, they are completely in accord with
+popular sympathies. The acts and the speeches, indeed, of these men have
+never been more unequivocal than within the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> last two or three years;<a name='fna_16' id='fna_16' href='#f_16'><small>[16]</small></a>
+yet almost everywhere they obtain the applause and the support of the
+multitude. An Irish contingent was sent to fight for the Boers; the war in
+South Africa was yelled at, at huge public meetings, as an odious instance
+of English tyranny and crime; every reverse that befell our arms was
+welcomed; the Irish masses, especially of late, have made a display of
+their antipathy to, and hatred of, the State. There was an outbreak of
+disloyal rioting in Dublin at the Diamond Jubilee; but for the accident of
+the Spanish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> War there would have been a great commemoration of the
+rebellion of 1798; even the visit of the late Queen to Ireland was made an
+occasion for seditious speeches; if her death was very generally mourned,
+public bodies were found to refuse an expression of regret.</p>
+
+<p>Irish administration, I have remarked, is in many respects faulty; this is
+mainly because it is dependent on British parties; it fluctuates as one or
+the other prevails in Parliament. It sometimes represents completely
+opposite principles; besides, as Lord-Lieutenants and Chief Secretaries
+usually hold office for a short time only, they are tempted to adopt a
+hand-to-mouth policy, and to govern with little thought of the morrow. A
+marked change, however, has, in the course of time, passed over the
+ordinary system of administration carried on at the Castle. The
+aristocracy and the leading Irish gentry had still, even at the beginning
+of the Victorian age, much influence in directing local affairs; their
+authority was not nearly as great as it had been; but they were still
+looked up to and consulted by the central government. This state of things
+has long ago ceased to exist; this order of men has long ago lost all
+political, and nearly all social, power; it has been superseded by a
+bureaucratic <i>r&eacute;gime</i>, depending mainly on paid officials and police,
+which rules Ireland from the Castle, with little external support. This
+mode of government is imposing and apparently strong; but it is
+essentially weak, and has little real hold on the country; the
+information, with which it is amply supplied, is often false, and
+occasionally causes grave mistakes; it forms an administrative system
+resembling that of the old centralised monarchy of France, of which
+Tocqueville has exposed the defects and the vices. Under this <i>r&eacute;gime</i>,
+however, the law of the land has certainly been vindicated more
+successfully than had been the case before; the Government has acquired
+decidedly increased power in dealing with disorders dangerous to the
+State, and perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> in holding the scales of justice even between divided
+classes; it has not diminished the strife of hostile Irish factions, but
+it has maintained order more completely than of old; and this
+unquestionably is a great advantage, and a real set-off against some
+mischiefs and failures. It would be untrue to assert that this system of
+rule has been the paramount and even a main cause of the great decline in
+agrarian crime and trouble which Ireland has happily witnessed of late
+years; other and far more potent causes have concurred; but it may fairly
+be said that it has contributed to it. It would, however, be a complete
+mistake to suppose that agrarian disorder, even in its worst aspects, has
+become permanently a thing of the past in Ireland, or that this
+destructive curse of Irish social life has not immense influence even at
+this moment, though its outward manifestations have been greatly changed.
+It was, so to speak, only yesterday that, under the auspices of the Land
+and the National Leagues, there was the most frightful outbreak of
+agrarian crime that had been seen since the great tithe conflict; it
+assumed the proportions, in fact, of a horrible servile war; and shallow,
+indeed, the understanding must be which imagines that this state of things
+can never recur. If open agrarian disorder, too, has been largely
+diminished, the spirit of agrarian disorder is still strong; and it is
+doing infinite mischief in many parts of Ireland. Steadily adhering to the
+precepts laid down by Parnell, the United Irish League has brought the
+detestable system of &#8216;boycotting&#8217; to a hideous perfection in several
+counties; whole districts are subject to this secret but villainous
+tyranny; the results are seen in numbers of derelict farms, in hundreds of
+victims writhing under ever-present terror, in an infamous interference
+with trade and industry. This malignant influence is more or less felt
+through nearly the whole of the southern provinces, and even to a
+considerable extent in Ulster; it should be added that the United Irish
+League, for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> present, discourages active agrarian crime, though its
+agents hold this force in reserve; it believes it can compass its ends
+without making use of this weapon.<a name='fna_17' id='fna_17' href='#f_17'><small>[17]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>A few words must be said, in this short survey, on the organisations that
+uphold the Christian faith in Ireland. The disestablished Anglican Church
+has certainly made progress in spiritual life; it has more moral and even,
+perhaps, social influence than when it was an appurtenance of the Erastian
+Castle. It has been admirably administered and ruled; the uses of
+adversity have been sweet to it, and it has been successfully launched on
+its new career; this is a strong proof of the inherent energy and capacity
+of the Anglo-Protestant Irish people. Very different, too, from what had
+been expected, moderation and wisdom prevail in its councils; its clergy
+are sincerely pious, but not given to extreme doctrines; its members are
+for the most part free from the narrow sectarian views which had formerly,
+not without reason, been laid to their charge. Its funds, amassed by good
+management, are, for the present, ample; but the rapid impoverishment of
+the landed gentry, the class from which it chiefly obtains support, and
+the confiscation with which they are threatened, no doubt expose it to
+future dangers; and it must always be the Church of a small minority,
+surrounded by influences hostile to it, but a Church which the State is
+bound to protect. The Presbyterian Church of Ireland has but little
+changed; it has felt the effect of the great religious movement, which has
+stirred the Three Kingdoms in the last half-century, and it is less
+rationalistic than it once was; but it is still what it always was, a
+powerful centre of the faith of John Knox, with a communion of strong
+democratic sympathies. The Catholic Church of Ireland still rests on the
+old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> foundations; but it is hardly the unshaken structure it was in the
+last generation. Its material resources have enormously increased; its
+fine edifices spread over the land; it still exercises immense influence
+over probably nine-tenths of Catholic Ireland. But a party has been
+growing up within it which resents, and has even defied, its pretensions;
+and though the power it possesses is, in the main, beneficent in the
+extreme, this has too often been abused in the domain of politics, and
+especially of late in Irish landed relations. The priesthood still largely
+direct their flocks, but they are more dependent on them than they once
+were; had it been otherwise, they would have hardly conformed to the
+bidding of the Land and the National Leagues, as unhappily they did in too
+many instances. Their leading men perceived from the first that these
+conspiracies were destructive of their moral influence; and had the whole
+body of the clergy received a just provision from the State, it would all
+but certainly have condemned the methods of the Leagues as these were
+decisively condemned by Rome. For the rest, the Catholic Church of Ireland
+is no friend of Protestant England, and of many of the institutions that
+exist in Ireland; but this has been inevitable from the events of Irish
+history; and whatever may be said, it has been essentially an ally of the
+State, by reason of its great religious authority. And if properly
+understood, it is a mighty conservative power, which ought if possible to
+be won over to the side of order and law; this is an ample, if there were
+no other, reason that statesmen should comply with its most reasonable
+demand, and remove the grievance, in high Catholic education, that only
+blind bigotry can deny.</p>
+
+<p>The administration of justice in Ireland is better, on the whole, than it
+was in the early Victorian era. It is not only that the law&#8217;s delay has
+been to a considerable extent, remedied, as it has been, in England, by an
+improved procedure. Traces of Protestant ascendency<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> were to be seen on
+the Irish Bench sixty years ago, though these were evanescent and few;
+such a trial as that of O&#8217;Connell in 1844, marked by partiality and even
+by wrong, would be simply impossible at the present time. Trial by jury,
+however, in Ireland too often reflects the animosities and prejudices of
+class, and is liable to grave perversion and errors; it is sometimes
+necessary, in causes where religious or political feeling is engaged, to
+make a careful selection in forming juries, in order that common right
+should be done; this inevitable, but invidious, process, held up to
+execration by the name of &#8216;packing,&#8217; is certainly a matter that causes
+regret. The fairness seen in the administration of the law in Ireland has
+been strikingly illustrated of late years; leaders and agents of the Land
+and the National Leagues have had to answer for their offences in the
+inferior courts; but despite rabid clamour against what is called
+&#8216;coercion,&#8217; the conduct of these inquiries has not been really impugned. A
+laudable attempt, however, to make the magisterial bench more popular, has
+lately placed on it an order of men, of whom some have abused their power;
+these instances, nevertheless, have not been frequent; the experiment
+cannot be pronounced a failure. The intellect of Ireland is not so
+fruitful as it was in the generation before the union; she has no
+political thinkers to be named with Burke, no writer of fiction equal to
+Maria Edgeworth, no dramatist to be compared to Sheridan, no orators who
+have reached the heights of eloquence reached by Grattan, Curran, Plunket,
+and other glories of her defunct Parliament. But there has been progress
+in this respect within the last sixty years; Ireland cannot boast of such
+public men as O&#8217;Connell, Sheil, and even Spring Rice; but she possesses
+Dufferin in the diplomatic sphere, and Lecky, and one or two others of
+repute in that of letters; she has only recently lost Lord Cairns and Lord
+Russell. The improvement of primary education in Ireland<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> has been
+immense; the land is full of elementary schools, which, in the last
+generation, were, comparatively, very few, and though a considerable part
+of the population is still illiterate, the greater part, whose fathers
+were sunk in ignorance, has felt the good influence of the light of
+knowledge. High education, too, has advanced in Ireland; Trinity College
+is greater than before as a place of learning; if two of the Queen&#8217;s
+Colleges have certainly failed, the Royal University has been, in a sense,
+successful. But, as I shall point out, in subsequent pages, University
+education in Ireland remains defective; a University for the Irish
+Catholic upper middle class is a requirement rightly demanded from
+Parliament. As for Irish secondary education, it is still backward, but
+there is hope of improvement in this respect; the general standard of
+Irish education, it should be added, is, except at Trinity College, low,
+though this has been inevitable if we look back at the events of history.
+Irish opinion generally still embodies the deep-seated animosities and
+strife of race and faith, at least as fully as it ever did; with few
+exceptions this appears in the tone of the newspaper press. The utterances
+of many of the self-styled &#8216;Nationalist&#8217; journals have been far more
+hostile to the State, and are conceived in a much worse spirit, than those
+of the same class of journals in O&#8217;Connell&#8217;s day.</p>
+
+<p>If we examine the condition of Ireland, as a whole, we see that there has
+been some material progress, but with retrogression in important respects;
+and if a certain measure of good has been done, great wrong and evil have
+been accomplished, in the principal and the most far-reaching of her
+social relations. Her moral and political progress has been at least
+doubtful; notwithstanding immense and searching reforms, the mass of the
+population is more disaffected than of old; discontent largely pervades
+the classes most loyal to the State; if the mere power of government has
+increased, its beneficent influence is but little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> recognised; the great
+body of the community maintains a hostile attitude. The crooked has not
+been made straight in Ireland, nor the rough places plain; a state of
+society exists, in which, as the Greek poet said, &#8216;the fountains flow
+backwards, and things are out of joint.&#8217; An old order has nearly passed
+away; but the new order that is replacing it is but of little promise; a
+type of society has been well-nigh broken up, but a strong and solid type
+is not being formed in its stead; at all events, in the phrase of Bacon,
+the time is still distant &#8216;when the strings of the Irish harp will all be
+in tune;&#8217; many respond to the player&#8217;s hand in discord. &#8216;The Constitution
+in Ireland,&#8217; Peel once exclaimed, &#8216;is not the British Constitution, but
+its ghastly image;&#8217; let us see what it is in Ireland at the present time.
+The Sovereign is, in England, a main pillar of the State; he is a great
+political and social force; the Monarchy is enthroned in the heart of the
+nation. In Ireland he is almost an unknown name, associated with not a few
+evil memories; his influence, which ought to be immense over a Celtic
+race, has never made itself sensibly felt. In England Parliament responds
+to the national will, and has gathered the reverence of ages around it; in
+Ireland it is a foreign and alien assembly, with which the mass of the
+people has no sympathy. In England the aristocracy is at the head of
+public affairs, leads society, commands universal respect; in Ireland it
+has lost all authority; has no weight in the National Councils; has no
+popular support, is even disliked at the Castle. In England the middle
+class is enormously strong, and is the best bulwark of order and law; in
+England the democracy is almost wholly free from revolutionary ideas, as
+regards property, and seeks reforms by constitutional methods. In Ireland,
+it is unhappily quite otherwise; the middle class is comparatively weak,
+and, in its lower strata, is opposed to the existing order of things; the
+democracy is an easily led multitude, ready at its leaders&#8217; bidding to
+rush into socialistic courses. In England, too, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> Commonwealth is
+completely secure; in Ireland there is literally no Commonwealth; and such
+organisations as the Land, the National, and the United Irish Leagues, are
+dangerous symptoms of a kind of Jacobin antipathy to the State. The words
+of Peel are still unhappily true; but painful as the contrast he pointed
+out is, even this is not the worst circumstance in the present condition
+of Irish affairs. What, I think, most alarms a reflecting mind, is the
+restlessness that pervades the mass of the people, an eagerness for some
+undefined change, a demand for the universal spoliation of a class, a
+sense of insecurity spreading far and wide, a neglect of the pursuits of
+calm industry in the hope of what a revolution may effect, an instability
+in the social fabric from top to bottom. The agitation, the disorder, and,
+I will add, the vicious legislation of late years, will, however, largely
+explain these phenomena.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Salisbury&#8217;s Ministry came into office, six years ago, at the head of
+the most powerful majority that had been returned to the House of Commons
+since the great Reform era. The time was singularly opportune to consider
+the state of Ireland, and to deal with the Irish questions that required
+sound and wise treatment. The Opposition was paralysed by a rout at the
+polls; the National League conspiracy showed few signs of life; the
+&#8216;Nationalist&#8217; party was rent asunder; the community was more quiescent
+than it had been for years. It would be unfair to deny that, since it
+acquired power, the Government has been beset by many and grave obstacles
+in legislating on domestic subjects; it has been encompassed by a sea of
+foreign troubles; it has had to conduct the protracted war in South
+Africa. It would be absurd, too, to expect that it could, once for all,
+have placed Irish affairs permanently on a secure basis; this can only be
+the result of the wisdom of years aided by the healing influence of time.
+But it has disappointed enlightened Irish opinion; it has not done, or
+even tried to do, what it might have accomplished.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> Undoubtedly parts of
+its policy have been good; it has effected something, if not much, in
+developing the material resources of the west of Ireland, and in
+mitigating the danger and the stress of Irish poverty; it has carried on
+the excellent work of Mr. Arthur Balfour in this respect; the Department
+of Agriculture it has lately formed will, not improbably, be of real use
+in promoting industry and self-reliance among the peasantry, on the
+principles advocated, a century and a half ago, by Berkeley. But
+commendation, I think, must here end; the Government, I believe, has made
+grave mistakes; it has assuredly not successfully dealt with the great
+&#8216;Case of Ireland,&#8217; greater now than in the days of Molyneux and Swift. It
+has not reduced the excessive representation of Ireland in the House of
+Commons; until this is done the Union will not be secure. It has
+disregarded the verdict of the important Commission which has declared
+that Ireland has been immensely overtaxed for years; here it defies
+universal Irish opinion; and having pledged itself to make a further
+inquiry, it has not hitherto taken a step to redeem its pledge. It is
+divided on the question of high education in Ireland, and professes that
+this must be an &#8216;open question,&#8217; as if this was not unwise and perilous;
+and though it has appointed a Commission to report on the subject,
+Catholic Ireland very possibly may not obtain the place of learning which
+it is entitled to demand. Above all, on the capital question of the Irish
+land, the Government has certainly all but ignored the recommendations of
+a Commission chosen by itself, and has refused to lessen the injustice
+proved to have been done wholesale; like its predecessors, in the case of
+the Encumbered Estates Act, it is still bent on agrarian legislation that
+has done infinite mischief. Its administration, too, up to this has not
+been successful; it has allowed the United Irish League to grow up and to
+gain strength, with far-spreading evil results; its conduct of Irish
+affairs has been weak and empirical, and notably<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> marked by false
+optimistic fancies. Of late there has been improvement in this respect; we
+can only hope it will not be abortive.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;In this gigantic body,&#8217; Macaulay exclaimed fifty-seven years ago, &#8216;there
+is one vulnerable part near the heart.&#8217;<a name='fna_18' id='fna_18' href='#f_18'><small>[18]</small></a> The Empire has expanded into
+ampler proportions than those described by the orator; its subject kings,
+dominations, princedoms, powers, above all, its myriads of many races and
+tongues, are united by far more durable ties than those which held it
+together in a generation that has passed away. Four years ago, Canada sent
+messengers from her great lakes, Hindustan representatives of her ancient
+dynasties, the great island continent envoys from her free nations, to do
+homage to Queen Victoria; the pageant, gathered &#8216;within London&#8217;s streaming
+roar,&#8217; was a magnificent spectacle of world-wide loyalty. England has seen
+another and a still more wonderful sight; the martial sons of our great
+self-governing colonies have flocked in thousands to do battle in her
+cause, in the distant and ill-known wastes of South Africa; in a long,
+bloody, and sometimes disastrous conflict, they have proved themselves to
+be worthy companions in arms of the offspring of the soldiery of Blenheim
+and Waterloo; they have fought and bled for England as if she was their
+common country. But Ireland, as regards the mass of the people, has, on
+both occasions, stood sullenly aloof; her heart has gone out in sympathy
+with the Boers; she remains, for the most part, hostile to our rule and
+disloyal. It is mere foolishness to shut our eyes to plain facts; still
+more so to join in the false p&aelig;ans of interested partisans, and ignorant
+scribblers, who announce that because Ireland is, on the surface,
+comparatively at peace, she is in every sense a contented or a happy land,
+free from grave elements of political and social danger. She is still the
+&#8216;vulnerable part at the heart of the Empire;&#8217; the spectre at the great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+national festival; the warning token, as in the case of the Oriental
+despot, that human grandeur and power are, in the nature of things,
+mortal. She is still, as she was in the day of Spenser, a malign influence
+across the path of our greatness, a riddle difficult to understand and
+interpret; the many problems she still presents to the statesman are
+perplexing in the extreme, and await solution. That any policy will
+suddenly remove the many evils apparent in her organic structure is a
+delusion a rational mind rejects; the deep-seated ills in that distempered
+frame may never be completely and finally cured. Something effectual,
+nevertheless, may, I think, be done; I proceed to examine, in the
+following chapters, the &#8216;Present Irish Questions&#8217; that confront our
+rulers; and to consider what the amending hand may accomplish.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<p class="center"><span class="large">THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE</span></p>
+
+<div class="note"><p class="hang">The question of Home Rule not extinct&mdash;The reasons&mdash;Butt&#8217;s scheme of
+Home Rule&mdash;It is denounced and ridiculed by Mr. Gladstone, and
+defeated in the House of Commons&mdash;Death of Butt&mdash;The Home Rule
+movement becomes allied with a foreign conspiracy&mdash;Davitt and
+Parnell&mdash;The Land League&mdash;Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s surrender to it&mdash;The
+movement makes no progress in the Parliament of 1880-85&mdash;The General
+Election of 1885&mdash;Mr. Gladstone suddenly adopts the policy of Home
+Rule&mdash;The probable reasons&mdash;The Home Rule Bill of 1886&mdash;Its nature and
+tendencies&mdash;Decisive objections to the measure&mdash;It is rejected at the
+General Election of 1886, having been previously rejected in the House
+of Commons&mdash;Policy and conduct of Mr. Gladstone&mdash;The Home Rule
+movement makes some progress in England, and why&mdash;The Home Rule Bill
+of 1893&mdash;It is much worse than that of 1886&mdash;The reasons&mdash;It is
+rejected by the House of Lords&mdash;Home Rule under different forms&mdash;The
+Union must be maintained&mdash;Proposal that Parliament should occasionally
+sit in Dublin&mdash;The over-representation of Ireland should be redressed.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Home Rule, it is very generally assumed, has vanished into the domain of
+extinct politics. Unlike what had been the case from 1886 to 1895, when
+this was the main of our domestic questions, Home Rule was scarcely
+referred to at the late election; it will receive little countenance at
+the hands of the present House of Commons, however Irish Nationalists may
+persist in urging their demand. It would, nevertheless, be imprudent to
+believe that this policy, as has been said, &#8216;is as dead as Queen Anne,&#8217; as
+impossible as a return to Protection or to an unreformed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> Parliament.
+Isaac Butt&#8217;s scheme of Home Rule was treated with scorn and ridicule by
+Mr. Gladstone during many years; Mr. Gladstone was the author of the Bills
+of 1886 and 1893, embodying Home Rule in forms few will now approve of;
+and he left nothing undone to convert them into law. At the General
+Election of 1880, Home Rule was regarded as a mere Irish craze, and hardly
+a candidate could be found, in England and Scotland, to consent to an
+inquiry upon the subject; within six years Home Rule was a Ministerial
+measure; and though the House of Commons pronounced against it, and its
+decision was emphatically ratified at the General Election of 1886, still,
+on this occasion, the votes in favour of Home Rule were not much less
+numerous than those cast against it.<a name='fna_19' id='fna_19' href='#f_19'><small>[19]</small></a> In 1892 England condemned Home
+Rule, if not as decisively as six years before; but Ireland, Scotland, and
+Wales declared for it; and a Home Rule Bill received the sanction of the
+House of Commons, which, but for the resistance made by the House of
+Lords, would now be a fundamental law of these realms. It deserves notice,
+too, that not one of the Liberal leaders, although, as a rule, they
+avoided the subject, repudiated this policy at the late election; two or
+three, indeed, gave it a qualified support; and it is evident that they
+keep the question in reserve, in the hope of turning it to account at a
+more convenient season. Nor can it be denied, as long as Ireland can send
+more than eighty Nationalists into the House of Commons, pledged to insist
+on Home Rule as their country&#8217;s right, that the subject must command more
+or less attention; for many reasons it is impossible to ignore the claims
+of a representation so large in numbers. It must be added that, under our
+system of party government, especially as this has existed of late years,
+a considerable group of politicians, with a fixed purpose, can effect much
+by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> throwing its weight indifferently into the Ministerial or the
+Opposition scale, and giving its support to either side, in order to
+compass its own ends; it has, sometimes with successful results, swayed
+majorities by these means, and not in vain. This is the hope of the Irish
+Nationalist leaders; &#8216;let parties in the House of Commons,&#8217; they cynically
+argue, &#8216;be equally divided, as must at some time happen,&#8217; and &#8216;we shall
+gain Home Rule from either Tories or Whigs, if we assist either by our
+votes to keep them in office.&#8217; It cannot be said, if we look back at some
+political events within the last twenty years, that this expectation is
+wholly groundless; and though I am convinced it will not be realised, its
+existence alone suffices to prove that Home Rule cannot yet be dismissed
+as outside the sphere of practical politics.</p>
+
+<p>Home Rule, therefore, is a &#8216;Present Irish Question,&#8217; and if not at this
+moment urgent, it remains the most important of Irish questions, for it
+directly affects the fortunes of the Three Kingdoms. It is necessary,
+accordingly, to examine it, in its principles at least; and an inquiry is
+opportune, at this juncture, for the subject can be fairly discussed in
+its different bearings, apart from the obscuring influences of national
+and party prejudice, and especially of political passion. Isaac Butt was
+the true author of the conception of Home Rule; for though a movement in
+favour of a Repeal of the Union had become dangerously active in 1843-44,
+and had been feebly intermittent since that period, this peculiar
+modification of the arrangements made at the Union, in fixing the
+relations between Great Britain and Ireland, was wholly an idea of that
+distinguished lawyer. The occasion, on which this scheme was put forward,
+was not a little remarkable for various reasons. Mr. Gladstone had just
+disestablished the Anglican Church in Ireland, and had disendowed it, to a
+considerable extent; this policy was angrily resented by a party of Irish
+Protestants; for the maintenance of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> Established Irish Church had been
+made an essential condition of the Treaty of Union. These men, who were
+not without energy and parts, declared that a great international compact
+had been broken; and they gradually obtained the support of leaders of the
+&#8216;Young Ireland&#8217; following, of survivors of the &#8216;Tail&#8217; of O&#8217;Connell, and
+even of adherents of the Fenian cause, all, in different degrees, opposed
+to the Union. Butt became the head and spokesman of this curiously
+assorted band, composed of essentially discordant elements; but he
+endeavoured to combine it into a strong Parliamentary force, by
+propounding a plan of Home Rule for Ireland, which he had thought out with
+patience and care, his hope being that this would unite his followers, and
+that his project would at least be entertained in Parliament, and would
+not be as hopeless as an attempt to repeal the Union. His views are set
+forth in his &#8216;Irish Federalism,&#8217; a long-forgotten work, but which, even
+now, may be read with profit. Butt professed, and I have no doubt
+sincerely, that he did not seek to disturb the Union, and that the
+Imperial Parliament was to remain as it was; but he proposed to give
+Ireland a Parliament of her own, with full powers of legislation on Irish
+affairs, and an Executive practically appointed by this, which would have
+the government of Ireland in its hands. Having thus called into existence
+an Irish State, possessing State rights of supreme importance, he sought
+to connect Ireland with Great Britain by a Federal tie; representatives
+from Ireland were to repair to the Imperial Parliament, and to vote in
+that assembly on Imperial questions, but not, as I believe Butt meant, on
+those which belonged to England and Scotland.<a name='fna_20' id='fna_20' href='#f_20'><small>[20]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The cry of Home Rule was welcomed in Ireland by her Catholic masses; at
+the General Election of 1874, sixty men were returned to the House of
+Commons to support<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> this policy, a party formidable in numbers, if not in
+essential strength. Butt brought forward his plan, in outline, on three or
+four occasions; but the question was not discussed with the fulness of
+knowledge and the breadth of view it certainly required; on the whole, it
+was superficially treated. Neither Butt nor his opponents thoroughly
+perceived that his proposals virtually repealed the Union, for if the
+Imperial Parliament was, nominally, to be left intact, a real Parliament
+was to be placed in its stead, in Ireland, which would practically annul
+its effective authority, from the Giant&#8217;s Causeway to Cape Clear; and they
+seem not to have understood that &#8216;Irish Federalism&#8217; implied Federalism for
+Great Britain to a great extent, and introduced into the Constitution the
+Federal principle with its far-reaching and dangerous effects. Butt&#8217;s
+scheme, however, was powerfully attacked in its details; by no one so
+powerfully as by Mr. Gladstone, who had lately announced, to an approving
+multitude, that Home Rule was sheer folly or worse, and had exultingly
+asked, &#8216;Can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that, at this
+time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to disintegrate
+the great capital institutions of the country for the purpose of making
+ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind, and crippling any power
+we possess for bestowing benefits, through legislation, on the country to
+which we belong?&#8217;<a name='fna_21' id='fna_21' href='#f_21'><small>[21]</small></a> Little knowing what the future was to bring forth,
+Mr. Gladstone declared that Home Rule was not to be even thought of, until
+it could be proved that the Irish affairs, to which the Irish Parliament
+was to be confined, could be separated from Imperial and British affairs,
+a partition he evidently deemed impossible; and he insisted that the
+introduction of Irish members into the Imperial Parliament, which,
+according to this plan, was to have nothing to do with Ireland, was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> not
+only essentially unjust, but involved the absurdity that these men &#8216;were
+to judge as they might think fit of the general affairs of the Empire, and
+also of exclusively English and Scotch questions,&#8217; an interpretation not,
+I believe, correct. Home Rule was rejected by overwhelming majorities in
+the Parliament of 1874-80; and at the General Election of the last-named
+year, it found no countenance, I have said, in England or Scotland. The
+subject was scarcely referred to by Mr. Gladstone, wholly preoccupied by
+his Midlothian campaign, and by his persistent efforts to deprive Lord
+Beaconsfield of power.</p>
+
+<p>Butt had sincere reverence for the Constitution and the Law; the Home Rule
+movement, as long as he was at its head, was a constitutional and a lawful
+movement. But this eminent man had been supplanted, by degrees, by a
+politician of a very different nature; and when he had passed away in the
+spring of 1879, Parnell, and what was called the &#8216;active Irish party,&#8217;
+which had baffled and incensed the House of Commons, became the directors
+of the Home Rule policy. The character of the movement was almost wholly
+changed; it became associated with a conspiracy hatched in the Far West,
+which aimed at the separation of Ireland from Great Britain; Butt&#8217;s
+moderate followers fell away from it, especially the band of Protestants
+who had first set it on foot. Meanwhile, American Fenianism, which had in
+vain attempted open rebellion in Ireland in 1865-67, had, at the
+instigation perhaps of Michael Davitt, made another effort to compass its
+ends; the &#8216;New Departure&#8217; in treason was made; the Land League was formed
+with the avowed purpose of overthrowing &#8216;Irish Landlordism,&#8217; as it was
+called, as being the mainstay of British power in Ireland, and then of
+wresting Ireland by force from her British rulers. But Davitt was not well
+fitted for his work; Parnell became the leader of the Home Rule and the
+Land League movements; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> during a short visit to the United States, he
+openly professed that his ultimate aim was &#8216;to break the last link between
+Great Britain and Ireland,&#8217; though he was still the chief of an apparently
+constitutional cause. Ere long the Land League, availing itself of a
+season of distress, and subsidised by Fenians across the Atlantic, had
+taken root in different parts of Ireland; and gradually a reign of terror,
+marked by detestable crime, and essentially of the Jacobin type, had
+acquired a frightful ascendency in ten or eleven counties. By this time,
+Mr. Gladstone had become Minister: how he denounced the League in
+passionate language; endeavoured, for a few months, to hold it in check;
+succumbed to it, when he made the &#8216;Kilmainham Treaty;&#8217; and, finally, how,
+after declaring that Parnell and his adherents were &#8216;aiming at
+dismemberment through rapine,&#8217; he became the author of the Land Act of
+1881, and threw the Irish landed gentry as a sop to Cerberus,&mdash;is
+sufficiently known, but I shall recur to the subject. During these years,
+Parnell, artfully playing the double game, which this born conspirator
+especially made his boast, and linking what he called &#8216;a constitutional
+with an illegal movement,&#8217; had more than once spoken on behalf of Home
+Rule in the House of Commons, his moderate and even statesmanlike language
+being in marked contrast with his treasonable harangues in Ireland. But
+Parliament had been otherwise engaged with Irish affairs; it had become
+more averse to Home Rule than ever; it had learned what the movement had
+begun to involve, veiled, if not open, rebellion against the State, and it
+voted down the question by immense majorities. Statesmen of all parties,
+Tory, Whig, and Radical, without exception, concurred in this view; Lord
+Salisbury, Lord Spencer, and John Bright alike condemned the very idea of
+Home Rule. Mr. Gladstone indeed asserted afterwards that he had a policy
+of this kind in his thoughts; but if he had, he kept it to himself; it
+cannot be gathered from his speeches of the time;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> he never breathed to
+his colleagues a word about it; he allowed them to pronounce against Home
+Rule with his full apparent sanction.<a name='fna_22' id='fna_22' href='#f_22'><small>[22]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s Ministry fell in 1885; Majuba, Gordon, and his Irish
+policy had set the best sense of the country against him. Lord Salisbury&#8217;s
+Government came in his place; for a short time the tendency, too often
+seen in British parties, to temporise with sedition and even crime in
+Ireland was exhibited with untoward results; the negotiations between
+Parnell and Lord Carnarvon have not yet been explained. At the General
+Election of 1885, Parnell openly took the Conservative side, denounced the
+Liberals in the bitterest language, and perhaps, through the influence of
+the Irish vote, deprived them of a few seats in England. His principal
+object certainly was to increase his own power and that of his band by
+weakening the strongest of British parties; but this association with the
+Conservatives probably lessened the antipathy of their opponents to Home
+Rule, and was not without effect on the events that followed. Ireland,
+however, was by no means a prominent question in this electoral contest;
+the Tory, Whig, and Radical leaders dealt, for the most part, with
+different topics; and though Mr. Gladstone dropped ambiguous phrases,
+which, he ere long contended, indicated his conversion to Home Rule, his
+lieutenants continued to declare against this policy, their chief
+remaining openly in accord with them; indeed, all that could be collected,
+from what he wrote and said, was that he called upon the country to give
+him such decisive support as would make him independent of all Irish
+factions. The result of this General Election, taken as a whole, was to
+gain for the Liberals a majority of some eighty seats in Great Britain;
+but in Ireland it effected a notable change in politics. By a recent,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+and, for Ireland, a most unwise statute, the electoral franchise had been
+assimilated in the Three Kingdoms; political ascendency had, for the first
+time, been secured for the masses of Catholic Ireland, largely an ignorant
+and superstitious multitude; property and intelligence were overwhelmed at
+the polls; and Parnell and his satellites, now called Nationalists, won
+more than eighty seats out of a total of one hundred and three. The
+Liberal majority, therefore, would be effaced should the Irish leader and
+his men give the Conservatives their votes; a weak Government would be the
+inevitable result; Mr. Gladstone, now in his seventy-sixth year, could
+hardly expect to return to office. In these circumstances, it became
+gradually known that Mr. Gladstone had accepted Home Rule in principle,
+and was even prepared to legislate upon the subject. It would be unfair to
+assert that personal motives alone determined this sudden resolve; though
+obviously should the Liberal chief retain the allegiance of his party, and
+draw Parnell and the Nationalists to his side, by inaugurating Home Rule
+as a practical measure, he would inevitably be restored to power with a
+great majority. Mr. Gladstone, ever ready to yield to a popular cry, may
+have believed that five-sixths of Ireland were passionately eager for Home
+Rule; he may have been convinced himself that, as affairs now stood,
+Parliament would well-nigh be reduced to a deadlock should nothing be done
+to redress the balanced state of parties, and that Home Rule was the
+condition of a stable Government; he may have thought that since the
+Conservative dalliance with Parnell, it had become impossible permanently
+to resist this policy; yet these considerations form no apology for the
+conduct of the aged, but most impulsive, statesman. Only a few years
+before large parts of Ireland had been in a state of frightful anarchy; a
+rebellious and socialistic movement against British rule and Irish landed
+property had acquired great force; even at the present time, the National
+League,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> replacing the Land League, kept disorder prevalent in many
+counties. Was this the moment to effect a revolution in Ireland, to tamper
+with, and to impair, the Union, to hand over the loyalty, the property,
+and the worth of the island to the classes and the men against whom but,
+as yesterday, it had been necessary to put the severest coercion in force?</p>
+
+<p>Lord Salisbury resigned office in the first months of 1886; Mr. Gladstone
+became Prime Minister in his stead. Had parties in the House of Commons
+remained unchanged, the prospect for the old statesman would have been
+auspicious; the Liberals and Nationalists combined would have been
+supreme; Home Rule would have been the fruit of the new alliance. But the
+most distinguished men of the Liberal party, resenting a coalition far
+worse than that of Fox and North, and convinced that Home Rule would be
+ruinous to the State, fell off from their leader in large numbers; the
+powerful Press of Great Britain, with few exceptions, emphatically
+condemned the Minister&#8217;s conduct. Mr. Gladstone, however, did not pause in
+his violent course; he introduced his first Home Rule Bill in April, 1886.
+I can only glance at the main features of this famous measure, and devote
+to it a passing comment.<a name='fna_23' id='fna_23' href='#f_23'><small>[23]</small></a> A Parliament was to be established in the
+Irish capital; this, subject to the limitations set forth in the Bill, was
+practically to exercise supreme power in Ireland. This Parliament was to
+be composed of two Orders, the first containing one hundred and three
+members, and formed of a few Irish peers and of men of some substance; the
+second comprising two hundred and four or two hundred and six members
+elected on the existing democratic franchise. The two Orders were
+ordinarily to sit together; but should differences in legislative
+measures<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> arise, the first Order was, for a short time, to have a
+suspensive veto on the decisions of the second Order, which, however,
+possessing an immense majority, would almost necessarily in the long run
+completely prevail. The Irish Parliament was precluded from legislating on
+many subjects, for the most part Imperial, but partly domestic; it was
+notably to have no control over the Customs and Excise of Ireland, which
+were to be kept in the hands of the Imperial Parliament; and though it was
+permitted to impose any other taxes, the whole revenue of Ireland was to
+pass through the hands of a British official, who was to pay into the
+Imperial Treasury a sum of about four millions sterling, as a contribution
+from Ireland, for Imperial purposes, before the Irish Treasury could
+receive a farthing. Bills voted by the Irish Parliament might be annulled
+by the veto of the Lord-Lieutenant and perhaps of the British Ministry;
+and the Judicial Committee of the English Privy Council, reinforced by a
+small body of Irish judges, was to have the power to pronounce Acts of the
+Irish Parliament void, if inconsistent with its constitutional rights.
+Subject, however, to these restrictions and checks, the Irish Parliament
+was to be a sovereign power in Ireland; it could practically appoint or
+displace the Irish Executive Government; it could enact, change, or repeal
+any laws it should think fit; it could pass any resolutions it pleased; if
+an assembly partly subordinate, it would be largely supreme. Ireland was
+to have no representatives in the Imperial Parliament, though this could
+dispose of the Irish Customs and Excise; no Irish protest could be made at
+Westminster against unjust fiscal exaction, by no means impossible. For
+the rest, the Union was nominally not disturbed, and the Imperial
+Parliament was nominally left intact; but it was declared that the Irish
+Parliament was to possess the rights secured to it, unless these were
+annulled by an Act of the Imperial Parliament, to which the Irish had
+given its consent, or by an Act of the Imperial<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> Parliament, in which
+representatives from Ireland should have a voice.</p>
+
+<p>The Bill was debated with great force of argument, but hardly in its high
+constitutional aspects. Like the plan of Butt, and every plan of the kind,
+it impliedly, if not expressly, repealed the Union, for the very creation
+of an Irish Parliament destroyed the real authority of the Imperial
+Parliament, the symbol and guarantee of the Union, in one of the main
+parts of the Three Kingdoms. It effected a radical change in our polity as
+a whole, for practically it gave birth to three Parliaments, the Irish
+sitting in College Green in Dublin, the British at Westminster without
+Irish members, and the Imperial, properly to be only so-called, when
+assembled upon one great occasion; and, even more distinctly than the
+scheme of Butt, it let the principle of Federation into the constitution
+of the State. And it did all this obscurely, indirectly, and, so to speak,
+with reserve; the hand of a veiled prophet appeared in his work; this must
+have led to endless controversies dangerous in the extreme. Nor did the
+Bill even attempt to mark out the distinction between Irish, British, and
+Imperial affairs, which its author had declared was a <i>sine qu&acirc; non</i>; this
+distinction, in fact, cannot be drawn, as Mr. Gladstone acknowledged
+afterwards; Irish, British, and Imperial affairs so run into each other,
+that they cannot be divided into separate heads, to be under the
+jurisdiction of different Parliaments. The conditions, too, which Mr.
+Gladstone described, as essential to a measure of Home Rule, were, in no
+sense, fulfilled. &#8216;The Unity of the Empire,&#8217; that is, of Great Britain and
+Ireland, as Mr. Gladstone no doubt had in his mind, was not secured, or,
+even in name, preserved; the subordinate Irish Parliament and its superior
+might, and probably would, come in serious conflict; this was absolutely
+inconsistent with the unity to be maintained. The &#8216;political equality of
+England, Scotland, and Ireland&#8217; was not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> assured; the Bill placed Ireland
+in a degraded position, especially in all that dealt with taxation, and
+through the exclusion of Irish members from the British House of Commons.
+It did not &#8216;produce an equitable distribution of Imperial burdens,&#8217; for
+the financial arrangements were thoroughly unjust, and subjected Ireland
+arbitrarily to a most galling tribute, without giving her the means of
+making a complaint. It did not &#8216;provide safeguards for the minority,&#8217; that
+is, for the loyal classes of Protestant and Catholic Ireland; it handed
+them over to an Irish Parliament, certain to be for years an instrument of
+their avowed enemies; and its supplement, a Land Purchase Bill, did not
+furnish a third part of the funds required to buy out the Irish landlords,
+a class which, Mr. Gladstone declared, it was &#8216;an obligation of duty and
+honour&#8217; to save harmless, and which he admitted an Irish Parliament would,
+probably, plunder and destroy. Lastly, the Bill did not secure &#8216;finality;&#8217;
+it was in no sense in the nature of a &#8216;permanent settlement,&#8217; as
+subsequent events have conclusively proved.<a name='fna_24' id='fna_24' href='#f_24'><small>[24]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>It may be urged, however, that even if this measure made a fundamental
+change in the constitution of these realms, and did not satisfy the
+conditions its author laid down, still the real question was, would it
+bring peace to Ireland, and improve the relations in which she stood
+towards Great Britain? Mr. Gladstone and his followers assumed that this
+would be the case; the &#8216;Union of Hearts&#8217; was to accomplish marvels; but
+this assumption was without the slightest warrant. The most favourable way
+to consider the subject, from the point of view of the Home Rule party, is
+to suppose that Great Britain and Ireland were two communities, in no
+sense estranged from each other, and that Ireland was not a widely divided
+people; and that both were not unwilling to accept the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> Bill, as a kind of
+modification of the partnership made by the Treaty of Union. This
+supposition would be obviously contrary to the facts; but, even on this
+supposition, the proposed measure would have completely failed to attain
+its objects, and, on any ordinary view of human nature, would have
+exasperated Great Britain and Ireland alike, and could not have been a
+&#8216;message of peace&#8217; to Ireland. The Parliament at Westminster would soon
+have found out that its real sovereignty in Ireland had been practically
+destroyed; that the Irish Parliament could, in many ways, interfere with
+British and Imperial affairs; that most of the checks on its powers were
+of little avail; this would certainly deeply offend the deceived British
+nation. The Irish Parliament, on the other hand, would necessarily resent
+the harsh limitations by which it had been bound; yet as it had most of
+the powers of a real Parliament, it could very effectually evade or impair
+these; could, through its Executive, largely annul them; could, at least,
+make continual and powerful protests. Discord, and perhaps conflict,
+between Great Britain and Ireland, from the nature of the case, would be
+the result; and, besides, there were special provisions in the Bill which
+would be deemed intolerable by five-sixths of Irishmen. Even loyal Ireland
+would not endure the banishment of Irish representatives from the British
+House of Commons, which would have power to impose the Irish Customs and
+Excise; this would be taxation without representation, in the very worst
+sense. It was monstrous that Ireland was to contribute a large sum for the
+charge of the Empire and yet was to have no voice in the Empire&#8217;s affairs;
+it was humiliating that a British official was to have absolute control
+over the whole Irish revenue. All this was subjecting Ireland to a
+degrading tribute; it should be added that the prerogative of the English
+Privy Council, to set aside practically Acts of the Irish Parliament,
+would have provoked the deepest and most widespread discontent.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> The Bill,
+in a word, revealed strange ignorance of the feelings of mankind; it would
+have worked on the assumption only that human beings in Great Britain and
+Ireland were without passions and wills of their own; it would have been
+blown to the winds, when put to the test.</p>
+
+<p>But &#8216;the circumstances,&#8217; to adopt the words of Burke, &#8216;are what render
+every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind;&#8217;<a name='fna_25' id='fna_25' href='#f_25'><small>[25]</small></a>
+what were the circumstances in the present instance? England and Catholic
+Ireland had been long opposed; the Land and the National Leagues formed a
+conspiracy against our rule in Ireland; England had interests in Ireland
+of the first importance; she had a large community of her own blood and
+faith in Ireland, attached to the Union and the old mother country.
+Ireland had been distracted for ages by feuds of race and religion;
+Protestant and Catholic Ireland stood apart from each other; the Irish
+Parliament, created by the Bill, would certainly be an instrument of the
+heads of the Catholic masses, supported by Parnell and his band, and by
+Fenians across the Atlantic. Under these conditions, Home Rule would have
+been a fatal gift, ruinous to Great Britain and Ireland alike. Suppose,
+for example, that an Irish Parliament, established in College Green, since
+1886, had ruled Ireland during the war in South Africa. It would
+unquestionably have taken the side of the Boers, as the Nationalist
+leaders have openly done; and it would have possessed the means of doing
+infinite mischief. It could have passed resolutions condemning the war;
+have called on Irishmen to keep aloof from the British army; have
+discouraged recruiting throughout Ireland; have sent messages of good will
+to the Boer Government. But probably it would have gone far beyond these,
+its constitutional, rights; it could have winked at the preparation of an
+armed force in Ireland to be despatched to the aid of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> the Boers; it
+could have invited Foreign Powers to put a stop to the conflict; nay, it
+could have laid hands on the Irish taxes, and refused to &#8216;pay tribute to
+an alien Government;&#8217; and what, in these cases, would have been England&#8217;s
+means of obtaining redress, save by the power of the sword? In the
+instance of other wars, the same course would be followed; we cannot
+forget that at Nationalist meetings, the Mahdi, the Dervishes, nay, all
+our enemies, were the objects of the applause of shouting Irish
+multitudes. And as the Irish Parliament could injure England in war, so it
+could embarrass and annoy her, in a hundred ways, in peace. There was
+nothing in the Bill to prevent Protection in Ireland, for the Irish
+Parliament could vote bounties on Irish exports; there was nothing to
+prevent the issue of Irish assignats, to mask confiscation of different
+kinds; and recourse would not improbably be had to these very expedients.
+It is unnecessary to dwell on what would be the legislation of the Irish
+Parliament at home, and the administration of the Executive it would have
+a right to set up. Composed as it would be, it would abolish &#8216;landlordism&#8217;
+by a stroke of the pen, or by merely preventing the recovery of rent; it
+would simply turn society upside down, and establish a Catholic ascendency
+by many degrees worse than Protestant ascendency ever was; it would, in a
+word, let revolution loose in the island. Protestant Ireland would, as a
+matter of course, resist; a savage war of race and creed would certainly
+follow; the scenes of 1690 and 1798 might well be repeated; and the
+struggle would end in general bankruptcy. England, in her own interest,
+and in that of her friends in Ireland, would assuredly intervene, under
+conditions like these; and the concession of Home Rule would probably lead
+to reconquest.</p>
+
+<p>The Home Rule Bill of 1886&mdash;apart from the fatal evils it must have
+caused&mdash;placed Ireland in such an inferior position, that every Irishman
+of spirit ought to have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> treated it with contempt; it was so dangerous to
+Great Britain, and, indeed, to the Empire, that John Bright declared that
+not twenty English members approved of it at heart. Mr. Gladstone himself,
+it should be remarked, regarded it with no doubtful misgivings; he
+presented it to the House of Commons as &#8216;but a choice of evils;&#8217; his
+measure itself, in many passages, revealed the profoundest distrust of the
+Parliament he proposed to create. Parnell, imposing his imperious will on
+his followers, accepted the Bill with professions of delight; this was
+effusively welcomed by the emotional statesman, deceived by an
+unscrupulous plotter, over and over again; it is now known this was a mere
+pretence; Home Rule, under the conditions of the scheme, would have been
+made a stepping-stone only for larger demands; and this, indeed, might
+have been easily foreseen. The Bill was rejected by a majority which did
+not express the true sense of the House of Commons, and showed how strong
+may be the ties of party; the great body of the Liberals, as, doubtless,
+they now bitterly regret, threw in their lot with Mr. Gladstone in his
+most reckless venture. It is of more importance to observe what the views
+on the subject were of the conspirators in America, who had set the Land
+and National Leagues on foot, and had supplied almost the whole of their
+funds; without their assistance the movement led by Parnell would probably
+have never struggled into life. The prospect opened by the Home Rule Bill
+was thus welcomed by the Clan na Gael, the most energetic and daring of
+the Fenian parties; it will be noted that it was to be a means only to a
+very decisive end. &#8216;The achievement of a National Parliament gives us a
+footing on Irish soil; it gives us the agencies and instrumentalities of a
+government <i>de facto</i>, at the very commencement of the Irish struggle. It
+places the government of the land in the hands of our friends and
+brothers. It removes the Castle&#8217;s rings, and gives us what we may well
+express as the plant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> of an armed revolution.&#8217;<a name='fna_26' id='fna_26' href='#f_26'><small>[26]</small></a> And at a great Fenian
+meeting held after the rejection of the Bill, one of the leading speakers
+dropped these significant words: &#8216;We have no desire to force the hand of
+Parnell, or to drive the Irish people into war unprepared. All that we
+demand is this, and we will be satisfied with nothing less&mdash;that no leader
+of the Irish people, who is supposed to speak for them, shall commit
+himself, or them, to accepting as a final settlement, bills of relief
+unworthy of the dignity of Ireland&#8217;s national demand. We are perfectly
+willing to see them accept such bills as that of Gladstone, as a
+settlement on account, but that must not be accepted as closing the
+transaction. We see no wisdom in it. It lowers the tone of the national
+cause. It lowers the spirit of the true people. To ask them to subside to
+a species of mere provincialism is an outrage on their struggle of seven
+hundred years for liberty. We admit that it may be good policy on the part
+of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Davitt to be what is called moderate in tone; but
+for us, who represent the national idea of the Irish people, it would be
+worse than folly to conceal our sentiments. We recognise that Ireland is
+incapable of fighting at present.&#8217;<a name='fna_27' id='fna_27' href='#f_27'><small>[27]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gladstone dissolved Parliament when it had thrown the Bill out; he
+appears really to have believed that the nation would give its sanction to
+Home Rule. At the General Election of 1886, he exerted himself &#8216;in the
+sacred cause of Ireland,&#8217; with the energy he had shown in his Midlothian
+Campaign; he associated his new Irish policy with appeals to the
+multitude; the opposition to him was that &#8216;of the classes against the
+masses;&#8217; in a word, the enthusiastic, and perhaps sincere, convert played,
+with little scruple, the part of a mere demagogue. But England pronounced
+against him, with no uncertain voice; &#8216;men of education and property,&#8217; as
+he sadly acknowledged,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> resisted him with the steadfastness of the English
+nature; a great majority was sent into the House of Commons pledged
+against Home Rule; Lord Salisbury&#8217;s Government came again into office. It
+deserves special notice that the rejection of the Bill did not, as was
+predicted would be the case, arouse anything like real discontent in
+Ireland, or cause her Catholic community to stir; this spectacle, which
+has been seen over and over again, proves how little the main body of the
+Irish people care for a political revolution of the kind; and how Home
+Rule, as Parnell and his band conceived it, was the work of a conspiracy
+of foreign origin, seeking, through it, to subvert British rule in
+Ireland. The real purpose of these men was very clearly shown at a
+Convention assembled at Chicago, in the summer of 1886; speeches of the
+most incendiary nature were made; and two of Parnell&#8217;s envoys, despatched
+to collect funds &#8216;for the cause,&#8217; announced that, after the failure of Mr.
+Gladstone&#8217;s measure, their &#8216;duty was to make the government of Ireland by
+England impossible.&#8217; Two or three years of trouble in Ireland followed; it
+is unnecessary to refer to these at any length. A season of agricultural
+distress and of a fall in prices made the payment of Irish rents
+difficult; the occasion was seized by the heads of the National League,
+which had gradually been acquiring formidable strength; the &#8216;Plan of
+Campaign&#8217; was set afoot; and another attack was made on the Irish landed
+gentry, with the ultimate object of paralysing the Irish Government, as
+had been solemnly proclaimed at Chicago. The social disorder of this
+period was not so deeply marked with horrible deeds of blood, as the
+Saturnalia of the Land League were; but the movement was, perhaps, not
+less dangerous; the cruel practice of &#8216;boycotting&#8217; was reduced to a
+system, and caused widespread misery and distress; an agrarian war was
+carried on in a few counties; judges, magistrates, and juries were
+terrorised in the administration of the law; and there were too<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> numerous
+instances of atrocious crimes. But a firm hand was at the helm of the
+Irish Government; Mr. Balfour did not palter with sedition and treason;
+the conspiracy was before long put down; and it should be added that
+&#8216;boycotting&#8217; and &#8216;the Plan of Campaign&#8217; were unequivocally condemned at
+Rome.</p>
+
+<p>In this struggle between the forces of disorder and law, the Rump of the
+Liberal party, which had accepted Home Rule, freely declared itself on the
+side of the National League and of anarchy. Mr. Gladstone, however,
+towered over his fellows; his vehement and, when aroused, unscrupulous
+nature, has never been more unfortunately displayed. He had been three
+times at the head of the State, charged with the administration of Irish
+affairs; the Government in office was engaged in a conflict with a
+conspiracy of no contemptible strength; yet Mr. Gladstone did not shrink
+from throwing his full weight into the scale against it, and giving his
+sanction to the movement led by Parnell and his creatures. His conduct was
+so flagrantly at odds with his former self, that, but for the gravity of
+the situation, it would have been ludicrous; it consisted in adoring what
+he had burned, and burning what he had adored; nothing like it had been
+seen since Fox, breaking away from the traditions of British statesmen,
+flung himself into the arms of Jacobin France, and rejoiced at every
+reverse that befell England.<a name='fna_28' id='fna_28' href='#f_28'><small>[28]</small></a> A remarkable episode in the politics of
+the day was not without real effect on events that followed. The acts of
+the Land and, in part, of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> National Leagues, and of the leaders of the
+revolutionary movements which had convulsed Ireland, were investigated by
+the judges of the Special Commission appointed by Parliament for the
+purpose; the inquiry, which lasted many months, was of supreme importance;
+such a damning sentence was never pronounced on a body of public men, as
+that pronounced on Parnell and his followers, though the accusation of
+treason was not brought into question.<a name='fna_29' id='fna_29' href='#f_29'><small>[29]</small></a> This decision was sufficient
+for well-informed and sensible men; but Parnell was acquitted on a
+personal, but minor, charge, that of having been the author of the
+well-known forged letters all but approving of the assassinations in the
+Ph&oelig;nix Park; Mr. Gladstone and his adherents welcomed him as an injured
+martyr; the House of Commons rang with their plaudits when he re-entered
+its walls. For a few months Parnell became a popular personage in
+democratic England; he had negotiations with Mr. Gladstone with respect to
+Home Rule, the tenor of which has not transpired; his satellites appeared
+at many public meetings, and split the ears of the groundlings with
+plausible talk about &#8216;self-government&#8217; for Ireland and the &#8216;Union of
+Hearts.&#8217; This mystification and falsehood were not without effect; the
+cause of Home Rule made a kind of progress in England; and, strange to
+say, the fall of Parnell which ere long followed&mdash;I shall not dwell on its
+squalid and grotesque incidents&mdash;had an influence in the same direction.
+Ireland had been brought into a state of comparative repose; the power of
+the National League appeared broken; the formidable leader of the
+conspiracy had left the stage; his adherents were scattered sheep, which
+had not a shepherd. With the ignorance of Irish affairs so common to
+Englishmen, and the desire, partly selfish, but partly generous, to &#8216;get
+rid of the Irish difficulty,&#8217; by any tolerable means, thousands in the
+constituencies, even in England,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> lately bitterly hostile to it, were
+gradually won over to the idea of Home Rule.</p>
+
+<p>The General Election of 1892 followed; a number of causes, in addition to
+that I have set forth, contributed to favour the Home Rule movement. The
+&#8216;swing of the pendulum,&#8217; seen in British politics, since Democracy has
+gained the ascendant, very distinctly appeared; the &#8216;idea that each side
+ought to have its innings&#8217; was widely spread; many Unionist seats were
+lost by these means. The extraordinary energy shown by Mr. Gladstone, at
+an age far beyond the ordinary span, had considerable influence on the
+masses; and though his real authority had been long on the wane, he was
+still the popular figure in England and, above all, in Scotland. He had,
+also, carefully kept his Home Rule scheme to himself; it was announced by
+his followers that his next measure for securing &#8216;self-government,&#8217; as it
+was called, for Ireland, would be free from the manifest faults of that of
+1886, and would finally, and happily, settle the question. A large part of
+the electorate was gained in this way; but the influence that most
+effectually assisted Mr. Gladstone was, essentially, of a very different
+kind. The Anti-Unionist Liberals had been out of power for many years;
+though they had long been split into separate groups, they resolved to
+combine against the common enemy, and to drive the Unionist Government
+from its seat, by appeals to the ideas they assumed were dominant in
+democratic England and Scotland. The Newcastle programme was
+ostentatiously published; the question of Home Rule was mixed up with
+projects for disestablishing the Church in England and Wales, for the
+destruction or the emasculation of the House of Lords, for enforcing
+temperance by the tyranny of the Local Veto, for extending the suffrage
+and raising the labourer&#8217;s status; in this way they satisfied themselves
+they &#8216;would sweep the country.&#8217; They knew, indeed, that Mr. Gladstone had
+no heart for much of their policy; but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> his passionate eagerness to
+accomplish Home Rule was notorious; they believed that by giving him a
+cordial support on this question, they would secure his powerful aid for
+the others, and that by the process known as &#8216;log-rolling,&#8217; they would
+attain their objects. The Unionist party was weakened at the election; but
+the sanguine hopes of its opponents were not fulfilled. Many of the
+Radical cries were far from popular; they nearly all combined large
+classes against them; England returned a large majority to the House of
+Commons pledged against Home Rule, if not so considerable as six years
+before; and though Scotland and Wales were, in the main, favourable to Mr.
+Gladstone&#8217;s policy, still the electorate of Great Britain, as a whole,
+pronounced against it. The election in Ireland presented features which,
+with respect to Home Rule, were of marked significance. In 1886, as in
+1885, the educated and upper classes were swamped at the polls, by the
+flood of illiterate and indigent multitudes; the Irish Catholic Church
+used, nay, abused, its immense authority, to secure votes for Mr.
+Gladstone&#8217;s coming measure. The same spectacle was beheld in 1892; but an
+element of confusion and disorder came in; the leaders of the factions,
+divided by the fall of Parnell, though Nationalists, ferociously flew at
+each other&#8217;s throats; the election was marked by disgraceful scenes of
+lawlessness. These certainly prefigured what would be the character of a
+future Irish Parliament sitting in College Green.</p>
+
+<p>This election gave Mr. Gladstone a majority of some forty seats in the
+House of Commons, but a majority composed of not well-united elements; and
+the best opinion of England was strongly averse to his policy. But the
+veteran statesman&mdash;he was in his eighty-third year&mdash;did not pause for a
+moment in his headlong venture, though ominous sounds were being already
+heard; after the resignation of Lord Salisbury, through a weak adverse
+vote, his rival became Prime Minister for the fourth time.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> He had staked
+everything to obtain the success of the cause to which he had passionately
+devoted his declining years; he brought in his second Home Rule Bill in
+the first months of 1893. The measure had much in common with that of
+1886; but in some respects it was very different, especially in one
+feature of supreme importance. An Irish Parliament was again to be set up
+in Dublin; but it was to be a much smaller body than that proposed by the
+previous Bill; it was to be composed of a Legislative Council of
+forty-eight members only, and of a Legislative Assembly of only a hundred
+and three; these were analogous to the First and Second Orders of 1886,
+but were not to be even half in numbers; and no Irish peers were to have a
+place in the new Parliament. The Legislative Council and Assembly,
+differing here from the original scheme, were to sit, not together, but
+apart; but the Legislative Council, like the First Order, was to have a
+temporary suspensive veto on the Assembly&#8217;s acts; the Assembly, too, like
+the Second Order, possessing a majority which would place real power in
+its hands; and both bodies, it should be added, being more democratic than
+the two which were to have been created in 1886. The new Irish Parliament,
+like that to be formed seven years before, was restricted by
+limitations&mdash;these much the same as those contained in the former Bill&mdash;in
+a number of Imperial and domestic matters; it was, like its predecessor,
+to be subjected to the same kind of veto, and to nearly the same authority
+of the English Privy Council. In finance, the &#8216;tribute,&#8217; which had been
+loudly condemned by all parties in Ireland, was given up; there was to be
+no British official to lay his hands on Irish revenue, and to divert it
+from its legitimate uses; but the Irish Customs were to be appropriated to
+the Imperial charge, which Ireland was declared to be justly liable to
+pay; and this was a sum of about two millions and a half, with an addition
+for a time of one million, a sum less than the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> estimate made in 1886. The
+Irish Parliament, however, if thus made largely subordinate, was like the
+Parliament of the preceding Bill, to be in many, and most important,
+respects supreme. It was to rule Ireland as a sovereign power, subject to
+the limitations by which it was to be bound; it could make, change, and
+repeal laws, as regards the Irish community, almost as it pleased; it
+could, in a word, do nearly everything within the province of a real
+Parliament. Above all, it could appoint and control the Irish Executive
+Government, to which the administration of Irish affairs would belong; and
+it would thus have complete power over the most important machinery of the
+State.</p>
+
+<p>The Bills of 1886 and of 1893 so far resembled each other, with some
+distinctions; but, in other respects, they markedly differed. The
+supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, implied but not expressed in the
+first scheme, was unequivocally asserted in the second, though this
+supremacy could not be effective, as respects Ireland. The Imperial
+Parliament was nominally left untouched by both Bills, though this was a
+play on words only; but it was to hold a position in the second it was not
+to hold in the first; the Union was not in terms repealed by either
+measure, though virtually it was repealed by both, through the mere
+creation of an Irish Parliament. The Bill of 1886 had, as its complement,
+a Land Purchase Bill; in fact, both were made parts of the same policy; a
+sum of &pound;50,000,000 was to be an indemnity for Irish landlords who should
+think fit to part with their estates; for Mr. Gladstone, we have seen, had
+declared that it was &#8216;an obligation of duty and honour&#8217; to protect this
+order of men; and he asserted that Parliament would, doubtless, vote any
+further sums required, a singular exhibition of credulous hope, for these
+would have amounted to &pound;150,000,000 at least; and he had himself, in a
+speech addressed to Lord George Hamilton, valued the lands of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> Ireland at
+&pound;300,000,000. But what was to be deemed sacred, in 1886, had a very
+different aspect in 1893; the settlement of the Irish land was, indeed,
+withheld for three years from the Irish Parliament, but, after this brief
+space of time, this was to be certainly left to a body, which Mr.
+Gladstone had evidently thought would make short work of the Irish landed
+gentry, and would drive them, in beggary, out of their own country. These
+differences, however, between the two Bills, sank into insignificance
+compared to a vital distinction which made them essentially unlike each
+other, and made their projects of Home Rule completely dissimilar. The
+exclusion of Irish representatives from the House of Commons at
+Westminster, under the measure of 1886, was palpably unjust, and had been
+condemned with much force of argument. Mr. Gladstone proposed to redress
+this wrong by summoning eighty Irish members into the Imperial House of
+Commons; these were to have no cognisance of British questions, but were
+to have a right to vote on Imperial and even Irish questions, though the
+Imperial Parliament was to have little or no power in Ireland, and an
+Irish Parliament was practically to fill its place, and to have all but
+supreme authority over Irish affairs. This strange expedient obviously
+made the Home Rule schemes of 1886 and 1893 altogether different; but Mr.
+Gladstone never saw the essential distinction; he maintained that the
+inclusion of the Irish members was little more than a detail of the
+measure. It would be perhaps unfair to insist that he introduced this
+immense change in order only to strengthen his already enfeebled party,
+which would be greatly in want of Irish votes at Westminster; more
+probably his intellect, yielding to old age, did not thoroughly grasp all
+that was involved in his project.<a name='fna_30' id='fna_30' href='#f_30'><small>[30]</small></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>The Bill of 1893, from a purely constitutional point of view, was
+infinitely more objectionable than that of 1886. It not only, I have said,
+virtually repealed the Union; it created a kind of Federalism in these
+realms to which there has never been a parallel. The Irish Parliament was
+practically to rule Ireland; no British members were to show their faces
+in it; it was to be all but the sovereign of the Irish State. The British
+Parliament was nominally to be sovereign of the British State;
+representatives from Ireland were not to appear in it, and, in theory,
+they were not to deal with British questions. The Imperial Parliament was
+to be analogous to a supreme Federal Council; this ought to have
+jurisdiction over Imperial affairs alone; but eighty Irish members were to
+have seats in it, and they were to have a right to vote on Imperial and
+Irish questions, though Ireland was to have a separate Parliament of her
+own. This arrangement, in conception, was simply monstrous; it gave
+Ireland powers to which she had no pretence to a claim; it really
+subjected Great Britain to her; it formed a Federation in which a weak and
+small State was to have immense authority over another tenfold as strong;
+it might be described as one-sided Federalism run mad. Passing from the
+main principles to the details of the Bill, this, like its predecessor,
+did not satisfy the conditions Mr. Gladstone had deemed to be essential.
+It did not separate British, Irish, and Imperial affairs; its author
+admitted at last that this was not possible. It asserted the supremacy of
+the Imperial Parliament, and gave it a more imposing position than it had
+under the Bill of 1886; but it did not maintain the Unity of the Three
+Kingdoms; the mere creation of an Irish Parliament placed this in
+jeopardy. It did not provide for the &#8216;political equality&#8217; of Great Britain
+and Ireland, for, in contradiction to the measure of seven years before,
+it practically gave Ireland a kind of ascendency; her representatives were
+to possess rights in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> no sense to be justified. It did not provide an
+&#8216;equitable distribution of Imperial burdens;&#8217; in this province it would
+have done wrong to Great Britain; for, while it abandoned the odious Irish
+tribute of 1886, and an effective control over Irish revenue, its
+expedient of allocating the Irish Customs, and nothing else, as the only
+source for the payment of Imperial charges, would, in all probability,
+have caused the Imperial Treasury a great loss; the Customs would have
+been enormously reduced by smuggling, to which Irishmen have always been
+much addicted, which the Irish Parliament would have no interest to
+prevent, and which, very likely, it would directly encourage. Again, it
+did not create &#8216;safeguards for the minority;&#8217; as we have seen, it threw
+the Irish landed gentry, after a brief respite, to the wolves, that is, to
+the tender mercies of the Irish Parliament; and, like the measure of 1886,
+it took no heed of Protestant and loyal Catholic Ireland, as a whole,
+though this assuredly was &#8216;a minority&#8217; that required protection. Finally,
+it could not have effected a &#8216;permanent settlement&#8217; of the affairs of
+Ireland; a &#8216;lopsided&#8217; and iniquitous arrangement like this would certainly
+have had a very short existence.</p>
+
+<p>The measure of 1893, in short, would have effected a complete revolution
+in the polity of these realms; it would have given the least important of
+the Three Kingdoms an iniquitous authority over the most important; it
+would unnaturally have placed weakness in superiority to power; it would
+have subjected the dominant to the lesser partner; all this, it will be
+observed, followed from the inclusion of Irish representatives in the
+Imperial Parliament, who, though a Parliament in Dublin was to rule
+Ireland, were to have a right to deal with Imperial and Irish questions.
+Mr. Gladstone, I repeat, seems never to have understood the strange and
+ruinous consequences this would involve; but this can be made manifest by
+one or two examples. The Irish members<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> would be excluded from the British
+Parliament, and would have no right to vote on purely British questions,
+say upon the extension of the British railway system, or the
+disfranchisement of an English or Scottish borough. But they would have
+eighty seats in the Imperial Parliament; and as it was impossible to
+separate a number of British questions from those of an Imperial or Irish
+character, they would have a most potent influence over British affairs;
+for example, they could legitimately vote upon such subjects as the
+confidence to be placed in a British Ministry, the financial relations
+between Great Britain and Ireland, or the validity of British incumbrances
+affecting Irish estates. The exclusion, however, of Irish members from the
+British Parliament, and their introduction into the Imperial Parliament,
+would have led to even more disastrous results; it must, in many
+instances, have caused a complete paralysis of the State. This in-and-out
+plan, as it was derisively called, must have made Parliamentary government
+well-nigh impossible; if Irish members were to have a right to vote in the
+same House of Commons on Imperial and Irish questions, but were not to
+have a right to vote on British questions, to vote, say, upon a war with a
+Foreign Power, and upon the domicile and status of Irish subjects, but not
+to vote on matters of purely British commerce, there might, and very often
+would be, two conflicting majorities in the leading House of Parliament;
+Parliamentary affairs would be brought to a stand; the tenure of even the
+strongest Ministry would be utterly insecure. It is needless to point out
+that the relations between Great Britain and Ireland would almost
+certainly have been more strained, under the Bill of 1893, than they would
+have been under that of 1886; and that the government of Ireland by the
+Irish Parliament, would, under both, have been much of the same character.
+The British nation would have been indignant at the humiliation of their
+ancient Parliament, which would be sometimes placed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> at the mercy of Irish
+members; it would have condemned the weakening in Ireland of its
+authority, through the mere establishment of an Irish Parliament; it would
+have been sorely vexed that Irish smuggling would filch away a large part
+of British revenue. It should be borne in mind, too, that the Irish
+members, who would have been let into the Imperial Parliament, would have
+been more difficult to deal with, by many degrees, more openly disloyal,
+more obstructive, than Irish Nationalists could be, as affairs stand at
+present; they would have the support of the Irish Parliament; the Imperial
+Parliament could hardly impose a check on them. As for the rule of the
+Irish Parliament, within its proper domain, it would have been the same,
+or much the same, under either measure; that is, it would have been a
+succession of angry wranglings with England and oppression in Ireland,
+leading to anarchy and general ruin.</p>
+
+<p>The Home Rule Bill of 1886, in a word, bad measure as it was, was
+innoxious compared to the Home Rule Bill of 1893. The fatal tendency of
+the scheme was quickly perceived; the sound mind of England was profoundly
+stirred; the Bill was publicly burned in the City of London; innumerable
+petitions against it flowed in; an immense assembly, representing loyal
+Catholic and Protestant Ireland, met in the capital, and denounced this
+whole policy in most determined language. As had happened, too, seven
+years before, the Press of Great Britain, all but universally, condemned
+the new measure as hopelessly bad; it was significant that the Liberal
+Press was well-nigh silent, and that Mr. Gladstone was supported by very
+few petitions. The Opposition simply tore the Bill to shreds in the House
+of Commons; but the self-deluded Minister desperately held his course; the
+Radical groups servilely gave him their votes; the process of
+&#8216;log-rolling,&#8217; never before so recklessly displayed, kept his petty
+majority almost intact, a crying disgrace to any party in the State. At
+last, whether afraid of the country rising against him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> or yielding to the
+instigation of his Irish allies&mdash;his subserviency to their truculence had
+been most painful&mdash;Mr. Gladstone forced the measure through the House of
+Commons by a method never employed before; &#8216;closure by compartments,&#8217;
+rightly compared to the &#8216;guillotine,&#8217; put an end to resistance by
+iniquitous means. The Bill passed the Lower House by thirty-four votes
+only; not half of it had been examined or discussed; the part that had,
+had been so completely transformed, that its parent could hardly have
+known his own offspring. The most notable of these changes was that the
+in-and-out plan was given up; its ruinous effects had been fully dragged
+into the light, but an arrangement, perhaps even worse, had been placed in
+its stead. Ireland was to retain her Parliament in College Green; but the
+eighty Irish members were to have a right to sit in the Imperial
+Parliament, and to vote on all questions, not only Imperial and Irish, but
+strictly British alike. A philosophic and calm-minded writer has indicated
+what this would involve: &#8216;Irish members may disestablish the Church of
+England, though England is to have no voice in the pettiest of Irish
+affairs. Irish members are to be allowed to impose taxes on England, say,
+to double the income tax, though of these taxes no inhabitant of Ireland
+will pay a penny; the Irish delegation, and this is the worst grievance of
+all, is to be enabled, in combination with a British minority, to detach
+Wales from England, or to vote Home Rule for Scotland, or to federalise
+still further the United Kingdom by voting that Man, Jersey, and Guernsey
+shall send members to the Imperial Parliament.&#8217;<a name='fna_31' id='fna_31' href='#f_31'><small>[31]</small></a> To say that this
+proposal would be unconstitutional would be to do it too much honour; it
+was scandalous in the existing situation of affairs; it implied that heads
+of the National League, leaders of a rebellious and socialistic movement,
+would have the power, without restriction or check, to rule the Imperial<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+Parliament, in many instances, with reference to exclusively English and
+Scottish questions; it practically bound Great Britain hand and foot in
+fetters to Ireland; it was rightly called &#8216;an absurd piece of infamy.&#8217; It
+is unnecessary to say that the system it would have established could not
+have stood a trial of even three months; England, whenever crossed, would
+have indignantly swept it away. But Nemesis had commended the poisoned
+chalice to Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s lips; the project, on which he had staked his
+fortunes, was that which he had incorrectly ascribed to Butt, and had
+declared to be impossible and worse.</p>
+
+<p>The Bill, it was notorious, could not have passed the House of Commons had
+not its rejection by the House of Lords been assured beforehand. It
+received its quietus, in that assembly, by a majority of about ten to one;
+the mind of England felt unquestionable relief; a great national peril had
+been averted. Exactly as had happened in 1886, scarcely a sound of
+discontent was heard in Ireland; the demand for Home Rule, in fact, is
+largely a fictitious cry, with which the great body of Irishmen has little
+or no sympathy; the evidence of this can be no longer doubtful. Mr.
+Gladstone retired, within a few months, from public life; one of his last
+acts was to shoot a Parthian arrow at the House of Lords, which, happily
+for these realms, had wrecked his policy; since that time he has
+disappeared from the scene; few eminent statesmen have been so soon
+forgotten. Home Rule was scattered to the winds at the General Election of
+1895; it has not been a prominent question at that of 1900; but if Ireland
+has sent more than eighty of its supporters into the House of Commons, the
+best elements in her community remain angrily hostile; and the opinion of
+Great Britain is distinctly adverse. For many reasons, however, as I have
+remarked, it is impossible to ignore the subject; in the strange chances
+and changes of British politics, and under our system of party government,
+a minister may again<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> become an advocate of Home Rule, though certainly
+not in the present Parliament. Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s Bills, it is likely, will
+not be heard of again; but Home Rule may be embodied in other forms; I may
+briefly refer to, and comment, on these. The project of restoring the
+Parliament of 1782-1800, an ideal of O&#8217;Connell during many years of his
+life, will hardly be revived in these times; the conditions in Great
+Britain and Ireland have so completely changed. The centripetal forces
+which, a hundred years ago, held the British and Irish Parliaments, in the
+main, together&mdash;they differed, however, on important questions&mdash;have long
+ago been all but completely destroyed; the present Irish Parliament could
+not be an assembly identified in race and faith with England; its House of
+Commons could not be elected by a small body of Protestants, and latterly
+by masses of Catholic peasants, the serfs of their landlords. The
+centrifugal forces, on the other hand, those which would keep the two
+Parliaments utterly apart, would probably be overwhelmingly strong; the
+Irish House of Commons would practically, at least for years, be ruled by
+the nominees of the National League and of the Irish Catholic priesthood;
+its electorate would, for the most part, be subject to these dominant
+powers; and Protestant Ireland would alike be swamped and incensed.
+Nevertheless, the restoration of what has been called Grattan&#8217;s
+Parliament, would, in my judgment, be a much better project than either of
+Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s schemes of Home Rule. The Irish Parliament would be bound
+by known and fixed precedents, which it would be difficult wholly to
+disregard; an Irish House of Lords would exist as a check on the House of
+Commons; above all&mdash;and this is of the very first importance&mdash;the Irish
+Executive would not be subject to the Irish Parliament; it would be
+appointed from Westminster by British statesmen. A Parliament of this type
+could hardly effect the ruinous mischiefs which Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s Irish
+Parliaments could certainly effect.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>Ireland, it has been urged, would obtain Home Rule, if she were
+assimilated to one of our self-governing colonies. These nations, as they
+may fitly be called, are by no means, as is commonly supposed, wholly
+independent of the Crown and the Imperial Parliament; they have
+Parliaments and Executives of their own; but these in theory, and partly
+in fact, are subordinate. No Act passed by the Parliament of a
+self-governing colony can in any way contravene an Imperial statute; the
+governor of a self-governing colony is a real governor; appeals run to the
+English Privy Council from colonial Courts of Justice. Nevertheless,
+self-governing colonies are practically all but independent; they pay no
+contribution to Imperial charges; they maintain their own garrisons,
+without a British army in their midst&mdash;at least, in a great many cases;
+they are hardly ever interfered with by the Imperial Parliament, or by the
+men in power at Westminster. Why, it may be argued, should not the same
+liberties belong to Ireland, for centuries the peccant part of these
+kingdoms; would not the concession make her as loyal as most of our
+self-governing colonies? The answer is short, but amply sufficient; the
+circumstances of our self-governing colonies and of Ireland are altogether
+different. In none of these settlements is there the profound estrangement
+which has long divided Great Britain from Ireland; in none is there a
+community in which a loyal minority is separated from a disaffected
+majority by long-standing discords of race and faith; Ireland is at our
+doors, our self-governing colonies distant. Give Ireland a Parliament like
+that of Victoria, and Ireland would break off from the British connection;
+the Irish Parliament would possess ample power to trample on and oppress
+hundreds of thousands of law-abiding men, of whom the protection was
+England&#8217;s duty; the Irish Parliament and Executive, within a few leagues
+of our coasts, could, in innumerable ways, do infinite mischief. The
+supposed analogy, therefore, completely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> fails; it would be treason to the
+State, and to loyal Irishmen, to make Ireland a self-governing colony; and
+no British politician has as yet countenanced this mode of Home Rule. It
+has been hinted again, but with bated breath and humbleness, that the
+relations of Great Britain and Ireland have been so long unfortunate, such
+a dreary record of disputes and miseries, that we should say to our
+intractable partner, &#8216;Depart in peace;&#8217; in a word, separation is a
+conceivable Home Rule policy. This proposal has never been discussed in
+Parliament; the interest, the self-respect, the pride of Englishmen almost
+forbid the thought. Yet separation, strange as it may appear, would be a
+better and more safe expedient than either of Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s schemes of
+Home Rule. The Imperial Parliament would have complete liberty to exercise
+its sovereign power in Great Britain; it would have a free hand to prevent
+injustice in Ireland, either by the strong arm, or by fiscal and other
+expedients, say, by laying an embargo on Irish products; it would not be
+subject to the exasperating but often effective checks which Home Rule
+would in any form involve; and the Imperial Executive would possess ample
+means to protect the interests of England and of her friends in Ireland.
+Let it not be forgotten that in perhaps the ablest speech ever made, in
+the House of Commons, on this subject, Peel declared that he would
+infinitely prefer separation to a repeal of the Union, by no means so evil
+a policy as Home Rule.</p>
+
+<p>A few politicians, however, have put the theory forward that &#8216;Home Rule
+all round&#8217; will meet the &#8216;national demand&#8217; of Ireland, and give her what
+they are pleased to call &#8216;self-government.&#8217; England, Scotland, Ireland,
+and perhaps Wales are to have local Parliaments to deal with their own
+affairs; Imperial affairs are to be directed by an Imperial Council. I am
+willing to admit that a scheme of this kind would be better than Mr.
+Gladstone&#8217;s Home Rule Bill of 1893; it would be less illogical, possibly
+not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> more disastrous. But I must be permitted to doubt whether these sages
+understand what their project certainly involves; this, indeed, seems to
+be rather in the nature of a device to angle for Nationalist votes,
+without scruple, and then to propose a plan which England, Scotland,
+Ireland, and Wales have never asked for, and which England and Scotland,
+at least, would indignantly reject. This scheme is pure Federalism, in the
+proper sense of the word; let us briefly consider what this means from the
+very nature of the case. England, Scotland, Ireland, and, I assume, Wales
+would form separate States; they would have separate Legislatures and
+Executives to manage their local affairs, separate local forces, separate
+Courts of Justice; they would be, essentially, separate countries. The
+Imperial Parliament and its Executive would be the only link between them;
+there would be an Imperial army, and navy, and Imperial tribunals; but the
+Imperial Parliament and its Executive would only have jurisdiction over
+Imperial affairs, and would be only the head of the separate States as
+respects Foreign Powers. But as it would be difficult in the extreme,
+under these conditions, to distinguish local from Imperial affairs, an
+arbiter of some kind, armed with sufficient powers, would be necessary to
+say what affairs were local and what Imperial, and decisively to pronounce
+on the subject, on the innumerable occasions when the question would
+arise; and it would be necessary, too, that there should be some means,
+perhaps a Referendum to a popular vote, to effect any constitutional
+change, to reform or to abolish the Constitution itself. This scheme
+obviously would be complex, intricate, and difficult to carry into effect;
+it would be a huge system of divided, and probably conflicting, powers,
+not easy to reconcile with each other; for this, and other reasons, it
+would require a formal Constitution reduced to writing, and setting forth,
+under distinct heads or articles, the conditions of the Federation that
+had been established,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> the spheres of the authority of the separate
+States, and the sphere of the authority of the Imperial Council. Is it
+possible to suppose that the Parliament of the United Kingdom would ever
+break up this ancient and undivided Monarchy; would tamely surrender its
+sovereign rights, and would substitute a new-fangled fabric of this kind
+for the venerable and unwritten constitution of these realms&mdash;a majestic
+temple that has grown up in silence; and that the British people, at all
+events, would not rise up in wrath at the very thought of such a change?
+For Federalism &#8216;amounts to a proposal for changing the whole constitution
+of the United Kingdom. It is, in fact, the most &#8220;revolutionary&#8221; proposal,
+if the word &#8220;revolutionary&#8221; be used in its strict sense, which has ever
+been submitted to an English Parliament. The abolition of the House of
+Lords, the disestablishment of the Church, the abolition of the Monarchy,
+might leave the English Constitution far less essentially changed than
+would the adoption of Federalism.&#8217;<a name='fna_32' id='fna_32' href='#f_32'><small>[32]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>It should be observed, too, with respect to this subject, that the
+conditions, under which Federalism would have a chance of success, would
+be absolutely wanting in the present instance. England, Scotland, Ireland,
+and Wales have long been moulded into a single sovereign State, and united
+under a supreme Monarchy; no Federation, I venture to assert, has been
+formed out of communities that have had a government of this kind.
+Federations, in fact, have almost always grown out of an association of
+existing States, which desire to remain separate, and yet to be a nation
+for some purposes; they have not been evolved out of the fragments of one
+State artificially rent asunder. Again, Federalism requires that no single
+State should be enormously more powerful than the other partners; there
+must be something like equality between the different States;<a name='fna_33' id='fna_33' href='#f_33'><small>[33]</small></a> it is
+unnecessary to remark that England has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> tenfold the resources and strength
+of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; and, in truth, would annihilate the
+Federation were her will really crossed, and break through the arbitrary
+limitations imposed on her. Suppose, for example, that England had set her
+heart on a great foreign war, and had the support of her own Parliament;
+does any one suppose that, if she were outvoted, by deputies from
+Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, in the Imperial Council, even though backed
+by their own Parliaments, the people of England would submit to be
+thwarted in this way; was Samson bound by the withs of the Philistines?
+Something like this, indeed, was seen in the great Civil War; the result
+was the subjugation of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and the complete
+ascendency of England, under Cromwell; an attempt to federalise the Three
+Kingdoms might lead to a similar issue. Let us assume, however, that,
+through some evil stroke of destiny, Federalism were made the constitution
+of these realms, and that this strange arrangement could be made to work
+even for a few years; the inevitable consequences, from the nature of the
+case, would follow. The omnipotence of the Imperial Parliament, the
+mainstay of the Empire, would be gone; so would the omnipotence of the
+Imperial Executive Government, the best security for justice and for equal
+liberties. Their powers would be parcelled out and subdivided; they would
+not survive anywhere in their complete fulness; they would be distributed
+in fractions between separate States, and would be transformed and
+impaired in the process; real Imperial unity and sovereignty could have no
+existence. General national weakness would be the probable result,
+leading, perhaps, to despotism within a short time; for Federalism is
+essentially weak; I have no sympathy with Jacobin France, but the
+Committee of Public Safety rightly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> put Federalism down, when they were
+engaged in their death-struggle with Europe; and Napoleon&mdash;perhaps the
+ablest ruler of the nineteenth century&mdash;approved of their conduct. But
+weakness would not be the only consequence; the dissemination of different
+powers would certainly produce disputes and conflicts between the Federal
+and the State authorities; above all, the very existence of separate
+States and of a Federal Government would divide allegiance, and powerfully
+tend to disruption, as was seen in the great Civil War in America. As
+regards Ireland, the establishment of &#8216;Home Rule all round&#8217; would
+necessarily be attended by all the evils inseparable from Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s
+schemes; but Federalism, having been thus made manifest, would probably
+increase, and in some sense justify, the alienation of Ireland from the
+other parts of these kingdoms.</p>
+
+<p>Home Rule, therefore, whatever the form it may assume, would be, it is my
+firm conviction, incompatible with the welfare of the Three Kingdoms,
+injurious to Great Britain, a curse to Ireland. In the peculiar
+circumstances which exist in Ireland, and to which I have adverted before,
+separation, I believe, would be an expedient less disastrous than Home
+Rule of any description, this involving the creation of an Irish
+Parliament, and of an Irish Executive, which would be its instrument. Home
+Rule, in fact, gloss it over as you please, has been forced to the front
+by an Irish faction, hostile to a man to the existence of British rule in
+Ireland, and depending on Fenianism in the United States; this party would
+be all-powerful in an Irish Parliament; and Home Rule would be made the
+means to a ruinous and disgraceful end. Thousands of Irishmen, indeed,
+honestly think Home Rule would do their country good, and have little or
+nothing to do with this bad conspiracy; this too, doubtless, is the case
+with the followers of Mr. Gladstone; but Home Rule is an Irish Nationalist
+movement, and Irish Nationalist movements are dangerous to the safety of
+the State. The Union, therefore, must be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> maintained in the interest of
+Great Britain and Ireland alike; and the Union is an international
+settlement that has endured for a century. But no candid student of Irish
+history, no impartial observer of Irish affairs, from 1800 to the present
+time, can deny that the Union has been in many respects a failure. It has
+been an incident, perhaps a result, of the Union, that Presbyterian
+Ireland, rebellious from 1795 to 1798, has, we have seen, become attached
+to the British connection, and is now devotedly attached to England. The
+power of the Imperial Parliament and of its Executive have kept
+lawlessness and disorder down in Ireland, and has restrained the evil
+passions of Irish factions more than was ever the case under the rule of
+the Irish Parliament. The Imperial Parliament, too, has accomplished
+reforms in Ireland, if often unwise, in the main beneficent; and, under
+the Imperial Executive, justice in Ireland has been administered, for many
+years, in a very different way from that which was seen a century ago; its
+tribunals are perfectly free and impartial. But the Union was, in itself,
+a bad half measure, tainted with iniquity and false promises; it did gross
+wrong to Catholic Ireland; the evil consequences are felt to this hour.
+The Union has not fulfilled the sanguine hopes of Pitt; Ireland, as I have
+pointed out, is far more behind Great Britain in wealth than she was sixty
+years ago; she is perhaps the poorest country in Europe at the door of the
+richest. The Union, too, has not reconciled the feuds of religion and race
+in Ireland; they are as marked as they were a century ago, if not attended
+with such deeds of violence; above all, the Union has not made the chief
+part of the Irish community attached to England, as Pitt confidently
+predicted would certainly happen. Nor can it be denied that the Irish
+reforms of the Imperial Parliament have too often been ill-designed and
+faulty, especially, as we shall see, as regards the land; and they have
+unfortunately, in many instances, been concessions to agitation and
+dangerous social<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> movements, and have been effected too late to do real
+good. The administration of Ireland reveals the same defects; it has been
+marked by good intentions, which, sometimes, have proved gross mistakes;
+and notably it has, over and over again, been shifty, vacillating, without
+principle, and showing a curious disregard of sound Irish opinion.
+Unquestionably, too, Ireland has, on many occasions, to the indignation of
+true-hearted Irishmen, been made the mere plaything of British faction,
+with the worst results to her best interests; this has been perhaps the
+most pernicious incident that has followed the Union; and in the immense
+revolution which has transformed Ireland, within the last hundred years,
+the effects that may be traced to the Union have by no means been wholly
+on the side of good.</p>
+
+<p>These evil consequences cannot be really questioned; it is very advisable
+to consider their causes, and if possible to see how they can be removed
+or lessened. They are partly to be ascribed to the fact that Great Britain
+and Ireland are countries differing from each other in most important
+respects, and standing, so to speak, on different planes of existence;
+this alone makes British rule in Ireland difficult, and perplexes and
+embarrasses British statesmen. They are partly due to defects in the
+English national character, essentially just in intention, and even
+generous, but with no sympathy with races of a character unlike its own,
+self-asserting, obstinate, sometimes rude and offensive; this has had
+marked and evil effects in the affairs of Ireland. They are largely to be
+attributed to the nature of Irish administration, seldom consistent, and
+changing with party changes: British statesmen appear at the Castle; rule
+for a few years; and then depart and give place to successors, who
+probably carry out a very different policy. They are largely due to the
+nature of the representation of Ireland, notably of late years; the
+Nationalist party&mdash;and the same remark applies, in some degree, to the
+&#8216;Tail&#8217; of O&#8217;Connell&mdash;have shown such an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> aversion to England, have used
+such seditious and even criminal language, have been so extravagant and
+wild in their demands, and have been such a dangerous element in the House
+of Commons, that Englishmen and Scotchmen turn away from Irish questions
+with disgust, and Ireland unfortunately has often been the sufferer. But
+the most important of these causes, one which may be traced throughout
+Irish history, and has been scarcely less evident since the Union, has
+been the strange but signal ignorance of Irish affairs&mdash;of all, in a word,
+that relates to Ireland&mdash;which has been but too characteristic of the
+British people, and, in a lesser degree, of many British statesmen. This
+capital fault aroused the <i>s&aelig;va indignatio</i>, of Swift; it was exposed by
+Grattan, O&#8217;Connell, even by Lord Clare; it was condemned in severe but
+thoughtful language by Burke; it has been conspicuous during the events of
+the last twenty years.<a name='fna_34' id='fna_34' href='#f_34'><small>[34]</small></a> The resulting mischiefs<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> have been numerous and
+grave in the extreme; can nothing be done to mitigate these and to make
+them less, consistently with maintaining the Union in its full
+completeness? I, for one, have long thought that much could be effected
+were the Imperial Parliament occasionally to hold its sessions in Dublin,
+and to govern Ireland directly, so to speak, on the spot. This very
+measure was proposed by many distinguished Irishmen, during the agitation
+for Repeal in 1843-44; it was made the subject of an eloquent eulogy by
+Sheil at O&#8217;Connell&#8217;s trial; it was seriously entertained by the Whig
+opposition of the day, as we know from a remarkable letter of Lord
+Waveney. This policy unfortunately passed out of sight; but even now, I
+believe, it would do the greatest good in Ireland. It would be something
+that the proposed change would cause the wealth of England and Scotland
+largely to flow into a poor country; that Irish absenteeism would be
+diminished; that Ireland would become, more than she is now, an attractive
+place of resort to the traveller. But it would be far more that the
+presence of the Imperial Parliament in College Green would necessarily
+largely remove the ignorance of Irish affairs I have just referred to; it
+would make English and Scotch members familiar with the requirements, the
+feelings, the wishes of Irishmen; as has happily been said, it would
+render our Irish legislation and administration &#8216;racy of the Irish soil.&#8217;
+And probably more than any other expedient, it would exorcise the weak
+phantom of Home Rule by bringing Irishmen in contact with the majesty of
+the Sovereign Assembly of the British Empire. I shall not comment on the
+petty inconveniences the scheme might cause; really they are not worthy of
+serious attention.</p>
+
+<p>The occasional presence of Royalty, too, in Ireland, as was made manifest
+during the late Queen&#8217;s visit, unquestionably would have beneficent
+results. It would gratify a sentiment of Celtic nature, always attached to
+persons rather than to institutions and laws, and especially attached<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> to
+rulers and chiefs, which, in Ireland, has been scarcely gratified before;
+it would spread far and wide a happy and good influence; it would
+certainly improve the social life of Ireland, and add something to her
+scanty material wealth. The maintenance of the Union, however, is the
+first requirement of a sound Irish and Imperial policy; one means of
+strengthening that fundamental law of these realms, consistently with
+strict constitutional justice, nay, if constitutional wrong is not to
+continue, has long been apparent to impartial minds. The
+over-representation of Ireland, in the House of Commons, is a flagrant
+anomaly, acknowledged for years; as I have remarked, it was largely
+expected that this important subject would have been taken up before this
+by Lord Salisbury&#8217;s Government, and have been settled in the Parliament of
+1895-1900. Taking the test of population alone, Ireland has, compared to
+England, Wales, and Scotland, an excess of twenty-three members; taking
+the test of population and property combined, she has an excess probably
+of from thirty to forty. I am willing to allow that, in this matter, we
+ought not to follow arithmetic only; Ireland, a poor country, far away
+from Westminster, may have a claim to a representation somewhat more
+numerous than mere figures would give her. But can anything be more
+unjust, nay, absurd, than that Ireland should have one hundred and three
+members, and that the world of London, with a population about the same as
+that of Ireland, and probably possessing tenfold wealth, should have
+little more than half that number? This excessive representation must be
+reduced, and Irish Nationalists cannot here appeal to the Union; the Union
+did not save the Established Church of Ireland, secured by the Treaty in
+emphatic terms; and the Union must not be wrested to work gross injustice.
+The anomaly can be only removed by a large scheme for the redistribution
+of seats, founded on sound constitutional principles; and should this
+become law, as I confidently<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> hope will be one of the achievements of the
+existing Parliament, the Union will acquire a new security, for the
+Nationalist vote in the House of Commons would be greatly reduced, and the
+Irish Unionist vote would be greatly increased. A very few figures will
+prove this: the rural populations of the Unionist counties of Antrim and
+Down are upwards of four hundred and thirty thousand souls; the rural
+populations of the Home Rule counties of Kildare, Kilkenny, King&#8217;s,
+Longford, Wicklow, and Louth have a population less than three hundred and
+ninety-eight thousand;<a name='fna_35' id='fna_35' href='#f_35'><small>[35]</small></a> yet Antrim and Down have only eight members,
+the other six counties have no less than twelve. The same disparity runs
+through all the Irish counties; in the boroughs of Ireland it is even more
+visible. Protestant and Unionist Ireland, in a word, has probably fifteen
+or sixteen members too few; Catholic and anti-Unionist Ireland fifteen or
+sixteen too many; it is high time this plain wrong should be redressed; it
+is unnecessary to point out how this would strengthen the Union. And what
+probably is not less important, it would make the representation of
+Ireland, not, what it is now, an utterly false index of Irish opinion, but
+a reasonably fair and trustworthy index; were the Irish representation cut
+down to eighty members, the Nationalists would probably command not more
+than fifty seats; the Unionists would command about thirty; and this,
+taking all things into account, would be a proportion approaching what is
+just. The &#8216;doing&#8217; of right, in this matter, has been too long deferred;
+loyal Ireland feels strongly upon the subject; the reform would be
+altogether in the interest of the State.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<p class="center"><span class="large">THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND&mdash;SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE LAND SYSTEM OF IRELAND TO THE YEAR 1870</span></p>
+
+<div class="note"><p class="hang">Great importance in the history of Ireland of the conditions of land
+tenure&mdash;The ancient Celtic land system and its characteristics&mdash;The
+Norman conquest of Ireland&mdash;Norman feudalism in the Irish land&mdash;The
+policy of Henry VII., and especially of Henry VIII.&mdash;The era of the
+conquest and confiscation of the Irish land&mdash;The possessions of the
+O&#8217;Connors of Offaly wrested from them&mdash;Forfeiture of the domains of
+Shane O&#8217;Neill, and of the Earl of Desmond&mdash;Attempts at
+colonisation&mdash;All Ireland made shire land&mdash;The extinction of the old
+Celtic land system&mdash;The Plantation of Ulster&mdash;Progress of confiscation
+during the reigns of the two first Stuarts&mdash;The Civil War&mdash;Immense
+confiscations made by Cromwell&mdash;His scheme of colonisation a
+failure&mdash;The era of confiscation closes after the battle of the Boyne
+and the fall of Limerick&mdash;The Penal Code of Ireland&mdash;Its fatal effects
+on the Irish land&mdash;Dismal period in Irish landed relations&mdash;Gradual
+improvement&mdash;The period described by Arthur Young&mdash;Evil traces of the
+past remain&mdash;Whiteboyism and agrarian disorder&mdash;State of Irish landed
+relations up to the rebellion of 1798, and after the
+Union&mdash;Over-population and the results&mdash;Distress after the
+Peace&mdash;State of Irish landed relations up to 1844&mdash;The Report of the
+Devon Commission&mdash;The Famine and its effects on the Irish land&mdash;The
+Encumbered Estates Acts&mdash;State of Irish landed relations from 1848 to
+1868.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The fortunes of many communities, it has truly been said, have been
+decisively affected by the conditions of the ownership and the occupation
+of the soil. The social, even the political, life of modern Europe has
+been, in a great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> measure, moulded by the land tenures that have grown out
+of the feudal system; I need only refer to the history of England, of
+France, and of Germany. This remark, however, especially applies to the
+events that make up the annals of Ireland; that long and unhappy tale of
+misfortunes and errors is intimately associated, all through, with the
+land, and with the relations connected with it. Modern research has shown
+how grotesque and mischievous was the ignorance of the Tudor lawyers and
+statesmen, who described the ancient organisation of the Irish land as a
+medley of barbarian and pernicious usages; it was an archaic and imperfect
+specimen of the feudal system, with differences indeed, but marked with
+its essential features. Norman feudalism, lawless and ill-ordered, was for
+centuries, after the first Conquest, placed beside this primitive form of
+society, in parts of a country not half subdued; the results were seen in
+incessant strife and discord, and in social anarchy, which prevented
+civilisation growing up. The Irishry had well-nigh driven the Englishry
+into the sea, when Henry VII. tried to make his authority felt in Ireland;
+his successor, partly a Celt in blood, and a real statesman, devised a
+noble scheme for bringing an ill-governed dependency within the domain of
+order and law, by planting an Anglo-Norman and native aristocracy in the
+soil, subject to a strong monarchy that would have protected the community
+as a whole. Most unfortunately the policy of Henry VIII. was not carried
+out; in the great conflict of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries,
+Ireland was drawn into a long struggle with England, and was repeatedly
+made a place of arms for her foes; an era of savage conquest, accomplished
+piecemeal, with ruthless confiscation following in its train, was
+protracted during nearly a century and a half; and at the close of the
+reign of William III., nine-tenths probably of the land of Ireland had
+been wrested from its former possessors, and the old Celtic land system
+had been destroyed by the sword and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> by law. Race and religion made this
+position of affairs much worse; the age of Protestant ascendency in
+Ireland began; in infinitely the greatest part of the island the land was
+parcelled out among a caste of owners distinct in blood and faith from the
+children of the soil, and lording it over an oppressed peasantry; and the
+system was propped up by a code of cruel laws, which maintained and, so to
+speak, stereotyped these evil divisions. The lines of the land system of
+Ireland were thus finally laid down; a variety of economic and social
+causes increased and deepened their extreme harshness; and though they
+have gradually been softened, and are now all but effaced, their traces
+and the results are still to be seen. The last thirty years have witnessed
+repeated attempts to effect radical changes in the modes of the ownership
+and the occupation of the land in Ireland; they have wrought a revolution
+in Irish landed relations, and have well-nigh turned them upside down; but
+the consequences have assuredly not been fortunate. The land system of
+Ireland has been made a chaos of economic disorder, of dissensions of
+class, of legalised wrong, absolutely incompatible with social progress
+and the general welfare.</p>
+
+<p>I must glance, for an instant, at the distinctive features of the land
+system of Ireland in the Celtic age, for despite the effects of
+confiscation and conquest, faint traces of it may still be seen, and have
+a kind of influence.<a name='fna_36' id='fna_36' href='#f_36'><small>[36]</small></a> As was the case in all communities of the Aryan
+stem, the land originally was largely held in collective ownership; but
+agriculture developed individual ownership by degrees, though less so in
+Ireland than in more progressive countries. The people were settled on the
+soil in tribes, clans, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> septs, these being the larger and the smaller
+units; the modes of the tenure of the land, misinterpreted by Elizabethan
+sages, differed widely from each other, but revealed the traditions of old
+patriarchal usage and power, especially in their canons of descent and
+succession. The feudalisation of the land, as it has been significantly
+called, a process which took place in nearly the whole of Europe, was also
+witnessed in Ireland, to a certain extent; but this was not so complete
+and strongly marked as in France and England. The land, nevertheless, was,
+throughout the island, held ultimately from a supreme monarch; it was
+divided, under him, among families of princely chiefs, who ruled vast
+tracts with scarcely controlled authority; inferior chiefs were subject to
+these; the organisation of the land had much in common with the
+organisation of the Anglo-Norman manor, and with the position of the Lord
+Paramount of every manor, the head of the English State. The Irish kings
+and chiefs had lands in demesne; they had a landed and a personal
+<i>noblesse</i>; the territories they ruled were held by classes strongly
+resembling the free tenants, the villeins, and the serfs of the feudal
+system. All this, however, was not as perfectly defined as it was in lands
+feudalised to a higher degree; and though the Davieses and Spensers were
+wholly in error in representing the dependents of the Irish kings and
+chiefs as little better than a horde of fighting men and slaves, Ireland
+never fully possessed the liberties feudalism secured. The Ceile of
+substance, who had lands of his own, seems to have been in an inferior
+position to the English freeholder; the Saer stock and Daer stock tenants
+held their lands by a tenure like that of the metayers of France; the
+Fuidhirs were kept in complete subjection, and had not even the rights of
+the villein. The land, too, was still largely held in collective
+ownership; in its occupation this is even now seen in backward and poor
+districts; and, curiously enough, distinctions were drawn between what was
+a &#8216;fair&#8217; and a &#8216;rack rent,&#8217;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> words still common in the mouth of the Irish
+peasant, and to which recent legislation has given its sanction.</p>
+
+<p>As in the case of most lands where anything resembling feudalism
+prevailed, with the single exception of England, under her strong
+Monarchy, Ireland in these circumstances was torn by continual discord,
+increased by the recurring struggles with the Dane. The Celtic kings and
+chiefs, nevertheless, were beloved by their people; the land system fell
+in with Celtic tribal ideas and sentiments. I pass over the incidents of
+the first Norman Conquest; in the course of time, an Anglo-Norman colony
+was established, within a Pale ever-varying in extent, and held parts of
+the country under feudal conditions, the remaining, and by far the
+greatest, parts being left in the possession of the Celtic kings and
+princes. Anglo-Norman feudalism, however, was completely different, in
+Ireland, from what it was in England; it was not subject to vigorous
+kingly rule; it was confined within comparatively small limits. In these
+circumstances the Pale fell into the hands of a few leading and great
+families; these, as had been largely the case in Scotland, formed a
+domineering and oppressive <i>noblesse</i>, continually engaged in quarrels
+between themselves, and in petty wars with the Celtic chiefs, and
+completely superior to the royal power in England. The Geraldines, the
+Butlers, the De Burghs, and other great houses, had no law but their own
+wills in their vast lordships; their exactions and tyranny became a
+byword; their lives were spent in savage feudal strife, and in &#8216;hostings
+against the Irish enemy.&#8217; Strange to say, too, these scions of a mighty
+conquering race fell under the spell of the Celtic genius, and, as it was
+said, &#8216;became more Irish than the Irish themselves; they were at least
+largely assimilated to a Celtic model, and they adopted many of the usages
+of the Celt. It was not much otherwise in the Celtic region outside the
+Pale; the Irish chiefs often blended in marriage with the Anglo-Norman
+settlers;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> but they were continually at war with them, and with each
+other. Under these conditions, feudalism, in its best aspects, could take
+no root, in the land, in Ireland; and there is much reason to believe that
+the archaic Irish land system was gradually changed and almost broken up,
+the power of the kings and chiefs being greatly increased, and the
+position of their dependents being made essentially worse. It is obvious
+that in a land, a scene of such disorder and misrule, civilisation and all
+that the word implies could not exist; Ireland was probably more barbarous
+at the close of the fifteenth century than she had been when she first saw
+Henry of Anjou. The Pale had been restricted within ever-narrowing bounds;
+generations of colonising &#8216;Englishry&#8217; had entered the country, and had
+left it in angry despair; the &#8216;Irishry&#8217; had encroached on their
+conqueror&#8217;s domain; the work of Strongbow and Fitzstephen appeared to be
+undone. Especially it was observed that nothing like a middle class, even
+then the best element in the social life of England, had been able to
+develop itself in Ireland, and that the humbler classes were always in a
+state of wretchedness, ground down by exaction, and exposed to incessant
+wrongs of all kinds. &#8216;What common folk of all the world&#8217;&mdash;these were the
+words of a State paper of the age&mdash;&#8216;is so poor, so feeble, so evil be seen
+in town and field, so greatly oppressed and trodden underfoot, fares so
+evil, with so great misery, and with so wretched a life, as the common
+folk of Ireland?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Henry VII. strengthened the authority of the Crown in Ireland; the
+Viceroyalty of Poynings marks an epoch in her chequered annals; but the
+conduct of the king was shifting and weak; the land fell under the control
+of the great House of Kildare; the Irishry were driven back, but in no
+sense subdued. Surrey, the victor of Flodden, intreated Henry VIII. to
+make the country his own by sheer force of arms; but his master refused in
+striking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> language; and proposed a scheme for bringing Ireland under the
+control of the Monarchy, for encouraging civilisation and promoting order,
+the wisest that has ever suggested itself to a British statesman. He made
+several of &#8216;the degenerate&#8217; Norman <i>noblesse</i> peers; he extended the same
+dignity to several Irish chiefs; he assembled representatives of Ireland
+in a Parliament composed of both races; he appointed commissioners to go
+through the country and to punish crime; above all&mdash;and this deserves
+special notice&mdash;he tried to conciliate the Celtic community by bringing
+their usages within the cognisance of the law, and giving them effectual
+legal sanction; and he condemned the attempts being already made to force
+laws on them peculiar to England. Had this enlightened policy been
+steadily pursued, the history of Ireland would have run a wholly different
+course; but destiny, that has played so sinister a part in Irish affairs,
+interfered to thwart the admirable designs of the king. The great
+Geraldine rebellion broke out, supported by irregular Celtic risings; from
+this time forward, during five generations of man, the era of cruel but
+intermittent conquest, accompanied by wholesale confiscation, set in. The
+powerful tribe of the O&#8217;Connors of Offaly, closely associated with the
+fallen House of Kildare, was the first to feel the weight of the arm of
+England; its territories were forcibly overrun and annexed, given the name
+of the King&#8217;s and the Queen&#8217;s Counties, and peopled with a colony of
+settlers from England. Celtic Ireland ere long was brought into the
+conflict between Elizabeth and Philip II., the representatives of the
+faiths that were dividing Christendom; the princely chief, Shane O&#8217;Neill,
+fell a victim to the English conquerors, though their quarrel with him was
+not wholly one of seeking the assistance of a foreign enemy; his vast
+domains were, also, in part forfeited, in part handed over to a puppet of
+English power. The frightful Desmond rebellion followed; it was directly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+encouraged by the Pope and by Spain; after a protracted struggle
+approaching a real civil war, the immense lordships of the great Geraldine
+House were confiscated, and granted to a colony of English blood. Tyrone,
+the real successor of his kinsman, Shane O&#8217;Neill, a soldier and statesman
+of no ordinary parts, seeing, as he bitterly said, that his &#8216;lands were
+marked down by the spoiler,&#8217; endeavoured, not without partial success, to
+combine a great Irish League against England; he entered into an alliance
+with Spain; a Spanish army landed on the southern coast of Munster; after
+a long and sanguinary contest, Tyrone yielded, but his resistance had been
+so formidable that he was allowed to retain his possessions.</p>
+
+<p>The subjugation of a large part of Ireland, in the Elizabethan wars, was
+marked by incidents of a most atrocious character. The Government had no
+regular army to act in the field; it was compelled largely to rely on
+armed levies of the Englishry, and on bodies of the Irishry attached to
+the conqueror&#8217;s standards; for in this, as in nearly all instances
+throughout their history, the Irish Celts were at feud with each other;
+Celtic Ireland was a house divided against itself. The queen, it has been
+written, &#8216;ruled over blood and ashes,&#8217; when Mountjoy sheathed his
+victorious sword; the memory of this period still lives in Irish
+tradition. A season of exhaustion and repose ensued after James I. had
+ascended the throne; but the time, in the phrase of Tacitus, had an evil
+aspect in peace itself. The Pale had long before this been effaced;
+conquest and confiscation had spread over nearly the whole island; the
+domination of England was felt almost everywhere. As the result, the whole
+of Ireland was made shire land; the old Celtic land system, which still
+widely prevailed, was swept away by decisions of the Anglican Courts of
+Justice; it was declared to be &#8216;a lewd and not law-worthy thing;&#8217; all the
+Irish land was subjected to English modes of tenure; they were imposed on
+a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> people which detested these gifts of the stranger; innumerable tribal
+rights were destroyed. Ere long the work of confiscation began again; the
+domains of Tyrone and of his kinsman O&#8217;Donnell were pronounced forfeited
+for reasons that have never been ascertained; the Crown was placed in
+possession of nearly six counties of Ulster. Up to this time the
+settlements of English colonists, which had been made in Ireland by Tudor
+conquest, had failed; the colonists had been almost lost in the midst of
+the Irishry, who hemmed them around. This immense confiscation was,
+however, in part successful; it was carried out on comparatively
+enlightened principles; it has produced the famous Plantation of Ulster;
+and this, with other settlements in the counties of Antrim and Down, has
+established, in a large part of the northern province of Ireland, a hardy
+and thriving community, in the main, of Scottish blood. Confiscation,
+nevertheless, did not stop here; &#8216;the ravages of war,&#8217; in Burke&#8217;s
+language, were &#8216;carried on amidst seeming peace;&#8217; enormous tracts were
+torn from their former owners on pretexts usually of the flimsiest kind,
+and were flung to Court favourites, to jobbing speculators, to greedy
+adventurers of the baser sort. By this time three-fourths probably of the
+soil of Ireland had passed into the hands of a new race of possessors; the
+descendants of Anglo-Norman nobles and of the Celtic princes had been
+sufferers well-nigh in the same proportion. At last Strafford marked out
+the whole province of Connaught, for what has been called &#8216;his majestic
+rapine;&#8217; this and other innumerable acts of spoliation and wrong
+unquestionably were the paramount cause of the great Celtic rising of
+1641. Another and soon to be a most potent element of evils and troubles
+had already begun to make its sinister presence felt in Ireland. In the
+great religious schism of the sixteenth century, England had become
+Protestant, Ireland had remained Catholic, and each had taken opposite
+sides in the conflict<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> that followed; though the Elizabethan wars were
+rather struggles of race than of faith. But as conquest and confiscation
+progressed in Ireland, the Anglican Church, a scion of the Norman Church
+of the Pale, was erected on the ruins of its Celtic Catholic rival; the
+land more and more became possessed by settlers alien in creed from the
+old owners, and from the vanquished children of the soil; and harsh laws
+had begun to deepen the distinctions between them. Nevertheless, though
+its signs had in some measure appeared, the era of Protestant ascendency
+and Catholic subjection had not been developed in Ireland, as yet, in its
+worst aspects.</p>
+
+<p>The wild Celtic rising of 1641 was followed by a rising of the old
+Englishry of the Pale&mdash;the descendants of the first Anglo-Norman settlers;
+both movements were probably encouraged from France; though widely
+different, they ran into each other. The great Civil War was now running
+its course in England; Ireland, for the most part, took the side of the
+king; the majority of Englishmen were certainly on the side of the
+Parliament. I cannot retrace the scenes of the contest in Ireland; after a
+fierce and protracted struggle, in which an envoy of the Pope became the
+representative of an ill-united Irish League; in which Preston and Ormond
+led the forces of the Pale, and Owen Roe O&#8217;Neill was at the head of the
+Irish Celts,&mdash;the whole island was subjugated by the sword of Cromwell, as
+it never had been subjugated before. Drogheda and Wexford are names of woe
+in the annals of Ireland; but the conquest of the Protector, ruthless as
+it was, was not so cruel as that of the Elizabethan soldiers; if deeply
+stained with blood, it was rapid and completely decisive. The colony in
+Ulster had begun to flourish; Cromwell designed a scheme for the
+colonisation of the vanquished country more thorough and extensive than
+any which had been designed before. Three-fourths of Ireland had been in
+arms against the Parliament; that assembly had made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> grants by
+anticipation of Irish forfeited lands to &#8216;adventurers&#8217; who had advanced it
+moneys; an opportunity for immense confiscations had arisen; the Protector
+was not slow to take advantage of it; his Puritan fanaticism, his hatred
+of the Irish people, especially of its &#8216;idolatrous Papists,&#8217; his strong
+English and religious sympathies, united to confirm him in his purpose.
+The forfeited lands in four of the Irish counties were appropriated to the
+Commonwealth and its uses; those in eighteen were to be granted to the
+&#8216;adventurers&#8217; and the soldiery of the late conquest; those in seven were
+to be allotted to the army in England. The grants were to be either free,
+or to be purchased at nominal prices; the owners, who had lost their
+lands, were to be deported to Connaught&mdash;&#8216;Hell&#8217; was the alternative, the
+tradition runs&mdash;and &#8216;Courts of Claims,&#8217; as they were called, were to be
+set up, to adjudicate on the conduct of those who were to be
+dispossessed&mdash;they were to be subjected to a test which scarcely one could
+satisfy&mdash;and practically to measure confiscation out under the pretence of
+law. By these means Cromwell calculated that some forty thousand
+colonists, of English blood and of the Puritan faith, would be poured into
+the millions of acres which the sword had placed in the hands of his
+Government; these would form a prosperous settlement loyal to England;
+would keep rebellion in Ireland for ever down; and would regenerate a land
+taken from a race akin to the Amalekites of old. As a foretaste of the new
+and glorious order of things, Sir William Petty, a very able man,
+remarkably skilful in feathering his own nest, made a cadastral survey of
+Ireland, which still remains.</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell&#8217;s scheme of confiscation was thoroughly carried out, spite of
+much angry wrangling between the Puritan warriors. The remains of the
+defeated Irish armies went, in thousands, into exile in foreign lands;
+they were the heralds of the renowned soldiery who, for a century and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> a
+half, were deadly, but honourable foes of the British name. The rule of
+the Protector in Ireland was stern but enforced peace; Ireland was
+prostrate in the exhaustion of despair; there is much proof that, under
+the Cromwellian settlement, the country made a kind of material progress.
+But Cromwell&#8217;s great scheme of colonisation failed, as such schemes had
+failed in many instances before; a large majority of the &#8216;adventurers&#8217; and
+the soldiers sold their possessions, usually for a mere nothing: many
+&#8216;degenerated&#8217; like the old Norman families, and, won over by the spells
+&#8216;of the daughters of Heth,&#8217; had, in one or two generations, become &#8216;mere
+Irish.&#8217; The ultimate result of the Cromwellian conquest was to establish
+in Ireland three or four thousand owners of the soil, of English blood and
+Puritan leanings, without the support of inferior dependents, in the midst
+of a vanquished population hostile in race and faith; the sentiments thus
+engendered have never died out; to this day &#8216;a Cromwellian landlord&#8217; is a
+name of reproach in Catholic Ireland. At the Restoration hope for a moment
+revived in the hearts of the ruined owners, who had been dispossessed by
+Cromwell, and of whom hundreds had fought for the Crown; but this was
+dashed by the perfidy of Charles II. and his courtiers; the Cromwellian
+forfeitures were, in the main, confirmed; large tracts were given back to
+favourites of the Stuarts, but thousands of beggared families lost their
+estates for ever through a policy of cruel baseness and wrong. Ireland
+remained quiescent for nearly thirty years; she even prospered under the
+wise rule of Ormond&mdash;one of the noblest figures in her unhappy history;
+but the bitter memories of the past lived in the conquered people, though,
+as has repeatedly been seen in a Celtic race, they were treasured in
+silence, and caused little apparent trouble. James II. ascended the throne
+in 1685; he had a great opportunity to mitigate many of the wrongs of
+Ireland; he might have removed some of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> evils of the Cromwellian
+conquest, and have effected changes in the settlement of the land, which,
+at least, would have done partial justice. But the unfortunate king was a
+bigot, and, in no sense, a statesman; like his father he tried the
+desperate policy of making use of Ireland in his designs against English
+liberties; he sent Tyrconnell to Dublin, and, in a few months, revolution
+had broken out through the country; English and Protestant Ireland was
+well-nigh trampled underfoot; Catholic and Celtic Ireland rose up in a
+wild hope of revenge. I cannot even glance at the stirring events that
+followed; the descendants of ruined barons of the Pale and of Celtic
+princes driven from their lands and their homes, joined in a great effort
+to raise a large armed force; the rising almost assumed a national aspect;
+but after the Boyne and the fall of Limerick, it was finally quelled by
+William III. The process of confiscation was once more renewed; thousands
+of acres were taken forcibly from those who had resisted in the field, and
+were handed over to a new race of colonists belonging to the blood and the
+creed of the victors; and the shameful violation of a solemn Treaty made
+all that was cruel in spoliation worse.</p>
+
+<p>The era of conquest in Ireland and of confiscation by force&mdash;an agony
+prolonged for a century and a half&mdash;was brought to an end in the reign of
+William III. This is not the place to examine the question on which side,
+as between England and Ireland, the balance of the wrongs that were done
+inclines; but if much that is cruel and shameful is to be laid to the
+charge of England, Ireland, it cannot be forgotten, crossed her path
+repeatedly in an age of grave national perils and troubles, and, moreover,
+wrecked her own cause by her wretched dissensions. The Irish land had now
+nearly all fallen into the hands of a caste of owners, of English and
+Scottish descent, and in faith Protestant, divided from a people of
+Catholic occupiers for the most part of the Irish race;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> wide lines of
+demarcation had been drawn between them; and there was no middle class to
+bridge over the gulf. In a part of Ulster alone where the proprietors and
+the holders of the soil were largely of the same religion and blood, was
+there the promise of a more auspicious order of things; even here causes
+of disunion were not wanting. Nor were these the only vices and dangers of
+a land system which has scarcely had a parallel. Enormous tracts had been
+bestowed on owners who never saw their estates; absenteeism existed to an
+immense extent; their lands, too, had, in thousands of instances, been
+underlet to a class of intermediate owners, who were to form a body of
+most oppressive landlords. In addition, the representatives of numbers of
+ruined families still vegetated on the domains which had been their own;
+the few families which had escaped from the spoilers, were held in
+reverence by the peasantry around; elements of disorder and trouble
+continued to fester. The destruction, too, of the old Celtic modes of land
+tenure, and the substitution of the English system, had unjustly
+annihilated tribal rights wholesale; the free, and other dependents of the
+Irish chiefs, had sunk into the position of mere tenants at will, that is,
+at the mercy of foreign and often unknown masters. One of the worst, if
+not the most apparent evil, of the gigantic confiscations which had taken
+place, and on which the land system had, so to speak, been founded, was
+that the respect which attaches to the ancient ownership of land, and
+which forms, perhaps, its surest support, could hardly exist in any part
+of Ireland; the disastrous consequences may be traced to the present hour.
+Landlords, with titles of yesterday, won by the sword, could not feel the
+interest in their estates and in the inhabitants on them, naturally felt
+by owners of gentle and ancient descent; the land which, as has been said,
+had been flung like a fox to ravening hounds, could not attract to it
+happy and peaceful memories; the very Government had learned to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> think it
+could deal with the land as it pleased, and treated the rights gained by
+confiscation with contempt. Prescription, the strongest cement of
+property, had no place in this ill-compacted land system.<a name='fna_37' id='fna_37' href='#f_37'><small>[37]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The era of Protestant ascendency bringing Catholic subjection with it, had
+now set in for many years in Ireland; its evils were aggravated by harsh
+divisions of race, and by more than a century of bitter memories; its
+effects were more conspicuous in the land than in other social relations.
+This unnatural and calamitous position of affairs might, however, have
+been replaced ere long by a better order of things, had it not been
+artificially maintained and made enduring by legislation unexampled for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+its far-reaching cruelty. I cannot attempt to describe the Penal Code of
+Ireland; in the emphatic words of Burke, &#8216;it was a complete system, full
+of coherence and consistency; well digested and well composed in all its
+parts; it was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance; and as well
+fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people,
+and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from
+the perverted ingenuity of man.&#8217;<a name='fna_38' id='fna_38' href='#f_38'><small>[38]</small></a> The objects of these execrable laws
+were threefold: to exclude the Irish Catholic whether of Anglo-Irish or
+Celtic descent&mdash;misfortune had well-nigh effaced the distinction&mdash;from
+every office of trust in the State, from every profession, almost from
+every walk of life; to persecute and proscribe the Catholic Church of
+Ireland, and to place its priesthood under a humiliating ban, and finally
+to ruin and degrade the few remaining Catholic owners of the soil; to
+prevent the Irish Catholic from acquiring any real interest in it; and,
+above all, to keep the Catholic peasantry in a condition of thraldom.<a name='fna_39' id='fna_39' href='#f_39'><small>[39]</small></a>
+The Code was only too successful in compassing its ends; I pass from its
+operation as regards the two first, to point out how it sought to attain
+the third, and how its provisions affected the Irish land and the manifold
+relations connected with it. The estate of the Irish Catholic owner was
+not to follow the ordinary courses of descent; it was &#8216;to gavel,&#8217; and to
+be divided among many persons; this was for the avowed purpose of making
+&#8216;the landed property of Papists crumble away, and disappear.&#8217; The Irish
+Catholic owner was subjected to cruel enactments that literally set his
+household against him; his wife and children were bribed to become his
+foes; law sate at his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> hearth to make his existence wretched. The Irish
+Catholic, too, was forbidden to acquire land by purchase or even to
+possess an incumbrance on it; as far as possible the ownership of land was
+strictly confined to the Protestant caste. But the wrong that, in its
+consequences at least, was perhaps the worst, was that the Catholic
+occupier of the Irish soil could not obtain anything like an advantageous
+tenure; he could not have a lease for a period beyond thirty-one years,
+and this, too, at an excessive rent; and, in the great mass of instances,
+he was a serf holding merely at will.</p>
+
+<p>The forty years that succeeded the death of William III. are certainly the
+most mournful period in Irish history. The memories of conquest and
+confiscation were still fresh; the Penal Code kept Catholic Ireland in its
+chains; society was fashioned on the type of the domination of a class,
+separated from a whole community in race and faith. Nothing was left
+undone to perpetuate this evil order of things; the Irish Parliament was a
+mere oligarchy of the sons of the colonists of Elizabeth, Cromwell, and
+William, apart from a few leading men in Ulster; its legislation for the
+vanquished race was barbarous; Lords-Lieutenant spoke of the Irish
+Catholics as of &#8216;the common enemy;&#8217; a &#8216;Papist was presumed not to exist&#8217;
+in the Irish Courts of Justice. Meanwhile the penal laws were relentlessly
+carried out for years; the Irish Catholic was placed under a universal
+ban; the Catholic Church of Ireland lay, as it were, in the valley of the
+shadow of death. But the direst consequences appeared in the land, and in
+the social life of the landed classes; these were most calamitous and have
+still left their traces. Many of the few Catholic owners abandoned their
+estates, and carried their swords into foreign lands, where some rose to
+well-deserved eminence; a small number conformed to the dominant faith in
+order to exist in comparative peace at home; the majority clung to their
+lands and bowed their heads to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> oppression. The Protestant lords of the
+soil were what their antecedents and the law had made them; they were long
+a harsh and exacting order of men, filled with bigotry and the pride of a
+conquering race; they regarded the inferiors they ruled as pariahs and
+helots. But, as usually happens, when society is in an unnatural state,
+they did not prosper amidst the ruins around them; their lands were kept
+on a kind of pernicious mortmain, as they could not mortgage or sell them
+freely; absenteeism with all its mischiefs greatly increased; and
+middleman tenures largely multiplied, subjecting the peasantry to a
+detestable breed of landlords, Protestants and of English descent, like
+their superiors, but much worse tyrants. As for the mass of the Catholic
+occupiers of the soil, they were kept down in the lowest state of serfdom;
+but multitudes found their way into foreign armies; &#8216;the wild geese,&#8217; as
+they were pathetically called, flew to Austria and, above all, to France,
+where, in the ranks of the celebrated Irish Brigade&mdash;&#8216;ever and everywhere&#8217;
+true to the Bourbon lilies&mdash;they won renown at Dettingen, Fontenoy, and
+other fields of fame. The aspect of Ireland bore too faithful witness to
+the misery engendered in this evil order of things. The country was still
+covered with the wrecks of the late wars; the habitations, even of the
+Protestant gentry, were squalid and mean; the towns were, in many
+instances, sinking into decay; the peasantry were huddled together into
+villages of huts; the traveller roamed through vast wastes of unfenced
+pasturage, evidences of a land almost left in a state of nature. Hideous
+famines were of repeated occurrence; one, that of 1739-41, swept the
+population away in tens of thousands; the Irish Parliament
+characteristically did nothing to help the sufferers; it met the emergency
+by strengthening the means to enforce the payment of rent. The miserable
+condition of Ireland was made worse by the legislation of the British
+Parliament, which treated the country as a conquered colony; and, true to
+the principles of the mercantile<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> system, impeded or prevented the growth
+of several Irish industries. This was, of course, most injurious to the
+Protestant settlers; but these were held down by the ruling power; as was
+finely said, &#8216;they knelt to England on the necks of their countrymen.&#8217; The
+state of things in the colonised parts of Ulster was somewhat better; but
+the Scottish and Presbyterian population of this corner of Ireland had not
+a few causes of serious complaint.<a name='fna_40' id='fna_40' href='#f_40'><small>[40]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>In the next generation a great but gradual change passed over the state of
+the Irish community. The Penal Code was not in letter relaxed; but the
+evil spirit which had conceived it lost much of its force. The men who had
+fought at the Boyne and at Aghrim had passed away; the human conscience,
+moved by the influences of the eighteenth century, revolted from the
+barbarous legislation of a half-fanatical age. The Irish Catholics slowly
+began to make themselves felt in the State; many amassed large fortunes in
+foreign commerce; shut out as they still were by law from almost every
+profession and office, they made their way into the medical calling, and
+especially at the Bar, where their disabilities were evaded or ignored.
+The Catholic Church was no longer proscribed; its worship, indeed, was
+still carried on under degrading conditions; but its priesthood were
+permitted to perform their sacred functions in peace; its dignitaries were
+even countenanced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> by the men in power at the Castle. This great social
+change was conspicuously seen in the land; landed relations were markedly
+improved, and partly transformed. The Catholic owners were permitted to
+hold their estates free from the cruel vexations of the past; they began
+to live on terms of friendship with the Protestant caste; legal fictions
+annulled the laws which had made their lives wretched; their lands were,
+in many instances, held by the Protestant gentry on secret trusts; and
+these, though contrary to law, were, as a rule, most honourably fulfilled.
+The principal, however, and most decisive change appeared in the position
+and the sentiments of the Protestant lords of the soil. As time rolled on,
+and threw its kindly growths over the settlement of confiscation and the
+sword, these men began to feel that Ireland was their country and home;
+they became, to a certain extent, Irishmen; they felt sympathy, by
+degrees, with the conquered serfs in their midst. This feeling was
+strengthened by the tyrannous selfishness of the British Parliament, which
+treated Ireland as if she were its footstool, and of the official class,
+nearly all Englishmen, who lorded it over the land they despised; an
+&#8216;Irish interest&#8217; grew up in the Parliament at College Green, composed very
+largely of the Protestant landlords; this became patriotic, in a certain
+sense, and a protector of the scanty rights of Ireland. As social order,
+too, was seldom disturbed, the wealth of the country had considerably
+increased; the gentry acquired a greater interest in their estates, and
+became more and more attached to them; absenteeism, as the result,
+perceptibly lessened; and middleman tenures, though still prevalent,
+diminished remarkably in the more progressive counties. The deep lines of
+demarcation which kept apart the owners and the occupiers of the soil were
+thus to a certain extent bridged over; the Irish landlord, especially if
+resident, became a kindlier superior than his fathers had been; the Irish
+peasant became less a stranger to him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>The evidences of this better order of things became manifest on the face
+of the country. Agriculture, though still backward, made real progress;
+the breeds of farming animals greatly improved; the huge breadths of
+pasturage had a less deserted aspect. The country towns had generally
+advanced; the land had been opened by good roads; the means of locomotion
+had been largely multiplied. The rental of Ireland had doubled within
+living memory; in some counties, indeed, it was nearly as high as it is
+now; the land was at a price of more years&#8217; purchase than it is at the
+close of the nineteenth century. It was at this period that the great
+country houses of Ireland were built, and their vast demesnes laid out;
+the wages of labour were low, but had distinctly risen; the peasant hind,
+Arthur Young tells us, in point of food and clothing, was as well off as
+his fellow in England. The land was largely parcelled out into
+considerable farms; but small holdings were on the increase; and the
+cottar system, in the course of time to become a source of manifold evils,
+was not yet a cause of much mischief; the pressure of population on the
+soil was not severely felt. Many of the great landlords, too, were
+excellent men; they ruled the country well, and greatly improved their
+estates; in numberless instances they had won the hearts of dependents,
+who regarded them as kind masters. Yet the picture was not without a dark
+side; this land system still had evil, nay, repulsive, features. Except in
+the best part of Ulster the deep divisions of race and faith continued to
+be profoundly marked; the Penal Code had made these, to a great extent,
+indelible. There was still much oppression and exaction in landed
+relations; the class of small landlords and the class of middlemen were
+too generally tyrannical and harsh; complaints of over-renting were not
+infrequent; and if the great landlords, as a rule, were not severe
+superiors, many were extravagant, addicted to excess, and reckless
+duellists; they bore a strong resemblance to the seigneurie of the old
+French<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> Monarchy. The peasantry, too, remained serfs, illiterate,
+ignorant, and superstitious; the good feelings they often had for their
+lords had too much of the submissiveness of the slave; and virtuous as
+their women ordinarily were, they too generally yielded to the lusts of
+their masters. The habitations, besides, of this population were still
+wretched; if their lot had assuredly become better, it was often hard,
+above all, degraded. They had begun to feel more acutely the ills they
+suffered; in many counties they had banded themselves together into
+lawless leagues, to protect themselves and to resist authority. These
+associations, known by the general name of Whiteboys&mdash;perhaps taken from
+the Camisards of the Cevennes&mdash;had as their objects the preservation of
+rights of commonage, the extinction of tithes, and the reduction of rents;
+they may be traced back to the great confiscations of the past; they were
+held together by secret leaders and passwords; and they often kept whole
+districts in a state of terror. A Draconic Code was directed against them;
+though often put down they have risen to life again; Ireland has never
+since been completely free from them; their influence still is distinctly
+apparent. Associations of somewhat a similar kind, known as Steelboys and
+Oakboys, were formed even in the good parts of Ulster; but they were much
+less dangerous and were not permanent. It is a characteristic of
+Whiteboyism, as it has ever since been called, that it has always had a
+political side, and lends itself to revolutionary movements against
+government itself.<a name='fna_41' id='fna_41' href='#f_41'><small>[41]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>Though Protestant ascendency was still supreme at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> this period, the
+confiscations of the past had not been forgotten; they were treasured in
+the minds of the descendants of the old Catholic families, and of the
+population among which they lived. The extinction, too, of the tribal
+Irish tenures, had, we have seen, been a cause of grievous wrongs; this
+was a tradition, also, handed down from father to son, and was still fresh
+in the remembrance of a whole race. The land system, though to outward
+seeming secure, nevertheless rested on unstable foundations, as was to
+appear in the course of time; another element of disturbance was being
+formed, which ultimately was to have immense force. Under the modes of
+land tenure, which prevailed in England, since the system of small
+holdings had been broken up, the land had generally been laid out in large
+farms; partly from this circumstance, and partly owing to custom, the
+charge of making permanent improvements of the land had almost everywhere
+devolved on the owner of the soil; a tenant, who rented a farm, took it,
+so to speak, equipped with the buildings and other things of the kind that
+were suitable to it. But in Ireland, partly because small farms were
+numerous, and partly because the custom had never grown up&mdash;the history of
+the past fully accounts for this&mdash;the permanent improvements were very
+seldom made by the landlord; the tenant, who held land, had to add, as it
+were, its plant to it; he had to do much that gave it any real value. As
+the inevitable result, the Irish occupier of the soil felt that he had
+acquired a concurrent right in it; this, if the improvements were solid
+and lasting, might almost amount to a partial joint-ownership, at least
+give him, in equity, a real hold on the land. But a right of this kind was
+not recognised by the law, founded as this was upon notions of English
+tenure; it was liable to be destroyed should the tenant be dispossessed;
+and as the tenure of the immense majority of the occupiers of the soil in
+Ireland was either at will, or for a short term at a high rent, this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+right, essentially of a quasi-proprietary kind, was made precarious, and
+had no legal protection. With the prescience of genius, Burke perceived
+the evils that might grow out of this state of things, though, as yet,
+these were not much felt; he saw that it discouraged improvement of almost
+every kind; especially he saw that the denial of legal sanction to the
+rights in the land a tenant might have, and the fact that his tenure was
+short and uncertain, might become a source of grave wrong, and of
+far-reaching discontent. In a word, he detected an economic vice in the
+land system of Ireland which, in the long run, was to do great mischief;
+and curiously enough he indicated the remedies that ought to be applied,
+and pointed out the true principles of a reform of Irish land tenure. It
+would have been well had British statesmen adopted these; his simple,
+just, and statesmanlike plan puts to shame the ill-designed and
+unsuccessful attempts that have been made to recast the Irish land system
+of late years, and the false, reckless, and socialistic theories at
+present current on this important subject.<a name='fna_42' id='fna_42' href='#f_42'><small>[42]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>I must pass over even the main events of the history of Ireland, after
+this period, up to the close of the eighteenth century. The &#8216;Irish
+interest,&#8217; mainly composed of the great landed gentry, and turning to
+account the American War, compelled the Parliament at Westminster to relax
+many of the commercial restraints on Ireland, and to concede her a partial
+free trade; under the guidance of the illustrious Grattan it obtained
+legislative independence for the Irish Parliament. At the same time the
+Penal Code was largely repealed; the Irish Catholic was permitted to
+acquire the ownership of the soil; before long he received the electoral
+franchise, though he was still excluded from the Irish Houses of Lords and
+Commons. In these circumstances, Ireland made real material and social
+progress;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> the wealth of the country rapidly increased; the Protestant and
+Catholic upper classes began to unite in marriage; a commercial middle
+class, if still very weak, grew up. Ireland seemed about to enter a
+happier era; yet there were drawbacks to this partial welfare, especially
+as regards the land system. Middleman tenures were becoming much less
+frequent; absenteeism was markedly on the decline; but partly owing to
+their contact with the Parliament in College Green, and to the brilliant
+social life it created in Dublin, the landed gentry became more
+extravagant than their fathers had been; they began to raise their rents
+and to encumber their estates; over-renting became more common than
+before; Whiteboy movements and agrarian disorder prevailed in many
+districts. Ireland, however, probably would have made a great advance but
+for the evil passions which the French Revolution engendered in the frame
+of a society still deeply diseased. I cannot dwell on the unhappy years
+that followed, leading to the Rebellion of 1798; I must confine myself to
+their influence on the Irish land system. The object of Tone and of the
+United Irish leaders was to combine Scottish and Presbyterian Ulster, and
+the great mass of the Irish Catholics, into a league against British rule
+and for &#8216;Irish freedom;&#8217; unhappily, they were but too successful. They
+appealed, not in vain, to thousands of farmers and traders in the Northern
+Province, who had long had solid grounds of discontent, and had been
+deeply stirred by the Revolution in France; they laid hold on the elements
+of disorder and of division of race and faith, abounding in Catholic
+Ireland, but largely concealed, and called on the peasantry to overthrow
+their Protestant tyrants, and to strike a decisive blow in &#8216;the cause of
+Ireland.&#8217; Evil incentives were recklessly employed to arouse popular
+passions; maps of the old confiscated lands were made; and active
+emissaries went through the country, reviving dangerous traditions of the
+past, and stimulating the worst sentiments of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> hatred, greed, and revenge.
+As the result, sedition ran riot in Ulster; in the Southern Provinces
+there was a great outburst of Whiteboy crime, and a widespread rising
+against the payment of rent; and thousands of the occupiers of the soil
+were swept into the United Irish ranks, scarcely conscious of the perils
+to which they were exposed. How the movement led to the bloody rebellion
+of 1798, and how this was put down after a desperate struggle, it is
+unnecessary to consider here; the consequences in Irish landed relations
+were most unfortunate. It is untrue that the large majority of the owners
+of the Irish soil were guilty of the crimes that have been laid to their
+charge; but they bitterly resented the allusions to the confiscations of a
+bygone past; they became more estranged from their inferiors than they had
+been for years.<a name='fna_43' id='fna_43' href='#f_43'><small>[43]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>This terrible outbreak shook society in Ireland to its base, revived the
+old divisions of race and faith which had been disappearing to a
+considerable extent, and left memories behind which have not been
+forgotten. Its inevitable result was to lead to the Union, a measure long
+in the contemplation of British statesmen, and especially of Pitt, and
+perhaps necessary in the most critical circumstances of the time. I cannot
+even refer to the events attending this great constitutional change; a
+large majority of the leading Irish landlords disliked it at heart; but a
+minority, alarmed for their possessions, gave it support; how strong this
+feeling was may be seen in a famous speech of Lord Clare, who described
+the whole order of men as &#8216;the heirs of confiscation hemmed in by enemies
+brooding on their wrongs.&#8217; The Union greatly weakened the influence of
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> Irish landed gentry, which had been very powerful in the defunct
+Parliament; the &#8216;Irish interest,&#8217; for many years a real force, was almost
+subverted; English officials became again supreme at the Castle; a
+bureaucracy gradually began to supplant the aristocracy of landlords in
+every sphere of government. As respects the land and landed relations, the
+class of Catholic owners slowly augmented; but the consequences were
+trivial and not marked; middleman tenures continued steadily to disappear;
+but absenteeism certainly increased, though absentee estates were usually
+better managed than before. Meanwhile causes of grave importance, tending
+to momentous social results, were profoundly affecting the whole land
+system, and the position of the classes dependent on it. Partly owing to
+the corn laws of the Irish Parliament, partly to the extension of the
+Parliamentary franchise, in 1793, to the great mass of the Catholic
+peasantry, but principally to the effects of the long war with France,
+Ireland, it may be said, was well-nigh changed from a pastoral to an
+agricultural country; large farms were generally replaced by small; the
+land in most districts was divided into little tillage holdings; the
+cottar system multiplied apace; the population, about three millions of
+souls in the day of Arthur Young, increased to more than six millions at
+the Peace of 1815; and this population becoming every year more dense, for
+the most part eked existence out on a precarious root. The economic and
+social consequences were very great, and continued in operation during a
+long series of years. The competition for the possession of land became
+intensely keen; rents were unnaturally forced up in thousands of cases;
+the value of landed property enormously rose; all this encouraged
+extravagance among the landed gentry, and especially induced them largely
+to encumber their estates. At the same time the wages of labour distinctly
+declined; the condition of the Irish labouring peasant, when Edward
+Wakefield, a very industrious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> and able observer, wrote on the state of
+Ireland in 1812, was markedly worse than it had been in the time of Arthur
+Young. Yet these were not the most serious, at least, the most lasting,
+effects of the revolution taking place in landed relations. As the large
+farm system was being broken up, as the small farm system had come in its
+stead, and as population had rapidly grown, the occupiers of the soil had
+more and more made the permanent additions to their holdings; they had
+built, fenced, and reclaimed land, more and more; and in the general
+eagerness to obtain the possession of land, considerable sums were often
+paid for farms on their transfer. The concurrent rights of the tenant
+classes in Ireland had thus become enormously increased; they often
+amounted, equitably, to a real joint-ownership; yet these rights were
+without the support of law, and were liable to be extinguished often at
+the mere will of the landlord. In Ulster alone, in its Presbyterian and
+Scottish parts, where the landed classes had been less disunited than in
+the South, a custom, now of considerable strength, had for a long time
+made the tenure of the peasant comparatively secure; yet even this was not
+under the &aelig;gis of law.<a name='fna_44' id='fna_44' href='#f_44'><small>[44]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>Made wise, after the event, we now clearly perceive what ought to have
+been done for Ireland in this position of affairs. There never had been an
+Irish poor law; Protestant property was not to be charged for Catholic
+want; but the population was fast increasing; a mass of wretched poverty
+was being formed; this should have been supported, and yet checked, by a
+poor law. At the same time legislation, as Burke had contended, should
+have vindicated the moral rights of the occupier of the soil,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> should have
+made what really was his property his own, should have rendered his tenure
+profitable and secure. Nothing of the kind, however, came into the minds
+of British statesmen, or even, it must be said, of the best Irishmen of
+the day&mdash;the age was one of Toryism harsh and unfeeling; the abuses of the
+poor law in England were great; it was not contemplated to apply it to
+Ireland; above all, the equitable claims of the Irish tenant were not
+understood or deemed worthy of notice; English tenure, utterly unfitted to
+his true position, was good enough for him. The land system, nevertheless,
+was not much disturbed while the high prices of the war prevailed; there
+was a good deal indeed of disorder connected with the land, but society
+was not deeply affected. And it is only just to observe that the
+landlords, as a class, did respect the concurrent rights of their tenants
+in the soil; the conclusive proof is that these could not have grown up
+had they been generally, or even largely, set at nought. But a great and
+calamitous change passed over Ireland when the comparative wealth caused
+by the war collapsed, and when the return to cash payments made the
+effects worse. Rents suddenly fell greatly, and even disappeared; the
+wages of labour, which had usually been paid through what may be called a
+wretched truck system, were reduced to a remarkable degree; hundreds of
+thousands of the cottar peasantry sank to the lowest depths of indigence.
+A great social convulsion, in a word, took place; this culminated in
+famine in several counties; a miserable population was deprived of the
+means of subsistence. In these circumstances the owners of the soil acted
+as a class would ordinarily act; many, impoverished themselves, let things
+drift; many made themselves conspicuous for good works of charity; a
+minority had recourse to severe measures, like the English landlords of
+the sixteenth century, to get rid of a mass of poverty clinging in despair
+to the land.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> The old divisions of race and faith unquestionably
+aggravated this state of things; but the Government of the day showed
+little forethought, and, in fact, was infinitely the most to blame; it met
+the emergency, not by wise and healing measures, but by legislation, which
+made the eviction of the peasant from his holding easy and cheap, and by
+having recourse to repression unjust and severe in the extreme. In too
+many instances, &#8216;clearances&#8217; of estates, an evil word, were witnessed;
+hundreds of families were driven from their homes and cast on the world;
+as the necessary result, in numberless cases, the equitable rights of the
+Irish tenant were ruthlessly destroyed. As a matter of course,
+Whiteboyism, never completely suppressed, broke out in formidable agrarian
+disorder; the peasantry, deprived of the protection of law, leagued
+themselves together to enforce a law of their own; crime multiplied to an
+immense extent; all the machinery of coercion could not wholly keep it
+under.<a name='fna_45' id='fna_45' href='#f_45'><small>[45]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>I must pass rapidly over the next twenty years, though a very important
+period in Irish history. Catholic emancipation was wrung by O&#8217;Connell,
+from a reluctant Ministry, through violent agitation, which distracted
+Ireland for years; the Irish Catholic was admitted into Parliament at
+last. This great event was followed by the savage Tithe War, a movement
+against the Anglican Church in Ireland stained with detestable deeds of
+blood; the representation of Ireland passed largely into O&#8217;Connell&#8217;s
+hands, the head of what was called &#8216;his Catholic Tail.&#8217; Protestant
+ascendency in Ireland received a mortal blow; the influence of the Irish
+landed gentry still further declined; that of the bureaucracy at the
+Castle increased. From this time forward the Irish landlord began to feel
+his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> position really insecure; it is remarkable how few large mansions and
+demesnes have ever since been designed or completed by this order of men.
+After the disastrous period which came to an end about 1826, the wealth of
+Ireland perceptibly grew; a kind of prosperity existed in many parts of
+the country. The age, too, had become more liberal and humane; the
+middleman was got rid of in not a few districts; the absentee landlords
+devoted more attention to their estates than they had ever devoted before.
+The process of eviction, moreover, became much less frequent, though too
+frequent for social order and peace; a considerable number of Irish
+landlords expended large sums in improving their lands; farms were
+consolidated, with good results, in many parts of the country. But the
+essential features of the land system were not much changed; its economic
+conditions became, in important respects, worse. The landed gentry, if
+much less extravagant than their fathers had been, were, nevertheless, as
+a class, much involved in debt; and, as usually has been seen in cases of
+the kind, they became less really prosperous, as their authority declined.
+Meanwhile, the population had continued rapidly to increase; by the close
+of this period it exceeded eight millions of souls, a total far too great
+for the resources of the land. The phenomena, already critical, became
+more sinister; rents were again forced up as the wealth of the country
+augmented, and reached the highest level they have ever attained; the
+wages of labour did not fall, indeed, they could hardly fall lower; but
+the cottar population had become more than ever dense; the competition for
+the possession of the soil grew fierce; as necessarily followed, the
+quasi-proprietary rights of the tenant in his holding had been enlarged,
+and yet these were still outside the pale of the law. A Report, made in
+1837-38, disclosed the appalling fact that two millions and a half of the
+Irish community were for months in every year on the verge of starvation,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+and always in a condition of extreme misery. Though Ireland had made, in a
+sense, progress, her economic state had thus become dangerous, and very
+bad; and a poor law, enacted at last in 1838, was utterly unable to cope
+with the evil. Whiteboy crime and disorders continued to abound; in 1844,
+an average year, there were more than a thousand instances of offences in
+landed relations.</p>
+
+<p>The year 1843 was that of the great Repeal movement, of which O&#8217;Connell
+was the master spirit. Peel had been Prime Minister for two years; his
+attention had been already turned to the vices and the perils of the Irish
+land system. He had been Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1812 to 1818;
+but he had been identified with the Tory misrule of that time; and though,
+like Chesterfield in another age, he had been too sagacious not to see
+that poverty made the social ills of Ireland more acute and worse, he had
+been the ablest opponent of the Catholic cause, had supported Protestant
+ascendency in many ways; and had not been in any sense an Irish reformer.
+A strong Conservative of the great middle class in England, he looked on
+Ireland as an almost foreign land, and had scarcely any knowledge of her
+real needs; and though his severe administration at the Castle had been
+wise and just, he carried out coercion with a steady hand, and is supposed
+to have been the author of the code of cheap ejectment, a cause of a great
+deal of evil and wrong. But his mind, if slow in moving, was moved at
+last; he saw that Ireland largely required the amending hand; the conduct
+of O&#8217;Connell, no doubt, had quickened his purpose. I cannot dwell on
+Peel&#8217;s other Irish measures; at the close of 1843 he appointed a
+Commission charged to inquire into the state of Irish landed relations;
+had he continued long at the head of the State, he would probably have
+done much to improve the Irish land system. The Commission had, as
+President, the chief of the great House of Courtenay; it was almost wholly
+composed of Englishmen, more or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> less associated with land in England; it
+was, therefore, ill constituted to deal with what may be called the Irish
+Land Question. But it investigated the subject it treated with most
+praiseworthy care; entering into every detail of Irish landed relations,
+their history in the past, the state of land tenure, the condition of the
+different classes seated on the land, the working of the law with respect
+to tenant&#8217;s improvements, the means of diminishing the wretched millions
+squatting on the soil, agrarian crime and all that it involved; the mass
+of evidence it collected is still of the greatest value. The Report it
+made, if somewhat over-cautious and timid, was very instructive in many
+respects; especially it showed how the Irish land system grew out of the
+conquests and confiscations of the past, and still bore the marks of its
+ill-omened origin, notably in the lines drawn between the owners and the
+occupiers of the soil marked by a profound division of race and faith; and
+many of the suggestions it made were wise, nay, excellent. But on the
+capital subject of land tenure, by many degrees the most important, the
+Report only too clearly revealed the ignorance of Englishmen as regards
+Ireland, and, above all, as regards her landed relations. The Commission
+ought to have fully recognised the concurrent rights in the soil, which
+the Irish occupier had acquired in tens of thousands of instances, rights
+often equivalent to more or less joint-ownership; it ought to have
+insisted that the Tenant Right, as it was now called, of the Ulster
+Custom, and the claims arising from improvements, the work of the tenant,
+and from sums paid on the transfer of farms, should be made law-worthy,
+and effectually secured. With a want of insight which would have made
+Burke gnash his teeth, it took exactly an opposite course; it warned the
+Irish landlord that these concurrent rights were creating against him &#8216;an
+embryo copyhold,&#8217; and eating away his freehold ownership; it plainly
+hinted that he would do well to get rid of them. It even refused to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
+acknowledge that the tenant had a claim to any improvements if made in the
+past; but it proposed a scheme for compensating him for improvements made
+in the future, so limited and fenced round with restrictions, that it was
+quite illusory, and indeed deceptive. The Report caused intense
+indignation in Ulster, and was not well received in any part of
+Ireland.<a name='fna_46' id='fna_46' href='#f_46'><small>[46]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>Bills, founded on the Report of the Devon Commission, as it was called,
+were brought into Parliament, but never became law. Within a few months
+Ireland was in the throes of an agony, the most terrible, perhaps, that
+has befallen any land in the nineteenth century. In the autumn of 1845,
+the potato, which formed the only food of the indigent multitudes fastened
+on the land, failed, to a considerable extent, in many districts; in the
+following year the crop was all but completely destroyed. Famine, far more
+general and appalling than that of twenty-five years before, had soon held
+a wretched population in its grasp; the results may almost be compared to
+those of the Black Death, and of the famines of the Middle Ages. The land
+system went to wreck in whole counties, especially in the west and along
+the seaboard; hundreds of the landed gentry were involved in ruin;
+thousands of farmers of the better class became bankrupt; the dense cottar
+multitudes were literally lifted up from the soil, and cast adrift, the
+waifs and strays of a far-reaching tempest. This is not the place to
+review the measures adopted to meet the dread visitation; if not free from
+errors, inevitable in a situation of the kind, they were, essentially,
+and, in the main, successful. Peel was still in office in 1845; well
+knowing what poverty in Ireland was, he introduced supplies of food into
+the remote and backward districts, which the energies of commerce could
+hardly reach; this wise policy saved tens of thousands of lives; as is
+notorious,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> he repealed the corn laws in the interest of the afflicted
+country. The Government of Lord John Russell had succeeded him in 1846; it
+had to confront an emergency infinitely worse; it followed, in many
+respects, the example of Peel, who had established &#8216;relief works&#8217; in many
+counties; but it did not assist the most impoverished parts of Ireland
+with food through the agency of the State; this possibly was a real
+mistake. Nevertheless, it manfully and humanely met the tremendous crisis;
+it is easy to censure some of its acts, for instance, the wasteful and
+useless public works it set on foot, and the gigantic outdoor relief it
+was compelled to lavish; but millions in starvation were thrown on its
+hands; and the poor law, only lately in operation, could not cope with
+universal distress. On the whole, the statesmen in power did their duty
+wisely and well; thousands of unhappy victims succumbed, indeed, to
+famine, and to dire diseases following in its train; but Ireland as a
+people was saved; assuredly she could not have saved herself. A word, too,
+must be said on the magnificent charity which flowed in from many lands
+into the community in its woe. England had turned in sympathy towards
+Ireland in the season of distress which had followed the Peace; she
+bestowed great sums on her, in 1845-46, through private subscription. The
+United States, France, Germany, and Italy joined in the good work; even
+the Ottoman Empire was not behindhand.</p>
+
+<p>I must dwell for a moment on the conduct and the position of the classes
+connected with the land during this appalling trial. The attitude of the
+landed gentry was much the same as it had been at an infinitely less
+disastrous crisis; but, on the whole, it was marked by nobler and more
+attractive features. The charity of the great landlords of Ireland was
+most praiseworthy; many devoted large sums for the support of the poor on
+their lands by instituting fine works of enclosure and drainage; some, I
+know, even mortgaged their estates for this very purpose.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> Hundreds of the
+lesser gentry, stricken down as they were, imitated their superiors as
+well as they could; old divisions were forgotten in the common misfortune;
+spite of the interested lies of a calumnious faction, as an order of men
+they acted extremely well. One of their bitterest enemies, who wrote at
+the time, has placed it on record, &#8216;that the resident landlords and their
+families did, in many cases, devote themselves to the task of saving these
+poor people alive. Many remitted their rents or half their rents; and
+ladies kept their servants busy and their kitchens smoking with continual
+preparation of food for the poor.&#8217;<a name='fna_47' id='fna_47' href='#f_47'><small>[47]</small></a> Many, however, of the Irish
+landlords, as was to be expected, looked hopelessly on at the misery
+around them; this was the case with feeble and incapable men, and the
+sight has always been seen in grave social crises; it was but in
+conformity with our frail and imperfect nature. A certain number,
+moreover, of the class had recourse to severe measures to remove from
+their lands the masses of wretchedness crowded upon them; the process of
+eviction became too frequent; hundreds of families were in this way
+dispossessed of their holdings. These acts of harshness were certainly to
+be deplored; but it was almost universally believed that the cottar in
+Ireland could not live from the land after the failure of almost his only
+means of subsistence; it must be added that, in this very matter, the
+conduct of Parliament and the Government was by many degrees more severe.
+A strict test of destitution had to be applied; a law was passed that, as
+a condition of obtaining relief, no person possessing more than a quarter
+of an acre of land should be entitled to support from the State; thousands
+of families abandoned their homes, through the effects of this measure;
+for one evicted by a landlord, fifty perhaps were practically evicted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> by
+this stern policy. The law was possibly required in the terrible
+circumstances of the time; but it was condemned by the Lord-Lieutenant,
+Lord Bessborough, a great Irish peer, and an able man; at all events, it
+justified, to a considerable extent, all that could be laid to the charge
+of a few Irish landlords whose acts were most unfairly denounced by many
+writers, and were falsely described as common to the great body of the
+class. For the rest, as I have said, the land system was broken up in many
+districts; and not only the owners but the occupiers of the soil suffered
+cruelly from the highest to the lowest grade.</p>
+
+<p>After the first months of the famine, the immense exodus of the Irish
+race, as it has fitly been called, began. The population fled from the
+country in hundreds of thousands; some found a home in England and in our
+Australian colonies; nine-tenths, probably, in the great Republic of the
+West. The sufferings of numbers of the emigrants were terribly severe;
+huddled together in the ill-found vessels of the time, hundreds perished
+before they beheld the lands they were seeking; that some check was not
+placed on the greed of the merchants, who subjected these victims to
+horrors like those of the Middle Passage, was certainly the worst mistake
+of the Government of the day. During the agony of the famine there was
+comparatively little crime; the minds of men were engrossed by a dire
+calamity; but in a few months Whiteboyism had been again aroused; there
+was a widespread outbreak of agrarian disorder followed by the abortive
+rising of 1848. The time was now ripe, in the judgment of even leading
+statesmen, for making another of the great experiments on the Irish land,
+which had been their policy since the age of the Tudors. Many of the Irish
+landed gentry had been ruined; the estates of many were heavily charged
+with debt, in part caused by extravagance in the past, but chiefly by
+large provisions made for their families in more prosperous times,
+especially during the period of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> the high prices of the war.<a name='fna_48' id='fna_48' href='#f_48'><small>[48]</small></a> The
+object of the Government&mdash;and Peel concurred&mdash;was to make a clean sweep of
+the embarrassed owners, and to transfer their lands to a new order of men;
+&#8216;English and Scottish capital was to be attracted to the Irish soil;&#8217; the
+Irish landlord was to be &#8216;sold out cheap;&#8217; his successor was to be a
+person fit &#8216;to discharge the duties of property;&#8217; the &#8216;regeneration of
+Ireland&#8217; was to be the magnificent result.<a name='fna_49' id='fna_49' href='#f_49'><small>[49]</small></a> The sale of encumbered
+estates in Ireland had from various causes been a slow and a costly
+process, an Act was run through Parliament with scarcely an expression of
+dissent,<a name='fna_50' id='fna_50' href='#f_50'><small>[50]</small></a> making the process as rapid and inexpensive as the wit of man
+could devise; a Commission was appointed to carry the law into effect; and
+intending purchasers were to be given an indefeasible title to any lands
+they might acquire. This was a strong measure, but it was not nearly all;
+the concurrent rights of the tenants in the estates to be sold were
+absolutely ignored, and left without protection; the new possessors were
+empowered to destroy them if they pleased. The results were such as might
+have been looked for when lands were forced into the market wholesale,
+when Ireland was still reeling from the strokes of a terrible famine, and
+agricultural ruin was seen everywhere. The Commission acted as such
+tribunals invariably act when skilfully selected to carry out a policy; it
+addressed itself to its task of &#8216;selling land cheap;&#8217; it was egged on by
+the Lord-Lieutenant of the day; and it sacrificed estates, in scores of
+instances, at less than half their value. This iniquitous proceeding went
+on for years, until the market for land in Ireland righted itself at last;
+but the Encumbered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> Estates Act was often renewed; about a sixth part of
+the lands of Ireland has been transferred by these means. As the result
+many of the Irish gentry, who might have tided over the crisis, were
+beggared and cast on the world penniless; and confiscation from above had
+its counterpart in confiscation from below; the partial joint-ownership of
+thousands of the occupiers of the soil was ruthlessly annihilated in
+numbers of cases. And what were the consequences of this scheme of
+spoliation and wrong, which English politicians would never have thought
+of but for their traditional contempt of the rights of property in land in
+Ireland? English and Scottish capital, indeed, reached the Irish soil; but
+it reached it in the form of large mortgages, a heavy drain on the
+country&#8217;s resources; the English and Scottish purchasers of the Irish land
+were a mere handful of men. The estates, in fact, transferred under the
+Encumbered Estates Acts, as a rule, passed into the ownership of jobbers,
+speculators, and mortgagees, people without the associations old
+possession ensures; they have formed, as a class, harsh and exacting
+landlords, the true successors of the almost defunct middleman; they are
+responsible for much that is bad in Irish landed relations of late years.
+A huge confiscation, in a word, failed, as those of Elizabeth and Cromwell
+failed before; the fact ought to be a warning to public men, who have been
+parading theories about the Irish land&mdash;strewn as this has been with
+monuments of misdeeds and errors&mdash;as false and more dangerous than those
+which produced the Encumbered Estates Acts.<a name='fna_51' id='fna_51' href='#f_51'><small>[51]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The exodus had, by 1851, reduced the population of Ireland by nearly two
+millions of souls; this decline has continued ever since; the population
+which, in 1846, was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> considerably more than eight millions, is now, we
+have seen, only about four and a half millions. In 1852 an agitation
+sprang up, which might have wrought a great change in Irish landed
+relations, had it not been brought by mere accident to an untimely end.
+The Report of the Devon Commission, I have said, had troubled Ulster; the
+Famine had driven peasants, in tens of thousands, from their homes; the
+operation of the Encumbered Estates Act was destroying their concurrent
+rights in their holdings. At the General Election of 1852 Ireland returned
+a large party of representatives to the House of Commons pledged to
+vindicate the claims of the tenant farmers; these were expressed in a
+demand that has been called the &#8216;Three F&#8217;s,&#8217; &#8216;Fair Rent,&#8217; &#8216;Fixity of
+Tenure,&#8217; and &#8216;Free Sale,&#8217; a mode of occupation which had been largely
+secured by the Custom of Ulster, and to which O&#8217;Connell had given his
+sanction. The Government of Lord Derby was now in office; it had brought
+in measures which, in some degree, would have legalised the rights of the
+Irish tenant; but the Ministry was defeated, partly through an
+intrigue;<a name='fna_52' id='fna_52' href='#f_52'><small>[52]</small></a> the cause of the Irish farmer was baffled and kept in
+suspense for years, largely owing to dissensions and treachery on the part
+of some of the Irish members. By this time the country had begun to
+revive, and to throw off the worst effects of the Famine; vast depopulated
+tracts had been opened to new husbandry; the land had been set free, over
+an immense area, from the incubus of a mass of wretchedness which had
+preyed on it, and had completely disorganised the land system, unnaturally
+forcing up rent and cutting down wages. Under these conditions the
+statesmen in power, already expecting great things from the Encumbered
+Estates Act, believed that the Irish land system would right itself, and
+that it was unnecessary to consider or to protect the rights of the
+tenant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> classes; these would either disappear, or would be fairly adjusted
+in the improved landed relations that were being formed. At all events,
+there was no legislation to secure these claims; the scanty legislation,
+that dealt with the Irish land, was unfavourable, in many ways, to these,
+and endeavoured to assimilate Irish to English tenures, as Tudor lawyers
+had done three centuries before; and Lord Palmerston, for a long time the
+head of the State, discouraged Irish tenant right, in more than one
+speech, and declared that it only meant landlord wrong, unwise utterances
+that showed he did not understand the subject. At the same time, the
+policy of clearing the land for cultivators of a capitalist class, able to
+occupy and do justice to large farms, was generally advocated in high
+places; more than one Lord-Lieutenant announced that nature had made
+Ireland a great grazing tract, and that her petty occupiers were little
+better than a social nuisance.<a name='fna_53' id='fna_53' href='#f_53'><small>[53]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>For some time it seemed as though the forecasts made by the great majority
+of our statesmen would prove correct. The immense emigration from Ireland
+to the United States had important results, unfortunate in many respects;
+but the uplifting of redundant millions from the soil greatly contributed
+to the country&#8217;s welfare. Holdings were consolidated over very large
+areas, a beneficent process, if humanely carried out; a certain number of
+Englishmen and Scotsmen rented large farms; the progress of husbandry of
+all kinds was distinct; a vast field for agriculture, really worthy of the
+name, was opened. A new standard for the management of land was, in fact,
+set up; at the same time a few purchasers, under the Encumbered Estates
+Acts, laid out considerable sums in improving their estates; the Treasury
+made large advances to many Irish landlords; these did much in works of
+enclosure, draining, planting, and the like. Ireland<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> began to wear a new
+aspect in several counties, especially in the more thriving parts of the
+southern provinces; the ruins made by the Famine, indeed, caused hideous
+eyesores, in wrecks of villages and the remains of peasant dwellings; but
+the mud hovels of the cottar population had largely disappeared, and the
+habitations of farmers of the better class very markedly improved. The
+economic conditions of landed relations became more conducive to
+prosperity than they had ever been before; rents fell considerably during
+a series of years, as the intense competition for land diminished; though
+they gradually rose in the course of time, they never reached the
+excessive rates of 1840-45; and the wages of labour greatly increased, and
+attained a level that, happily, has since been preserved. Many
+circumstances concurred to quicken and augment this unquestionable social
+and material progress. Agricultural prices were high from about 1852
+onward; Free Trade was as yet adding to the wealth of Ireland; and there
+was a long succession of good harvests, the most important element in her
+general welfare. The railway system, too, introduced of late years, opened
+a number of new markets to her products, and greatly facilitated their
+access to British markets. At the same time the turnip replaced the potato
+over hundreds of thousands of acres; farm machinery greatly improved in
+Ireland; the importation of the best stock from England and Scotland had
+excellent results, and almost transformed the old breeds of Irish farming
+animals. An era of prosperity, in a word, had seemed to dawn on Ireland;
+and though agrarian disorder had not disappeared, the Whiteboy secret
+societies were greatly broken up, and political agitation well-nigh
+ceased.</p>
+
+<p>In these circumstances, it was a common belief in England that &#8216;the Irish
+difficulty,&#8217; as it was called, was passing away, and that the &#8216;Hibernia
+Pacata&#8217; had at last become a happy reality. Yet the progress and
+tranquillity of this brief period were largely superficial and even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+deceptive; fires were still alive beneath the smouldering ashes. The
+partial prosperity of Ireland mainly depended on good harvests and high
+prices; it was interrupted, even in these years, by two or three seasons
+of distress. Notwithstanding the widespread consolidation of farms, and
+the removal from the soil of indigent millions, the land still, for the
+most part, remained in the possession of a mere peasantry; very few of the
+English and Scottish capitalist farmers settled in Ireland, and really
+throve; the great majority left the country, like the &#8216;Englishry&#8217; of a
+bygone age. And though things wore a serene aspect, the inherent vices of
+the land system continued to exist; in some respects they increased, or
+were more painfully felt. The old divisions of race and faith between the
+owners and the occupiers of the soil remained; they had but little changed
+and even had perhaps widened; much had happened to keep the landed classes
+more apart than before. The new purchasers, under the Encumbered Estates
+Acts, were, we have seen, often hard-fisted and grasping landlords; they
+raised their rents, without scruple, in too many instances; standing on
+the letter of the law, they too often ignored the partial joint-ownership
+in their farms of their tenants; they had sometimes recourse to unjust and
+severe evictions. The old landlords, too, never recovered from the effects
+of the Famine; they were overshadowed by the bureaucracy of the Castle,
+which, for many years, had been growing in power; they thus became an
+order of men with privileges, but without authority, in the midst of
+inferiors, who had little sympathy with them, a dangerous position like
+that of the French seigneurie in the later years of the eighteenth
+century&mdash;a position described by Tocqueville in very striking language. At
+the same time the peasantry stood aloof from them more than in the days of
+their fathers; and though they remained quiescent for years, as has often
+happened in Irish history, there were causes for this increasing
+estrangement. They<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> were no longer the grossly ignorant multitude of fifty
+years before; education had made some way among them, though in this
+respect they were still backward; they felt more acutely all that was hard
+in their lot, like the French peasantry before the great Revolution of
+1789-94. This sentiment, however, owed its principal force to sentiments
+engendered in far distant lands. The thousands of the exodus had left
+their country with memories embittered against some Irish landlords, and,
+notably, against the British Government; a new Ireland was rising across
+the Atlantic; the emigrants and their sons were in constant communication
+with the old Ireland once their home; socialistic ideas as regards the
+land, blending with dislike of the superiors and the rulers, under whom
+they lived, were gradually diffused among the Irish peasantry. The
+economic conditions, too, of landed relations by degrees made these
+feelings more general and intense. Rents were rising as the wealth of the
+country increased, though, except in the cases of the new landlords, and
+of a very few surviving middlemen, they were, as a rule, by no means
+excessive. Simultaneously a concurrence of causes had extinguished
+leasehold tenures in most parts of Ireland, and had reduced the status of
+the Irish farmer to that of a mere tenant at will, liable to be
+dispossessed by a notice to quit, at the mercy, in fact, of the lord of
+the soil. And, meanwhile, the equitable rights of the occupiers as a
+class, due to improvements, and to sums paid for the goodwill of farms,
+had been increasing to an immense extent; and yet a grievous wrong&mdash;they
+were not even recognised by law. Law and fact had long been sharply
+clashing in landed relations; there was much that was essentially bad in
+the land system; and agrarian trouble and crime was on the increase.</p>
+
+<p>The mind of England had turned away from Ireland after the petty outbreak
+of 1848; it charged the Irish community with ungrateful folly, as it
+recollected the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> charity lavished during the Famine. This sentiment was
+replaced by what was worse, indifference; throughout this period&mdash;from
+1850 to 1868&mdash;Parliament gave little attention to the affairs of Ireland.
+British statesmen continued to pin their faith to their policy; they
+disregarded ominous symptoms on the increase; Ireland was rapidly becoming
+more prosperous; the claims of the Irish tenant farmer were a delusion, or
+worse. This apathy was augmented by the state of the representation of
+Ireland in these years; this was in a feeble, even a degraded condition;
+and largely owing to the authority of Cardinal Cullen, who prohibited the
+Irish priesthood from taking any part in politics, agitation, I have said,
+had become a mere tradition of the past. Yet the causes I have glanced at
+were silently at work, which ultimately were to lead to grave social
+troubles. The first sign of disturbance was seen in a little outbreak, the
+result of a conspiracy hatched by one of the rebels of 1848, and supported
+to some extent from America: but the &#8216;Ph&oelig;nix plot,&#8217; as it was called,
+almost at once collapsed; the Government thought it hardly worthy of
+notice. Another and much more formidable conspiracy was matured in
+1864-65; and though it was put down with little difficulty in time, it
+showed that there was much that was peccant in the state of Ireland; and
+it deeply affected the minds of Englishmen, aroused as it were out of a
+fool&#8217;s paradise. The millions of the Irish race in the Far West were
+passionately appealed to by leaders, not without parts, to assist in a
+crusade against &#8216;landlordism,&#8217; and British rule in Ireland; they gave the
+movement very general support; they found numerous allies in thousands of
+Irishmen disbanded after the great conflict between the North and the
+South. The Fenian conspiracy was launched on its course; its directors
+made skilful attempts to debauch whole regiments, and to stir up the
+passions of the mob in many of the towns of Ireland; and they especially
+turned their attention to the mass of the peasantry. Here,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> however, their
+policy was injudicious and ill-conceived; they promised the Irish land as
+a spoil to those who would join the ranks of the &#8216;patriot Irish army;&#8217; but
+all this alarmed the occupiers of the soil, whose only object was to
+acquire a better mode of tenure for their farms, and who rightly thought
+the Fenian movement made their possessions insecure, a belief generally
+encouraged by the Catholic priesthood. A short-lived rising, conducted by
+a few American soldiers, and backed by the rabble of a few villages and
+towns, found no real support in Ireland, and was finally quelled in 1867;
+but in England there was a spurt of Fenian disorder, and this, though
+easily quenched, made a profound impression. It was generally felt in
+England and Scotland that, notwithstanding the optimism of a generation of
+public men, there was still much that was rotten in the state of Ireland,
+and that this should be removed by large and searching reforms. The chief
+sign of this change in British opinion was seen in the result of the
+General Election of 1868; Mr. Gladstone, who, hitherto, had taken
+comparatively little part in Irish affairs, but who, with his keen
+instinct of every turn in the public mind, had been vehemently enlarging
+on the wrongs of Ireland, was placed in power with a great majority, and
+at once addressed himself to the task of Irish reform.<a name='fna_54' id='fna_54' href='#f_54'><small>[54]</small></a></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="large">THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (<i>continued</i>)&mdash;THE IRISH LAND ACT OF
+1870&mdash;THE LAND LEAGUE AND THE NATIONAL LEAGUE&mdash;THE LAND OF
+1881&mdash;SUBSEQUENT LEGISLATION AS REGARDS THE LAND SYSTEM OF IRELAND</span></p>
+
+<div class="note"><p class="hang">State of landed relations in Ireland in 1869-70&mdash;Mr. Gladstone Prime
+Minister&mdash;The Land Act of 1870&mdash;Its merits and defects&mdash;A short period
+of prosperity in Ireland&mdash;Ominous symptoms&mdash;Michael Davitt&mdash;The
+teaching of John Finton Lalor in 1848&mdash;The &#8216;New Departure&#8217; in
+Fenianism arranged in America&mdash;Foundation of the Land League&mdash;It was a
+foreign rebellious conspiracy, with an agrarian side, under a
+constitutional mask&mdash;Parnell the master spirit of the League&mdash;His
+visit to America and the results&mdash;A short period of distress in
+Ireland&mdash;Conduct of the Irish landlords&mdash;Progress of the Land
+League&mdash;Mr. Gladstone again Prime Minister in 1880&mdash;The Compensation
+for Disturbance Bill rejected by the House of Lords&mdash;Outburst of
+agrarian crime, as the Land League increases in power&mdash;Rents at
+Griffith&#8217;s valuation&mdash;Boycotting&mdash;Frightful state of Ireland in
+1881&mdash;After a short attempt to repress it, Mr. Gladstone surrenders
+to the Land League&mdash;The Land Act of 1881&mdash;Mr. Gladstone breaks the
+pledges he had made in 1870&mdash;His promise of compensating the Irish
+landlords&mdash;The Land Act of 1881 a bad and unjust measure directly
+inconsistent with that of 1870&mdash;The &#8216;No Rent Manifesto&#8217;&mdash;The
+Kilmainham Treaty&mdash;The Ph&oelig;nix Park tragedy&mdash;Coercion&mdash;Parnell
+founds the National League, the successor of the Land League&mdash;Renewal
+of agitation in 1886&mdash;Struggle with law and the Government&mdash;Subsequent
+agrarian legislation for Ireland&mdash;This is really a concession to
+agitation, for the benefit of Irish tenants, and to the injury of
+Irish landlords.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Gladstone, after his conversion to Home Rule, more than once declared
+that, almost from early manhood<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> he had given special attention to
+Ireland; either his memory was at fault, or he had kept the fact to
+himself. He had been a conspicuous figure in politics, for many years
+before 1868; but until he had been placed at the helm of the State, he had
+shown little acquaintance with Irish questions, and, indeed, had expressed
+few opinions on them. In 1866 he had said in the House of Commons, that
+the existence of the Anglican Irish Church would be probably long; he had
+been in high office almost since 1853, and, as a colleague of Lord
+Palmerston, had acquiesced in the philippics of that statesman against
+Irish tenant right, conduct that revealed ignorance of the land system of
+Ireland. But, in 1868, when the Fenian outbreak had caused the nation to
+demand large reforms in Ireland, he suddenly abandoned his attitude of
+reserve; he threw himself into Irish affairs; his zeal, it may be
+remarked, as often happened, fell in with his interests, and with those of
+the Liberal party, and gave him a leverage to drive Disraeli from office.
+During months before the General Election that ensued, the orator
+thundered on Irish grievances, and on the manifold ills of Ireland; in
+figurative and impassioned language, he said that the island was blighted
+by a huge upas tree, the Church, the land, and education being the three
+main branches. These harangues, addressed to the new democracy,
+contributed powerfully to the fall of the Conservative Ministry; it was
+little noticed, at the time, that one of the results was ere long to
+compel Mr. Gladstone himself to subject Ireland to severe repressive
+measures, for Whiteboy and agrarian outrages became frequent In 1869, the
+Minister addressed himself to the task of hewing down the first branch of
+the poisonous upas; he disestablished and disendowed the Protestant Church
+of Ireland. This is not the place to comment upon that great measure; it
+was well designed upon its professed principles; it dealt liberally, nay,
+generously, with the voluntary Church, which replaced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> the Church of the
+State it overthrew. But essentially it was a scheme of destruction, formed
+in Nonconformist not in Irish interests, and opposed to the views of
+generations of statesmen; it made no provision for the clergy of the Irish
+Catholic Church, a policy which Pitt, Castlereagh, and Lord John Russell
+had had at heart, which had been all but a condition of the Union, and
+which, if carried into effect, would have done much to strengthen and
+maintain that fundamental law, and to promote tranquillity in Ireland and
+her general welfare.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gladstone now turned to the second branch of the upas, the land system
+of Ireland and her landed relations. His whole career, especially in its
+Home Rule phase, proves that his knowledge of Ireland was not exact or
+profound; at this time he had had little experience of the Irish land
+question. But the mind of England was still attracted to Irish affairs; a
+number of distinguished Englishmen and Scotchmen went to Ireland, to
+investigate the state of the country on the spot; the British Press sent
+some of its best contributors; the time was singularly opportune for a
+fair and complete inquiry; no Minister has had, before or since, such
+assistance in dealing with Irish problems. I must glance at the state of
+the Irish land system in 1869-70, as this was fully explored and made
+manifest.<a name='fna_55' id='fna_55' href='#f_55'><small>[55]</small></a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> The material progress being made, since about 1854, had
+been largely developed in by far the greatest part of the island. The
+population was being still diminished by emigration and other causes; the
+area for real husbandry had been greatly extended; the rural community, at
+least in its lower grades, was infinitely better off than it had been
+before the Famine. The look of the country, in most places, bore witness
+to a change beneficent in the main; it had been almost transformed since
+1844-45. The cottar system, no doubt, was to be found in backward
+counties; but even in these it had been largely effaced; it was all but
+passing away in the more thriving counties; masses of indigence were to be
+seen only in tracts west of the Shannon; and these were aggregated on an
+area comparatively small. The general consolidation of farms had,
+meanwhile, gone on; and though Ireland remained, on the whole, a land of
+small farms, her land system had, from top to bottom, ceased to depend for
+its support on a perishable root. In every conceivable respect a marked
+improvement was visible in the state of the peasantry; they were by many
+degrees better clothed and fed than their fathers had been; the wages of
+agricultural labour were still rising, and were now paid in money, and not
+in plots of potatoes; and though the habitations of this whole class were,
+as a rule, still mean, the dwellings of the class of substantial farmers
+had shown signs of distinct social progress. At the same time agriculture
+had made a marked advance, owing to the influences I have referred to
+before; fine specimens of extensive farming were very commonly to be seen;
+thousands of acres had been reclaimed and enclosed of late years; at no
+period certainly had the landed gentry, in a great measure through moneys
+borrowed from the State, expended such large sums in improving their
+estates, especially in arterial drainage, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> the introduction of the
+best breeds of stock of all kinds. The wealth of Ireland, too, was
+increasing, if not rapidly; and a change for the better might be traced in
+what we may describe as her general social life. Her middle class was
+still weak and small compared to that of England and Scotland; but it had
+been growing in wealth and power; and this, to some extent, had had a good
+effect on a community still mainly dependent on the land.</p>
+
+<p>The material and even the social progress of Ireland, since the Famine,
+had thus been marked; it had been more decided than it has been, at any
+period, except, possibly, that from 1782 to 1800. Her land system, too,
+had become better in important parts; but in many respects it remained
+vicious; some of its vices had been aggravated, or were more sensibly
+felt. The hope that the land would pass generally into the hands of large
+farmers, able to develop its resources, had not been realised, or had been
+realised only to a relatively trivial extent; it was still held in the
+main by a peasantry of small occupiers of the soil, though the
+consolidation of farms had gone on over extensive areas, especially over
+wide tracts of pasturage, in the eastern, midland, and western counties,
+and this, in some instances, through a process of harsh eviction. The
+profound divisions of race and faith, the distinctive feature in the
+organic structure of the whole community, were at least as visible as ever
+in the land system; from causes I have pointed out before, they had, not
+improbably, been widened; this tended to increase the old dissension in
+landed relations, and the long-standing separation between the landed
+classes. Middleman tenures, with their mischievous effects, had, since the
+Famine, well-nigh disappeared; but the new landlord had largely replaced
+the middleman; absenteeism remained what it had been; and though absentee
+estates, as a rule, were under good agents, there was too much of that
+&#8216;absenteeism of the heart,&#8217; condemned by Tocqueville<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> as a grave social
+danger. The purchasers under the Encumbered Estates Acts, with some
+honourable exceptions, no doubt, were too often oppressive landlords; the
+old landlords, as a class, had, certainly, done much for their estates,
+but they had lost their political and largely their social influence;
+partly owing to apprehensions as regards tenant right, partly to the
+assurances of statesmen that their position was safe, they had become
+perhaps more exacting in their dealings with their dependents; in the
+existing situation, they more and more resembled a weak caste, controlled
+by the central Government, and isolated amidst a community, to a great
+extent, not friendly. All this tended to produce a want of stability and
+insecurity in the land system, which was ominous of social strife and
+trouble; but the most active element of disturbance was to be certainly
+found in the contact with the rebellious movement which Ireland had lately
+witnessed. Fenianism had been scotched, but by no means slain; and though
+the peasantry had held aloof from it, Fenian emissaries were going through
+the country, appealing to the passions and the greed of the occupiers of
+the soil, for different reasons not contented with their lot, hostile, in
+a great degree, to the order of things around them, and more alive to
+their grievances than in the past generation; at this very time a cry
+against the payment of rent, and against &#8216;landlordism,&#8217; as it was called,
+was being heard in a few counties. It was significant that agrarian
+crimes&mdash;some of the worst type&mdash;and agrarian disorder were distinctly
+increasing; and it should be added, that, in spite of Cardinal Cullen, the
+younger Catholic priests, in some districts, were beginning to play the
+part of agitators again.</p>
+
+<p>Passing from the general state of landed relations, the conditions of land
+tenure, briefly noticed before, had not improved of late years, and were,
+in some respects, worse. Rents had been rising for a considerable time:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+but except in comparatively few instances, they were not excessive, as
+affairs stood; whatever mendacious calumny has since maintained, Ireland,
+on the whole, was in no sense an over-rented land.<a name='fna_56' id='fna_56' href='#f_56'><small>[56]</small></a> But the modes of
+occupation were essentially bad; they were open to the gravest objections;
+their vices had become more than ever apparent. The tenant right, under
+the Ulster custom, had, I have remarked, largely secured the tenant
+farmer, in parts of the province, what was generally known as the &#8216;Three
+F&#8217;s,&#8217; Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure, the power of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> a Free Sale of the
+holding;<a name='fna_57' id='fna_57' href='#f_57'><small>[57]</small></a> though it should be especially borne in mind that the fair
+rent was never adjusted by an external agency, but was settled by what
+Adam Smith would have called &#8216;higgling&#8217; between the owner and occupier of
+the soil. The custom, however, had been very powerful; its violation, on
+anything like a great scale, would have certainly caused a fierce war of
+classes; and it gave the Ulster tenant, in tens of thousands of cases, a
+real proprietary right in the land, whatever might be the terms of his
+contract; a right equivalent to more or less joint-ownership, and that
+might be described as a precious <i>peculium</i>, subject to conditions that
+long had made it practically secure. But this most important right,
+involving property worth many millions, still remained wholly unprotected
+by law; and though its value had enormously increased, as the wealth of
+Ulster had been developed, of late years, it was being &#8216;nibbled away&#8217; on
+not a few estates, and restricted by limitations of many kinds that had
+greatly impaired it. An analogous right,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> like seed scattered by the
+winds, had partially spread into the southern provinces, as the natural
+result of the equitable claims, the occupiers of farms had repeatedly
+acquired, though this had not been recognised on many estates, and its
+efficacy was not as yet great; but this right, such as it was, like its
+fellow, was not law-worthy, and depended wholly on the will of the lord of
+the soil. In addition to the tenant right in the north and the south, the
+concurrent claims of the tenant farmers, throughout the country, in
+respect of improvements and of sums paid on the transfer of farms, for
+&#8216;good-will,&#8217; had been greatly increasing of late years, especially as
+prosperity was advancing; and yet tenures had continued to become more
+precarious; leaseholds were being almost everywhere replaced by tenancies
+at will. These claims were never so extensive before; often equivalent to
+joint-ownership, in no doubtful sense, and, in almost all cases, of some
+value, they were, nevertheless, still outside the &aelig;gis of the law, a fact
+that must ever be borne in mind; they could be destroyed or greatly
+reduced by the raising of rent, they could be annihilated by a notice to
+quit, if eviction followed. Unquestionably in the great mass of instances,
+these rights, whatever their nature, were not invaded; but they certainly
+had been in a certain number; a single case of invasion created alarm and
+distrust, and had a bad effect on landed relations; throw a stone into a
+pond, and it makes a ripple; it has a disturbing influence far beyond the
+surface it strikes. No wonder, then, that complaints of these modes of
+tenure had become very general, and were loudly expressed, not only by
+those who might suffer from them, but by intelligent minds which had
+mastered the subject. It was an exaggeration to assert, as was said at the
+time, that the peasant in Ireland lived under a sword of Damocles; but he
+lived under a system in which law and right were very plainly opposed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>Only a revolution, which Parliament would not have sanctioned, could have
+effaced the inveterate ills of the Irish land system, running up to the
+conquests and the confiscations of the past, and the divisions of race and
+faith in the Irish land; the remark is as true now as it was thirty years
+ago; and a revolution of the kind, I am firmly convinced, would, even
+under the best conditions, make infinitely worse whatever was already bad.
+But it was possible for legislation to remove or mitigate the essential
+vices in the modes of Irish land tenure; Mr. Gladstone rightly confined
+himself to this object. He brought in his first Irish Land Bill in the
+early spring of 1870; he had to address a House of Commons not much in
+sympathy with a project of the kind. Many of the members were ignorant of
+the subject; many thought English land tenure perfect, and could not
+understand why it would not do for Ireland, a prejudice at least three
+centuries old; some believed Irish tenant right to be a violation of Free
+Trade, then in the ascendant in every phase of commerce. The Minister&#8217;s
+speech was adapted to those who heard it; it was tentative, moderate, not
+striking; he drew, indeed, very plain distinctions between British and
+Irish land tenure, and showed how the first could be no rule of right for
+the second; but if he enlarged on the just claims of the occupier of the
+Irish soil, he did not venture to maintain, what he probably felt, that
+these were often equivalent to a joint-ownership more or less developed.
+He was, in short, dexterous, but not profound; very inferior to Burke,
+who, a century before, had grasped the essential facts in this province,
+though the question was still in the remote future. The most important
+parts of Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s speech, and indeed, of those of his leading
+followers, regard being had to events by no means distant, were those in
+which he repudiated, with no doubtful censure, the whole theory of the
+&#8216;Three F&#8217;s,&#8217; the extreme demand, at this time, of the tenant class<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> in
+Ireland. &#8216;Fair Rent&#8217; he argued, especially if adjusted by the State,
+deprives a landlord of his first proprietary right, and involves his
+expropriation in the long run; &#8216;Fixity of Tenure&#8217; means a perpetuity for
+the tenant, to which he has no just claim, and involves confiscation
+hardly disguised; &#8216;Free Sale&#8217; was but a corollary to legislation on these
+principles.<a name='fna_58' id='fna_58' href='#f_58'><small>[58]</small></a> At the same time, Mr. Gladstone protested, with marked
+emphasis, that the Bill he was introducing was to be absolutely a final
+measure; it was to effect a permanent settlement of the Irish land; Irish
+landlords would have nothing more to apprehend, Irish tenants to expect.
+In this instance, as in that of Home Rule, the orator was to belie
+himself, and to be a curious example of the irony of Fate; within a few
+years he was to legislate on the lines he had denounced as dangerous and
+false; to carry into effect a scheme for dealing with the Irish land,
+infinitely worse than that of the &#8216;Three F&#8217;s;&#8217; to scatter the &#8216;finality,&#8217;
+to which he had pledged his word, to the winds.</p>
+
+<p>The Bill thus launched was a comprehensive and wise measure, if not free
+from real, even grave, defects; it remains the only statesmanlike scheme
+for the settlement<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> of Irish landed relations that hitherto has received
+the assent of Parliament.<a name='fna_59' id='fna_59' href='#f_59'><small>[59]</small></a> It made the tenant right of Ulster, in its
+various forms, as these existed in different estates, law-worthy, and
+protected to the fullest extent; it gave the same sanction to the inchoate
+tenant right of the southern provinces. This was, in itself, an immense
+reform; but the Bill properly had a far wider sweep; it extended, with the
+exception of certain kinds of lands, such as demesnes, town parks,
+holdings of a residential type, and, in most cases, large pastoral
+holdings, to nearly all the occupiers of the Irish soil; even the excepted
+lands were partially within its scope. The first great object of the
+measure was to secure to the Irish tenant the rights he had acquired to
+improvements he may have made on his farm, a right hitherto not within the
+pale of the law; its provisions, in this respect, were, I think,
+excellent. With a true perception of the unquestionable fact that, though
+the Irish landlords, especially of late years, had expended considerable
+sums on their estates, still, as is inevitable under the small-farm
+system, the Irish tenant, as a general rule, had made the greatest part of
+the additions to the land, Mr. Gladstone provided that, subject to
+limitations by no means severe, in order that the law should not run wild,
+improvements made on farms, in the absence of proof to the contrary,
+should be deemed to be the tenant&#8217;s property, thus reversing the
+presumption of English law, iniquitous when applied to Irish tenures, that
+what is annexed to the soil belongs to the owner, and not to its occupant.
+The ground being, so to speak, cleared,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> the Bill declared that, in almost
+all cases, a tenant should have a right, when leaving his farm, even
+though dispossessed for the failure to pay his rent, to claim
+compensation, from his landlord, for his improvements; and facilities were
+offered to landlords to discharge these claims through loans from the
+State. In order, however, reasonably to secure right being done, in a
+complex and very difficult matter, the Bill proceeded to define
+improvements, and to impose restrictions on claims, to which objection
+could fairly be made. Apart from unexhausted tillages and manures, an
+improvement was to be a work &#8216;suitable to a holding, and adding to its
+letting value,&#8217; a description as equitable and precise as could well be
+desired. And, speaking generally, claims in respect of improvements were
+not to be preferred were the improvement twenty years old, except in the
+case of buildings and the reclamation of waste land; nor if the
+improvement were prohibited by the landlord, under the conditions laid
+down; nor if it were made under a contract for value; nor if it were
+forbidden by a special contract; nor if, in certain cases, the landlord
+had agreed to make it; nor if the claim was barred by express written
+contract, in the case of improvements made before the Bill became law;
+nor, in the case, with some exceptions, of certain classes of leases; nor
+if the landlord, under certain conditions, permitted a tenant to dispose
+of his interest in his farm.</p>
+
+<p>This measure, therefore, gave the Irish tenant farmer complete property in
+his improvements, within reasonable bounds, and yet did not here invade
+the just rights of the landlord; it was only to be regretted that it had
+not been proposed many years before. It proceeded, however, a great deal
+further, and asserted a principle, for the behoof of the tenant, which has
+since been very generally condemned,<a name='fna_60' id='fna_60' href='#f_60'><small>[60]</small></a> though in my judgment, it was
+essentially right,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> if carried somewhat beyond proper and safe limits.
+Except in the case of leases granted before the Bill, and of a class of
+leases granted when it was to become law, Mr. Gladstone engrafted on the
+great mass of Irish tenancies what really was a new tenant right; he was
+probably convinced, though he did not say so, that this was to be an
+equivalent for the joint-ownership, more or less manifest, which, in
+innumerable instances, the Irish occupier had acquired in the soil. This
+tenant right was given the rather ambiguous name of &#8216;Compensation,&#8217; in the
+event of &#8216;Disturbance;&#8217; a sum varying in amount from seven to one year&#8217;s
+rent, according to the size of the holding, but in no case to exceed &pound;250,
+was to be paid to a tenant when dispossessed by a notice to quit, and, in
+some circumstances, by other means; this was to be over and above any sum
+due in respect of improvements; but this, too, as in the case of the
+last-named sum, was to be paid only when the tenant was &#8216;quitting&#8217; the
+land. Obviously this was a potential tenant right, if to be realised only
+in one way; it practically gave a quasi-proprietary right in the fee, as,
+when commenting on the Bill, I pointed out at the time; and I certainly
+thought that the compensation was very large, and introduced a principle
+into the Bill which might be abused. Two other provisions of the measure,
+with respect to the position of the Irish tenant, may be briefly noticed.
+No attempt was made to adjust rents, through the agency of the State, Mr.
+Gladstone having expressly denounced the idea; but in the case of petty
+occupiers, subjected to &#8216;exorbitant rents,&#8217; compensation for disturbance
+might be adjudged to them, even if evicted for not paying the rent, that
+is, the landlord might be mulcted in very heavy penalties. In nearly all
+instances, too, the tenant was declared to be entitled to &#8216;his away-going
+crops,&#8217; another privilege, sometimes of no little value, and analogous to
+that secured by usage in many parts of England. So far the Bill dealt with
+the Irish land on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> the side of occupation; but it dealt with it, also, on
+the side of ownership. John Bright had urged the expediency, during
+several years, of facilitating the transfer of the fee simple, in his
+holding, to the Irish tenant; this policy had been carried out, to some
+extent, by the Act disestablishing the Anglican Church in Ireland. The
+Bill of 1870 extended the principle; it provided that the State might
+advance moneys to Irish tenants, to enable them to become owners of their
+farms; but&mdash;and this should especially be kept in mind&mdash;the tenant was to
+supply a third part of the purchase money at least; and the transaction
+was to be effected by free contract, that is, by the voluntary act of the
+landlord disposing of his land. It remains to add, that the administration
+of the measure, was, for the most part&mdash;subject to an appeal to the
+Superior Courts&mdash;entrusted to the County Courts of Ireland, that is, to
+long-established tribunals of repute.</p>
+
+<p>The Bill passed through both Houses with little change; it has long been
+known as the Irish Land Act of 1870. It was, in the main, I repeat, a
+great reforming measure; it effected a far-reaching improvement in the
+tenure of land in Ireland, and that without any marked infringement of the
+just rights of property. No impartial mind can fairly object to the
+protection given to the tenant right of the north and the south, or to the
+compensation secured for tenants&#8217; improvements; if &#8216;Compensation for
+Disturbance&#8217; was a bold experiment, still this Parliamentary tenant right,
+as it may be called, was in harmony with fact in nearly all instances.
+Nevertheless, the Act had three marked defects; these largely detracted
+from its practical value. It bristled with such exceptions and limitations
+that it was difficult even for the learned to understand; it seemed to the
+unlettered peasant a dangerous puzzle, involving him, perhaps, in lawsuits
+and costs; it did not strike his imagination as a substantial boon.
+Though, too, it annexed a real tenant right to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> nearly all farms, and thus
+secured to the Irish tenant, in almost all cases, any joint-ownership he
+may have acquired in the land, still this was intelligible only to
+educated men; &#8216;Compensation for Disturbance&#8217; was to be given only when an
+occupier was about to leave his holding; but this was exactly what he
+could not bear to do; he was, therefore, ready to accept almost any terms,
+rather than face consequences he dreaded to think of. Mr. Gladstone,
+again, had, in this measure, shown that he wished to assimilate Irish to
+English land tenure in the long run; he sought to vindicate the just
+claims of the Irish tenant; but he desired ultimately to give him the
+status of his fellow in England, a long-standing, false conception of
+British statesmen. The Land Act, therefore, provided that most of the
+rights it conferred on the tenant might be commuted by the grant of a
+lease for thirty-one years or upwards; and it further enacted that tenants
+of the larger kind might &#8216;contract themselves out&#8217; of the privileges it
+gave, by voluntary agreements made with their landlords. The object of
+this was to place the Irish land, by degrees, no doubt, under rather long
+leases, discharged from the tenant right and other claims; but in the
+circumstances of Ireland this was a mistake. This part of the Act was a
+temptation to landlords, to persuade or even to force tenants to accept
+leases under conditions which might be too severe, with respect to rent
+and many other things, and to forego rights they would otherwise have
+enjoyed, by a process which might not be a free contract; it encouraged,
+in a word, unfair evasion of the law. This flaw in the measure was pointed
+out from the first; Mr. Gladstone, however, denied its existence, and
+characteristically shut his ears to other schemes of reform, notably to an
+ingenious proposal of the late Judge Longfield to extend the Ulster tenant
+right to all Irish tenancies by a very simple and self-acting process, and
+to a proposal of Butt to convert tenancies at will into long leaseholds,
+at the rents then current. These<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> projects certainly deserved attention;
+and, whatever their shortcomings, were easy to understand.</p>
+
+<p>The Act of 1870, like the Act dealing with the Protestant Church, was
+followed by a short-lived outbreak of agrarian crime put down only by
+severe coercive measures. This phenomenon has been common in Irish
+history, from the days of Tyrconnell to the present time; disorder has
+been the immediate result of concessions; peccant humours discharge
+themselves if you touch the head of an ulcer. There is some reason, too,
+to believe that in a few instances&mdash;and they were very few&mdash;wrongheaded
+landlords, alarmed at the prospect before them, began to harass and even
+to dispossess tenants; they aimed at &#8216;clearing&#8217; their estates, in order to
+evade the law; conduct of this kind naturally provoked indignation in some
+places.<a name='fna_61' id='fna_61' href='#f_61'><small>[61]</small></a> Nevertheless, the Land Act of 1870 was generally well received
+in Ireland, though it fell short of the popular demand, and it was ill
+understood by the tenant classes;<a name='fna_62' id='fna_62' href='#f_62'><small>[62]</small></a> many farmers availed themselves of
+its benefits, especially those holding under the Ulster custom. Five or
+six years of prosperity followed, the brightest perhaps ever seen in
+Ireland; agricultural prices were high, harvests extremely good; the
+material progress of the country was decided; the peasantry seemed, as a
+rule, contented; agitation abandoned, as it were, the land, and
+concentrated itself on the Home Rule movement. Mr. Gladstone, always
+optimistic, and proud of his own offspring, boasted, towards the close of
+his first Ministry, that his recent legislation had done wonders; the Land
+Act had reconciled Irish landlords and tenants, and had greatly increased
+the selling price of land; he refused to see how much of all this was due
+to a cause wholly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> independent of himself, the comparative well-being of
+nearly all Ireland. As had happened in the period from 1854 to 1870, this
+tranquillity was not deeply founded or complete; as then, it was, in a
+great degree, deceptive. The peasantry were living fast in a good time;
+banks and traders had made large advances to them on the security of
+tenure the law had created; their position became such, in some districts,
+that a season of distress might reduce many to sudden poverty, and be
+productive of the necessarily resulting evils. Rents, again, were rising
+as the country grew in wealth, though except in comparatively few cases&mdash;a
+fact that should be steadily kept in view&mdash;they were still, as a rule, by
+no means excessive; they were far below the rents of thirty years before;
+but this gradual rise was of course not popular. In some instances,
+too&mdash;but these were very rare, as was conclusively proved at a subsequent
+time&mdash;tenants, under more or less pressure on the part of their landlords,
+had accepted leases excluding them from the advantages of the law, and not
+equitable in some respects, or had wholly &#8216;contracted themselves out&#8217; of
+the Act; this naturally caused alarm and distrust in many peasant
+dwellings. But the principal reasons that content was really less than it
+seemed to be in landed relations were altogether of a different nature.
+Like too many even excellent reforms in Ireland, the Land Act of 1870
+became law too late; twenty years before it would have been hailed as an
+extraordinary boon; it was now regarded as almost a half measure, in view
+of the socialistic ideas about the land afloat. At the same time,
+Fenianism continued to make its influence felt; Irish-Americans continued
+to flit through the country denouncing British rule and Irish landlords,
+and calling upon the peasantry, as in 1798, to rise. Even in these years
+of prosperity, though rents were well paid, there was a secret movement
+against rent beneath the surface of things, so well concealed that it was
+absolutely unknown by the Government.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>Meanwhile, in the midst of apparent peace, the elements of trouble in
+Ireland still quiescent were to come to a head and to give rise to a
+movement. The most formidable to British rule though skilfully masked,
+which had been seen since the rebellion of 1798. Revolutionary schemes in
+Ireland have always fastened on the land as the chief source from which
+they could derive strength; the United Irish movement as I have pointed
+out, was connected with a peasant movement against the payment of rent.
+This idea had been brought into marked prominence by John Finton Lalor,
+one of the rebels of 1848, a comparatively unknown but a sagacious man;
+&#8216;You must associate&#8217; he wrote, &#8216;the cause of Irish liberty, for which the
+people really care little with a cause for which they care a great deal;
+an inert mass must be yoked to a powerful engine; the Irish landlord must
+be driven from the land and the peasant masses be made its owners; and the
+fall of English power will follow that of its landlord garrison.&#8217; These
+words fell for the moment on unheeding ears; but the tradition has
+continued from that day to this the destruction of Irish &#8216;landlordism&#8217; was
+one of the objects of the Fenian leaders of 1865-67, and they denounced
+the Irish gentry in atrocious language, though they did not know how to
+carry out their policy. This teaching was eagerly adopted by Michael
+Davitt, a Fenian, who had been convicted of a crime against the State;
+during a long imprisonment at Dartmoor, he brooded &#8216;on his country&#8217;s
+wrongs,&#8217; but satisfied himself that if the independence of Ireland was a
+patriot&#8217;s first object, this could be attained only by uprooting the
+existing land system, by hounding on the occupiers of the soil against its
+owners, and by handing it over as spoil to the peasantry. Davitt was
+released from Dartmoor at the close of 1877; he attended a meeting in
+Dublin at which Parnell was present, and two of the assassins of the
+Phoenix Park tragedy; and he became supreme in the ranks of the Fenian
+societies,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> known as &#8216;the Irish Republican Brotherhood,&#8217; which still
+retained a feeble life in Ireland, and even in England and Scotland. A
+short time afterwards he made his way to the United States, where he found
+the Fenians divided into two parties, known under the general name of the
+Clan na Gael, but having different objects, though with a common purpose.
+Both parties were for liberating Ireland &#8216;from the Saxon yoke;&#8217; but the
+most violent and the most active sought to attain this end by expedients
+of desperate force; a &#8216;skirmishing fund&#8217; had been established; &#8216;England
+was to be invaded&#8217; by small bodies of &#8216;resolute men;&#8217; her capital and
+chief towns were to be destroyed by dynamite. The other party, more
+prudent, but with similar aims, had been struck by Parnell&#8217;s attitude in
+the House of Commons, and by the success of his unscrupulous tactics; its
+leaders began to think that something might be done by &#8216;constitutional
+means;&#8217; they gradually came to an agreement with Davitt, that &#8216;the
+overthrow of English domination&#8217; was to be their ultimate end; but that
+efforts in this direction were to be linked with energetic efforts to
+subvert &#8216;the landlord system, a disgrace to humanity and to the
+civilisation of the present century;&#8217; to banish the Irish landed gentry
+from their country, and to secure their estates for their tenantry. This
+movement, though rebellious in no doubtful sense, was nevertheless to have
+a legal disguise; the wolf was to wear sheep&#8217;s clothing; the &#8216;formation of
+a peasant proprietary, and the abolition of arbitrary evictions,&#8217; were to
+be its proposed objects.<a name='fna_63' id='fna_63' href='#f_63'><small>[63]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>Treason, seeking support from socialistic greed, was thus the origin of
+the Land League conspiracy, for this was its only legitimate name. I have
+glanced at this movement, on its political side, as it was associated with
+the cause of Home Rule; I must here consider it on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> its agrarian side, the
+most prominent, if not the most dangerous, to the State.<a name='fna_64' id='fna_64' href='#f_64'><small>[64]</small></a> The compact
+between Davitt and the moderates of the Clan na Gael was called the &#8216;New
+Departure;&#8217; Davitt returned to Ireland to stir up what became known as the
+&#8216;Land War;&#8217; Fenian emissaries went to Ireland, about the same time, in
+order to collect arms and to drill peasants, with a view to a possible
+rising should the occasion be found. Meanwhile, Davitt had addressed
+himself to what was more immediately at hand; in the spring of 1879 he got
+a meeting together, in his native county, Mayo, at which &#8216;landlordism&#8217; and
+all its works were savagely denounced; during the following months other
+meetings of the same sort were held, but as yet only in the western
+province of Connaught. At these gatherings the crusade against the landed
+gentry went on; rebellious utterances were blended with ferocious
+diatribes against<a name='fna_65' id='fna_65' href='#f_65'><small>[65]</small></a> landlords sometimes marked out for vengeance by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+name; and the peasantry were called on to keep &#8216;a firm grip on their
+lands;&#8217; these would become their own should they only be steadfast. The
+Land League movement was now launched on its course; but it was known to
+be an essentially Fenian movement; it was subsidised from Clan na Gael
+funds; it was supported by a murderous Clan na Gael print; it was
+condemned in the severest language by an aged Catholic prelate, one of the
+few of O&#8217;Connell&#8217;s surviving friends. The movement, however, as yet was
+not of much strength; Davitt had opinions about the &#8216;nationalisation of
+the land,&#8217; which, like those of the Fenian leaders of 1865-67, were not to
+the mind of the peasantry; his efforts, hitherto, had not had much
+success. In this position of affairs he addressed himself to Parnell, who
+had had Fenian sympathies and associations for years, and had, we have
+seen, attracted Fenian admiration abroad; what passed between the two men
+has not transpired; but Parnell, if with reluctance, consented at last to
+become the head of the Land League and to direct the movement. The
+measures he adopted were skilfully designed, in harmony with the &#8216;New
+Departure,&#8217; and with the double-dealing nature of a true conspirator. A
+Central Land League was established in Dublin; it was to have &#8216;branches&#8217;
+extending through the country; it was to make a steady attack on the land
+system. Its professed objects, however, were constitutional, nay, fair; it
+was &#8216;to agitate against rack-rents and unjust evictions,&#8217; and to
+&#8216;facilitate the ownership of the soil by its occupants.&#8217; The ultimate
+purpose of the League, nevertheless, was that of the Fenian chiefs; of its
+seven high officers four<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> were Fenians; it was wholly supported by Fenian
+moneys; its most prominent members made a boast of their Fenian
+sentiments.<a name='fna_66' id='fna_66' href='#f_66'><small>[66]</small></a> It was, in a word, a rebellious organisation in a
+constitutional garb; it was the embodiment of what Parnell avowed
+afterwards: &#8216;A true revolutionary movement in Ireland should, in my
+opinion, partake both of a constitutional and an illegal character. It
+should be both an open and a secret organisation, using the Constitution
+for its own purposes, but also taking advantage of its secret
+combination.&#8217;<a name='fna_67' id='fna_67' href='#f_67'><small>[67]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The Land League established, under these auspices, gradually made some
+progress in the western parts of Ireland, always centres of poverty more
+or less developed. It had not, however, as yet, become a power in the
+land; Parnell went to the United States, as I have mentioned before, in
+order to obtain support for the &#8216;New Departure.&#8217; He was the grandson of a
+distinguished American; the elections for a President were near; it was
+necessary to bid for the Irish vote; the chief of the League was invited<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+to say what his Irish policy was in the Representative House of the
+people; and this he did in moderate and carefully chosen language. His
+real attitude, however, was very different; he associated with well-known
+Fenian leaders, became acquainted with a contributor to the <i>Irish World</i>,
+the worst journal of the Clan na Gael press; and more than once gave
+utterance to what was plain treason, notably to the &#8216;last-link&#8217; speech
+already referred to. He obtained considerable funds for the League in
+Ireland, and before long founded a similar League in America, which became
+a Fenian organisation of the very worst type. Meanwhile a season of
+distress had visited Ireland; this quickened the elements of disorder
+being already let loose. The harvest of 1878 was not good; that of 1879
+was the worst known since the Great Famine; the prosperity of the country
+suddenly came to an end. There was a universal calling in of demands,
+especially from tenant farmers, who, I have said, had been rather
+extravagant, and had become involved in debt;<a name='fna_68' id='fna_68' href='#f_68'><small>[68]</small></a> the whole class suffered
+more or less, though there was very little extreme indigence, and Lord
+Beaconsfield&#8217;s Government was not slow in providing relief, which private
+charity largely increased. In these circumstances the landed gentry acted
+as any class would naturally act; a considerable number made remissions of
+rent; if a large majority, as certainly was the case, insisted upon their
+legal rights&mdash;conduct which must be pronounced unfortunate&mdash;it must be
+recollected that an agitation of extreme violence had been directed
+against the whole order; and that Mr. Gladstone had declared that, after
+the Land Act, there were to be no more concessions. The League now
+acquired new power; its branches spread over large parts of the west; its
+directors, from members in the House of Commons, to its avowed agents, and
+to the &#8216;village ruffians,&#8217; who carried out its bidding in many<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> places,
+rioted in atrocious threats against landlords whether good or bad; and a
+movement against the payment of rent began. The teaching which had been
+spread abroad during many months, bore the fruits which were to be
+expected from it; there was a sudden outbreak of agrarian crime, and of
+Whiteboyism in its worst aspect; it deserves special notice that this was
+confined to the counties where the League was in real force. The
+landlords, under these conditions, were often driven to enforce their
+claims; attempts were made to show that the evictions that followed were
+the sole causes of this social disorder. But it is absolutely certain that
+this was not the case; it was the Land League which provoked the
+evictions, and was responsible for the incidental crime.<a name='fna_69' id='fna_69' href='#f_69'><small>[69]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The spring of 1880 had come; Lord Beaconsfield had been driven from
+office, in an evil day for the renown of England; Mr. Gladstone had been
+returned again to power, on the flood of a tide of democratic sympathy.
+Lord Beaconsfield was not an author of any very large Irish reform, but he
+understood Ireland much better than his impetuous rival; he had seen from
+the first the real nature of the Land League movement; in his address to
+the nation, when he dissolved Parliament, he declared that an &#8216;attempt
+scarcely less dangerous than famine and pestilence&#8217; was being made to
+separate Ireland from Great Britain, words treated by Mr. Gladstone with
+scornful ridicule, but words of real truth. The incoming Minister had of
+late taken little heed of Irish affairs; he had been engaged in his
+crusade in Midlothian, and in stirring up the multitude on the Eastern
+question; but he had clung to his optimistic Irish faith; he had solemnly
+announced that Ireland was &#8216;contented and happy,&#8217; when the country was
+suffering from unquestionable distress; he had even refused to renew a
+measure for the repression of agrarian crime, when agrarian crime was
+formidably on the increase,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> and the Land League was rapidly growing in
+strength. At last, however, partly opening his eyes to the facts, he
+appointed a Commission charged to report on Irish land tenure; and he
+introduced a Bill slightly to amend the Land Act of 1870, showing thus
+from the outset that he choose to regard a conspiracy against the State on
+its economic side mainly, and not in its far more grave political aspect.
+A word must be said on this measure, which had its origin, to a great
+extent, in sheer and audacious falsehood. By this time Parnell was at the
+head of some sixty adherents in the House of Commons; he had linked the
+Home Rule and the Land League movements; his followers were, in many
+instances, chiefs of the League; they induced Mr. Gladstone to listen to
+them, on representations characteristically untrue. Evictions were on the
+increase in Ireland, owing to the onslaught made by the League on the
+landed gentry; Parnell and his band unscrupulously exaggerated the number,
+perhaps twenty-fold, by confounding ejectment decrees of the Courts with
+evictions actually carried out; Mr. Gladstone appears to have accepted
+this shameful statement. The new &#8216;Compensation for Disturbance&#8217; Bill, as
+it was called, provided that in the case of certain classes of tenants,
+although they had failed to pay their rents, compensation, withheld, we
+have seen, under the Act of 1870, might be afforded them, under rather
+strict conditions; this was certainly an innovation of a startling kind,
+but something was to be said for it, in the existing position of affairs.
+The House of Commons, however, disliked a measure nicknamed &#8216;payment by
+reason of non-payment,&#8217; and limited its application in many ways; and the
+House of Lords, unfortunately, I think, threw it out.</p>
+
+<p>This Bill, closely circumscribed as it was, would not have extended,
+perhaps, to many tenants; it was condemned by Parnell and his satellites
+as a sham. Its rejection, however, gave an opportunity to the League; its
+leaders proclaimed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> at meetings, never so frequent before, that Ireland
+had nothing to expect from a foreign Parliament; the attack on
+&#8216;landlordism&#8217; became more intense; treasonable and predatory harangues
+increased in vehemence. The influence of the conspiracy spread beyond
+Connaught, over nearly all Munster, and parts of Leinster; wherever it was
+felt it was attended with agrarian crime; &#8216;crime,&#8217; as Mr. Gladstone
+exclaimed, &#8216;always dogged its footsteps.&#8217; Offences of this kind
+portentously multiplied; they had been eight hundred and sixty-three at
+the close of 1879; they were two thousand five hundred and eighty-nine at
+the close of 1880;<a name='fna_70' id='fna_70' href='#f_70'><small>[70]</small></a> and these included a number of barbarous murders,
+and of other atrocious deeds of outrage and blood, especially of the
+mutilation of the cattle of those opposed to the League. A kind of servile
+war springing from the land had set in; and during this whole period the
+spokesmen of the League, whether in the highest or the lowest grades,
+continued to denounce the landed gentry, though they knew that their
+utterances were the direct incentive to far-spreading crime. Parnell,
+however, infinitely the ablest of the conspirators, perceived that this
+brutal disorder would incense Parliament, and, besides, could not have
+decisive results; the cool, calculating schemer laid down a plan of
+operations for the League, which he hoped would be less openly detestable,
+and much more effective. Orders were issued that tenants should, in every
+part of Ireland, repudiate the rents they had agreed to pay, and should
+pay only such sums as had been assessed on land by a valuation made by the
+State for rates, a standard long acknowledged to be much too low; every
+landlord who should reject these terms was to incur the vengeance of the
+League. By these means Parnell expected, and not without reason, that a
+great combination for the forcible reduction of rent would be formed, and
+that numbers of farmers would flock<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> in to the League, but he knew that
+his proposal was simply a defiance of the law, and that it would be
+resisted by many of the landed gentry; he hit on an expedient through
+which he believed he would attain his end. Should any landlord refuse to
+accept the sum offered instead of the proper rent, and should proceed to
+dispossess the defaulting tenant&mdash;and practically he could have no other
+remedy&mdash;the evicted farm was to be left derelict; it was to be smitten, as
+it were, by the interdict of the League; and any wretch who should dare to
+take it was to be banned by the whole neighbourhood; he and his, and those
+who dealt with him, &#8216;were to be shunned as lepers,&#8217; and &#8216;treated as
+traitors to the cause.&#8217;<a name='fna_71' id='fna_71' href='#f_71'><small>[71]</small></a> In this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> way, the crime of &#8216;boycotting,&#8217; as it
+has ever since been called&mdash;its origin may be traced to the great Tithe
+War in Ireland&mdash;was made part of &#8216;the unwritten law&#8217; of the League; and
+Parnell professed, whether sincerely or not, that through this device the
+League would baffle the law, and the landlords, as a class, as unhappily
+it did, in too many instances. Having thus armed the conspiracy with
+increased power, he cynically began to deprecate crimes of violence: the
+device of &#8216;boycotting&#8217; was a more excellent way; it would before long
+&#8216;bring landlords to their knees,&#8217; and would ultimately &#8216;plant the tenant
+in his farm to be held at a nominal rent,&#8217; should he only be true to the
+League. At the same time the astute plotter found other means to extend
+his authority and that of the conspiracy he ruled. He appealed to the
+elective Local Boards in each county, composed for the most part of tenant
+farmers, to join the League, and to carry out his policy; and continuously
+but steadily he brought the force of the League to bear upon the
+administration of the law, by the intimidation of juries, magistrates, and
+even judicial persons.</p>
+
+<p>The teaching of Parnell was disseminated by the League and its agencies,
+especially at gatherings of peasant mobs; it was largely followed wherever
+the League prevailed. In hundreds of instances tenant farmers were
+compelled or induced to tender sums, &#8216;at Griffith&#8217;s valuation,&#8217; as it was
+called, in lieu of the rents they were bound to pay; and on the rejection
+of the offer, refused to pay anything. A widespread combination against
+rent was thus set on foot, sustained by a principle of greed which held it
+together;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> the League was more completely organised than it had been
+before; it made its way into ten or eleven counties, the only centres in
+which it was formidably strong. In these circumstances the landed gentry
+acted, as an order of men so assailed would act; not a few accepted the
+terms imposed on them, and took their rents at the reduced scale, the
+majority resisted the mandates of the League, and appealed to the law to
+enforce their rights. The terrors of the League were at once directed
+against those who had dared to defy it; in a certain number of instances
+landlords and agents were brutally murdered, for popular passions had been
+let loose for years; in many more &#8216;boycotting&#8217; was carried out with such
+fatal effect that scores of families were driven out of Ireland, banned,
+persecuted, deprived even of the necessaries of life; in many others the
+demesnes of gentlemen were ravaged by &#8216;Land League hunts,&#8217; overrun and
+half destroyed by savage mob gatherings. Evictions of course increased as
+the law was being trampled under foot; it is hardly necessary to say that
+Parnell&#8217;s doctrine was here ruthlessly applied; evicted farms were left
+deserted and waste over thousands of acres; the fears caused by
+&#8216;boycotting&#8217; had become so intense, that no &#8216;land-grabber,&#8217; as the name
+was, would dare to take them; the success of the League was in this
+respect remarkable. The vengeance of the conspiracy, too, was extended
+universally to another class of persons. Tenants in numbers of instances
+paid their rents, either from an honest motive, or through dread of
+eviction; the payment was often made at night, and under a pledge of
+secrecy; but wherever they were discovered the League marked &#8216;the
+traitor&#8217;s doom;&#8217; they were sometimes &#8216;boycotted&#8217; almost to death;
+sometimes murdered, often visited by gangs of ruffians&mdash;significantly
+known as Parnell&#8217;s police; the victims were shot in the legs, or the hair
+of their women was cut off, or their cattle were cruelly mutilated and
+maimed. It deserves special<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> notice that, as was to be expected, Parnell&#8217;s
+warning against open crime was but little heeded; &#8216;boycotting,&#8217; as Mr.
+Gladstone said, truly &#8216;was but a passive thing;&#8217; it &#8216;required
+assassination as its sanction;&#8217; the peasantry had been stirred up, in
+places, to frenzy; although Parnell made few violent speeches at the time,
+his satellites still gave a free rein to their wicked licence. Agrarian
+crime increased to an appalling extent; it had reached in 1881 a total of
+four thousand four hundred and thirty-nine cases, nearly two thousand more
+than those of the preceding year.<a name='fna_72' id='fna_72' href='#f_72'><small>[72]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>In the spring and summer of 1881, the power of the League was at its
+height; in its organisation and working it bore a strong resemblance to
+the Jacobin societies of the Revolution in France. It was directed by a
+council from a central office in Dublin; its orders were sent thence to
+the bodies connected with it; these, scattered over many parts of the
+country, enforced its decrees through &#8216;boycotting&#8217; crime, and terror.
+&#8216;Obnoxious&#8217; persons, landlords, agents, &#8216;land-grabbers,&#8217; and tenants who
+had paid their rents, were denounced and exposed to the League&#8217;s
+vengeance; officers of the law and of justice were especially banned; even
+those thought to be &#8216;luke-warm&#8217; in the cause were declared &#8216;suspected.&#8217; In
+some districts the regular government was practically superseded by the
+government of the league, described by Mr. Gladstone as &#8216;a scheme of
+anarchic oppression;&#8217; in these a Reign of Terror was really supreme. It
+will never be known to what extent the League made use of Whiteboyism and
+its secret conclaves in order to carry out its purposes; the central body,
+controlled by Parnell, probably did not, but the affiliated bodies
+certainly did; it is impossible to account otherwise for the enormous
+increase of agrarian crime; the branches of the League, it is generally
+supposed, overshadowed, so to speak, the Whiteboy societies; these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> were
+active agents in the atrocious deeds that were done. It is scarcely
+necessary to refer to what the condition of social life was wherever the
+influence of the League was great; despair settled on the hearts of
+thousands, who felt themselves exposed to unseen perils, and existed, as
+it were, in an atmosphere of crime; and it must be borne in mind that for
+one member of the better class, fifty probably of the humbler, who had
+transgressed the law of the League, were kept in a state of moral dread
+and torture. By this time the Fenian League in the United States, formed
+by Parnell, but ruled by the Clan na Gael, had completely joined hands
+with the League at home; its emissaries were found in many parts of
+Ireland; its organ, the <i>Irish World</i>, &#8216;spread what it called the light,&#8217;
+the teaching of treason, murder, and dynamite; and it supplied the parent
+League with, probably, nine-tenths of its funds, for it is a significant
+fact, deserving special notice, that the contributions of the peasantry to
+the League were, from first to last, small. Large parts of Ireland were
+thus in a deplorable state; but it is a complete mistake to suppose, as
+has been asserted, that the authority of the League was general throughout
+the whole island. Protestant Ulster, with a true instinct of what the
+conspiracy was, a movement against British rule in Ireland, kept aloof
+from the League, in angry contempt; and though its influence was more
+widely diffused, it was confined, I have said, to comparatively few
+counties if regarded as a dangerous and formidable power. It is also
+absolutely untrue that the movement was the uprising of an injured
+peasantry against oppressive landlords. There was little distress in 1880
+and 1881, when the League was rapidly growing in strength, for the
+harvests of those years were above the average; and the Commission lately
+appointed by Mr. Gladstone had reported that over-renting in Ireland was
+not common, though instances of over-renting were of course to be
+found.<a name='fna_73' id='fna_73' href='#f_73'><small>[73]</small></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>The centre of disturbance formed by the Land League was, I have said,
+comparatively small; and it was, for the most part, limited to backward
+and poor districts; its wicked and sordid teaching did not command the
+sympathies of the more intelligent and better parts of Ireland. Its
+influence, however, spread, in different degrees of strength, over nearly
+the whole of Catholic Ireland, and it was more or less supported by the
+Catholic priesthood, in many instances yielding to the pressure of their
+flocks. Within the bounds where it did not create a Reign of Terror, it
+was joined by thousands who thought it a constitutional movement,
+especially by peasants only seeking an improved tenure; and it is not
+pretended that even a majority of those who took part in it had
+treasonable or rebellious objects in view. But it was not the less a
+conspiracy hatched abroad, and aiming at the subversion of British power
+in Ireland; this was the policy its leaders avowed; and a conspiracy must
+be judged by the acts and words of those who direct it. The state of
+anarchy in Ireland had become such, in the spring of 1881, that the
+Government was compelled to try to put it down; a prosecution against
+Parnell and his chief lieutenants had failed; a Bill, resisted by
+obstruction, more persistent than had been ever known before, passed
+through Parliament with the object of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> repressing the Land League. The
+measure, however, was not well designed; minor agents of the League,
+&#8216;village ruffians,&#8217; &#8216;Parnell&#8217;s police,&#8217; and the like, were imprisoned in
+large numbers, no real punishment; but the chiefs of the conspiracy were
+not brought within the law; the funds of the League were removed to Paris;
+the movement went on in its destructive course. &#8216;Coercion,&#8217; nevertheless,
+was beginning to produce its effects, as it has always done in Irish
+disorders, when Mr. Gladstone made a sudden change in his policy, never
+made before by a Minister at the head of the State. He had denounced the
+conspiracy in passionate language; he had partly at least seen what its
+objects were; &#8216;it aimed at dismemberment through rapine;&#8217; but always a man
+of phrases and not of action, he had shrunk in every passage of his career
+from facing difficulties where popular feelings were involved; and while
+Ireland was still in a terrible state, he resolved to make a great
+concession to the League, and to effect a complete revolution in the Irish
+land. It was a surrender akin to that of Majuba, made with little
+information, and without mature reflection; whether its author believed,
+as I have remarked, that the conspiracy was most dangerous on its agrarian
+side, or was willing to propitiate Parnell, at the expense of the Irish
+landed gentry, he inaugurated the legislation, ever since pursued, which
+has resulted in destroying the property of the Irish landlord, without
+gaining the sympathy of the occupier of the Irish soil, has reduced the
+land system of Ireland to a ruinous chaos, and has, in essential respects,
+been an absolute failure.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s position was difficult when he introduced his new Irish
+Land Bill; his speech in the House of Commons, lucid as regards details,
+was apologetic, ambiguous, often beside the subject. He went out of his
+way to praise Irish landlords, &#8216;acquitted,&#8217; he declared, by the late
+Commission; he deeply regretted a new experiment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> on the Irish land. He
+retained his admiration for the Act of 1870, but insinuated that it had
+been injured in the House of Lords; had this not been the case, it would
+have settled the Irish land question. He passed over his solemn pledges,
+on the faith of which millions had been lent on Irish estates, that the
+legislation of eleven years before was final; here he took refuge in
+appeals to &#8216;Divine Justice,&#8217; in the &#8216;light of which&#8217; a statesman must
+walk, as if Divine Justice was an excuse for a gross breach of faith. He
+then unfolded his plan of reform; he endeavoured, with an ingenuity all
+his own, to distinguish it from the schemes he had emphatically condemned
+in 1870; but in this respect mystification was at fault; the measure was a
+clumsy imitation of the &#8216;Three F&#8217;s,&#8217; and where it differed, it differed
+greatly for the worse. Anticipating objections certain to be made, the
+orator dismissed &#8216;political economy to Saturn&#8217; with a confident gesture;
+for some untold reason the philosophy of Adam Smith could not possibly
+apply to the order of things in Ireland. But by many degrees the most
+important part of the speech, in view of events which have since happened,
+was that in which Mr. Gladstone announced that should the measure really
+injure the Irish landlord, the State was bound to provide an indemnity. He
+denied, indeed, that the Bill could have any such effect; it would be a
+boon, he gravely said, to the Irish landed gentry; but should the contrary
+be the case, &#8216;compensation&#8217; would be clearly their right. &#8216;I do not
+hesitate to say&#8217;&mdash;these were his very words spoken after the Bill had made
+much progress&mdash;&#8216;that if it can be shown, on clear and definite experience,
+at the present time, that there is a probability, or if after experience
+shall prove that, in fact, ruin and heavy loss has been brought on any
+class in Ireland by the direct effect of this legislation, that is a
+question which we ought to look very directly in the face.&#8217; The same
+meaning was even more clearly expressed: &#8216;I should certainly be very slow
+to deny that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> where confiscation could be proved, compensation ought to
+follow,&#8217; and several of Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s lieutenants spoke in the same
+sense.<a name='fna_74' id='fna_74' href='#f_74'><small>[74]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The Bill, I have said, applied the principle of the &#8216;Three F&#8217;s&#8217; to the
+relation of landlord and tenant in by far the greatest part of Ireland. As
+in the case of the Land Act of 1870, it excluded certain classes of lands
+from its scope, demesnes, residential holdings, town parks, and large
+pastoral farms; it extended also only to tenants at will, that is, subject
+to a notice to quit; it left tenants under leases outside its purview. It
+was confined, too, to &#8216;present tenants in occupation,&#8217; at or near the
+existing time; it had no reference to &#8216;future tenants,&#8217; that is, to
+tenants holding by contracts made after the Bill should pass, or a few
+months afterwards. Subject, however, to these exceptions, on the whole not
+large, the measure placed tenancies in Ireland under the &#8216;Three F&#8217;s,&#8217; but
+with conditions of tenure peculiar to itself, and hitherto unknown in
+Ireland, or in any part of Europe. &#8216;Fair Rent,&#8217; which, under the Ulster
+Custom, was settled by a bargain between landlord and tenant, was to be
+adjusted through the intervention of the State, legislation akin to the
+medi&aelig;val statutes regulating the price of bread, and the wages of labour.
+&#8216;Fixity of Tenure&#8217; was not to be a perpetuity in name; Mr. Gladstone
+feared that the speeches would be thrown in his teeth, in which he had
+declaimed against the idea; it was to be a lease for fifteen years, but
+capable of being renewed for ever, as a rule, through a periodical and
+costly lawsuit. &#8216;Free Sale&#8217; was to be conceded under somewhat strict
+conditions; and the landlord was to be afforded a right of pre-emption in
+the case of such sales, in accordance with the analogy of the Ulster
+Custom. An estate virtually perpetual, at a State-settled rent, was thus
+to be carved out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> of the landlord&#8217;s fee, and given to tenants actually in
+possession of the land; it was created in absolute derogation from the
+landlord&#8217;s rights; it was a large if partial expropriation, in no doubtful
+sense. As to the interest of landlords in what was left of their property,
+they were to retain what are usually known as &#8216;royalties&#8217;&mdash;timber,
+minerals, mines, and privileges of sport; they were to have the ordinary
+remedies for enforcing payment of rent; and the statutory leases were to
+be subject to certain conditions, taken, for the most part, from the
+Ulster Custom, the violation of which might lead to their forfeiture. A
+tribunal, called the Land Commission, was to be set up to carry the law
+into effect, that is, to &#8216;fix fair rents,&#8217; and to make tenures &#8216;fixed;&#8217; it
+was to be assisted by dependent agencies, known as Sub-Commissions, which,
+Mr. Gladstone intimated, were to be quite subordinate, and from which
+appeals to the Land Commission were to run; but a sinister feature of an
+untried revolutionary scheme&mdash;the decision of the Land Commission as
+respects &#8216;fair rent&#8217;&mdash;was to be final. Subject to an appeal to the Land
+Commission, the Irish County Courts were empowered to administer the law;
+but it was foreseen that they would not do much in this province. The new
+modes of tenure might be applied to lands, by agreements between landlords
+and tenants carefully guarded; and Mr. Gladstone believed that this would
+be the ordinary course of dealing. The Bill, he thought, would not cause
+litigation to any great extent; it would operate as a self-acting force to
+lead to friendly contracts.<a name='fna_75' id='fna_75' href='#f_75'><small>[75]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>So much for the scope of the Bill and the classes of tenants to which its
+benefits were to extend. A most important change was made in the measure,
+which contained, originally, nothing of the kind; this has been attended
+with far-reaching results. As we have seen, tenants were to be compensated
+for their improvements,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> under the Act of 1870; but the compensation was
+to be paid only when they were leaving the land; Mr. Healy, one of the
+ablest of Parnell&#8217;s lieutenants, induced Parliament to accept a provision
+exempting tenants&#8217; improvements from rent, when the adjustment of &#8216;fair
+rent&#8217; was to be made. However equitable in principle this might appear to
+be, it was, in the peculiar state of Irish land tenure, unjust in the
+extreme to landlords, as I shall endeavour to point out afterwards; and it
+has been a source of litigation, as mischievous and demoralising as can
+well be conceived. The Bill, like the Act of 1870, prohibited the
+subdivision and subletting of farms&mdash;an inveterate evil practice of the
+Irish peasant&mdash;under conditions possibly rather too strict; and it made
+changes, in that statute, which require attention. It added weight, so to
+speak, to the law, in the tenant&#8217;s interest; it increased the amount of
+compensation in respect of disturbance; it limited the power of
+&#8216;contracting out,&#8217; to a smaller class of tenants than had been the case
+before, in fact, to large capitalist farmers; and it provided that
+tenants, who had accepted leases excluding them from the benefits of the
+Act of 1870, through illegitimate conduct on the part of their landlords,
+should be exonerated from such unfair contracts. It thus greatly amended
+the original Land Act; but it left many of its defects untouched; it is
+only right here to add that despite the lying clamour raised by the
+subsidised Press of Parnell&mdash;lying has ever since been part of its
+stock-in-trade&mdash;the instances were exceedingly few in which &#8216;forced
+leases,&#8217; as they were called, were set aside by the Courts. A remarkable
+feature of the Bill has yet to be noticed: Mr. Gladstone, as was the case
+eleven years before, had still the wish, so characteristic of British
+statesmen, to assimilate Irish to English land tenure; for this reason, as
+I said, he deprived &#8216;future tenants&#8217; of the advantages of the Bill; these
+were to hold their farms on the footing of pure contract. This was a
+shortsighted and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> bad arrangement; it tempted directly ill-conditioned
+landlords to dispossess tenants, whenever a chance offered, and to create
+&#8216;future&#8217; tenants so as to discharge their estates from a burden; it
+revealed marked ignorance of the affairs of Ireland. The Bill dealt, also,
+with the land on the side of ownership; it gave additional facilities to
+tenants to purchase their holdings; the State was empowered to advance
+three-fourths of the moneys; but the tenants were to find the remaining
+fourth; the transaction was to be still a purchase, and not in the nature
+of a gift.<a name='fna_76' id='fna_76' href='#f_76'><small>[76]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The Bill became law, with very little change; the House of Lords, though
+fully alive to its evils, did not amend it in any important respect; the
+Peers had in mind, perhaps too much, what had followed the rejection of
+the Bill of the year before. Mr. Gladstone and his followers maintained at
+the time, and the statement has been ever since repeated, that the Land
+Act of 1881, its popular title, was but a natural development of the
+original Act of 1870; but this assertion is not only untrue, but
+absolutely contrary to the truth. The Act of 1870, no doubt, considered as
+a whole, annexed a large tenant right to the estate of the landlord, and
+to that extent placed a burden on it; but it preserved for the landlord
+the ownership of the land; it did not interfere with his rent, his first
+proprietary right; above all, it was, in the main, in accord with fact,
+and just. The Act of 1881 was almost the exact opposite; it deprived the
+landlord of the ownership of his land, and nearly converted him into a
+mere rent-charger; it created against him a perpetuity at a State-settled
+rent; it really all but made the tenant the owner of the land; it was, in
+short, inconsistent with fact, and essentially unjust. The Act of 1881,
+too, established a principle, never heard of before in civilised
+countries, that tribunals of the State<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> were to fix the rate of rent; this
+not only annihilated the most important of landed contracts, entirely to
+the landlord&#8217;s detriment, it inevitably tended to cut down rents
+wholesale, as Judge Longfield had predicted would be the case. &#8216;It is
+probable,&#8217; wrote that great authority, &#8216;that the value of land, as fixed
+by any tenant-right measure, would be less than half the rent, which a
+solvent tenant would be willing to pay;&#8217;<a name='fna_77' id='fna_77' href='#f_77'><small>[77]</small></a> the prediction has been too
+well verified. The Act of 1870, in a word, was a remedial law, fairly
+adjusting the rights of landlord and tenant; the Act of 1881 was a
+socialistic law, despoiling the landlord of his property wholesale, and
+handing it over to a dependent who had no claim to it; it was sheer
+confiscation hardly disguised; and it should be added that the exemption
+of tenants&#8217; improvements from rent, as affairs stood in Ireland, was a
+grave wrong to the landlord. The Act of 1881, to speak plainly,
+transformed the Irish land system iniquitously for the benefit of a single
+class; and it directly promoted litigation of the very worst kind, on an
+enormous scale, embittering, and still further dividing, the classes
+connected with the land. The evils of this legislation, a monument of
+reckless unwisdom, were at once manifest to well-informed persons; the
+Duke of Argyll and Lord Lansdowne resigned office rather than take part in
+a measure of the kind; Lord Ashbourne, the present holder of the Great
+Seal in Ireland, caustically remarked that Parliament would do much better
+should it deprive Irish landlords of a fourth part of their rents on the
+spot. The verdict of enlightened and impartial opinion in Ireland was very
+much the same.</p>
+
+<p>I shall comment on the administration of this law in another chapter;
+enough to say here that what was bad was made, by many degrees, worse. The
+conduct of Parnell, as regards the measure, was characteristic; he assumed
+an attitude of moderation, and proposed to make<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> &#8216;a trial of the Act by
+test cases;&#8217; he wrote to his Fenian friends in the Far West that the Act
+was a mockery; he allowed the Land League to riot in lawlessness as
+before. Mr. Gladstone, always incensed when his will was crossed, shut him
+up in prison under the recent statute, with several prominent leaders of
+the League; the reply was a manifesto against the payment of any rent,
+unhappily obeyed in some districts, though every symptom of exceptional
+distress had passed away. A brief but violent struggle was the result; the
+peasantry refused to pay a shilling in several counties; and as the
+principal agents of the League were within four walls, flights of
+viragoes, like those of the French Revolution, were let loose to preach,
+far and near, the evangel of &#8216;no rent.&#8217; This conflict, however, was not
+lasting; agrarian crime and disorder, indeed, still continued frequent;
+but the Government was too strong for the &#8216;Ladies&#8217; Land League;&#8217; by the
+spring of 1882 its triumph appeared to be certain. But Mr. Gladstone,
+&#8216;unstable as water&#8217; in view of what he deemed popular movements, would not
+steadily persist in vindicating the law; the imprisonment of the chiefs of
+the conspiracy and their subordinates, in large numbers, seems to have
+made him feel sore if unworthy misgivings; he surrendered to the enemies
+of the State, for the second time, and entered with Parnell into the
+famous &#8216;Kilmainham Treaty,&#8217; as shameful as the Glamorgan Treaty which cost
+Charles I. his head. The &#8216;Suspects,&#8217; as they were called, were set free in
+scores; the Lord-Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary indignantly left their
+posts; a new Government for Ireland was formed, charged to carry
+&#8216;conciliation,&#8217; as the phrase was, out, that is, to make fresh concessions
+to Parnell and his creatures. But the auspicious prospect was suddenly
+darkened by the frightful assassinations of the Ph&oelig;nix Park; these
+cannot be justly laid to the charge of the League, indeed were against
+Parnell&#8217;s interest, for it was generally expected he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> would obtain high
+office; but two agents of the League were implicated in the crime; and the
+Press of the League began soon to plead for the murderers. The mind of
+England was now thoroughly roused; Mr. Gladstone, bowing at once to
+England&#8217;s will, carried through Parliament the severest repressive measure
+that has ever, perhaps, been applied to Ireland. The battle with the
+League was soon brought to a close; the conspiracy indeed resisted for a
+time, and crime, as always, was attendant on it; and the Clan na Gael gave
+it all the assistance it could, in large subsidies which had never ceased,
+in the dissemination in Ireland of its incendiary journals, and especially
+by &#8216;carrying the war into England,&#8217; and fulfilling its threats to attack
+her chief towns by fire and dynamite, outrages, however, that really came
+to nothing. But &#8216;coercion,&#8217; as has been invariably the case in Ireland,
+produced its effects; agrarian crimes, which, in 1882, if less than those
+of the year before, were, nevertheless, three thousand four hundred and
+thirty-two in number, had fallen to eight hundred and seventy in 1883.<a name='fna_78' id='fna_78' href='#f_78'><small>[78]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The Land League was paralysed, if not destroyed; its organisation was, in
+name, suppressed by its framers. It reappeared, however, at once, in a new
+form; the skill of Parnell in masking a conspiracy was never more fully
+displayed. He felt that the Land League could not cope with the law; that
+the crimes of violence and blood, which attended its course, gave the
+Government opportunities to put it down; that its openly avowed purposes
+were a danger to it. He set up, therefore, the &#8216;National League&#8217; in its
+stead; the professed object of the association was to promote &#8216;Home Rule,&#8217;
+while it upheld the rights of the occupiers of the Irish soil, and kept
+the Irish land, so to speak, in view; it was thus apparently a mere centre
+of a constitutional movement. Through these means, and under these
+pretences, the astute and able plotter swept<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> into his net thousands who
+had held aloof from the Land League; many of the middle classes joined the
+National League, notably hundreds of the clergy of the Catholic Church in
+Ireland; the peasantry gave it increased support; its influence spread
+beyond its predecessor&#8217;s limits. The National League, however, was only
+the Land League under another name;<a name='fna_79' id='fna_79' href='#f_79'><small>[79]</small></a> its leaders and officials were the
+same men; its &#8216;branches&#8217; were those of the League it replaced; its real
+objects were exactly the same, the overthrow of British rule in Ireland,
+and the annihilation of the Irish landed gentry. But the methods it
+employed to work out its ends were, to a great extent, different; open
+agitation was kept down; public meetings, likely to be violent, were not
+held; the perpetration of agrarian crime was not encouraged. The movement,
+in a word, was comparatively secret and below the surface; but it was
+essentially the successor of the Land League in its aims; we may say of
+it, with a slight change, in the words of the poet&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">&#8216;Facies non una sororum,</span><br />
+Nec diversa tamen.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Boycotting&#8217; was now made the chief weapon of the reformed conspiracy;
+&#8216;National League Courts&#8217; were held regularly in many districts, at which
+this barbarous interdict was systematically pronounced on persons
+violating &#8216;the unwritten law&#8217; of the old League; the persecution against
+landlords, agents, &#8216;land-grabbing&#8217; peasants who were &#8216;disloyal and
+traitors,&#8217; and traders suspected of dealing with &#8216;rotten sheep,&#8217; was
+carried on with a pertinacity and ingenuity hardly known before; the
+number of derelict farms augmented; and the Government found it far from
+easy to deal with these crimes. At the same time, &#8216;the Nationalist Press,&#8217;
+as it had been named, fully<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> revealed the purpose of the conspirators;
+trusting to impunity, under the law of libel, which depended upon the will
+of juries, it was even more treasonable and seditious than before; and it
+gave infamous license to defamation of personages in high places, worthy
+of the abominations of the P&egrave;re Duchesne.<a name='fna_80' id='fna_80' href='#f_80'><small>[80]</small></a> Ireland, however, remained
+in comparative peace while the recent measure of repression continued in
+force; but this was injudiciously allowed to expire in 1885&mdash;a strange act
+on the part of a Conservative Ministry; and in a short time agrarian
+disorder broke out afresh. Crimes of this class had fallen, in 1884, to
+seven hundred and sixty-two in number; they were one thousand and
+fifty-six in 1886; and &#8216;boycotting&#8217; had increased fourfold.<a name='fna_81' id='fna_81' href='#f_81'><small>[81]</small></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>The National League remained quiescent, while Mr. Gladstone was making
+another surrender, and endeavouring to carry Home Rule through Parliament.
+Upon the rejection of the measure of 1886, its activity was renewed; and
+it found considerable support from the American Fenians, who, from first
+to last, had been its chief paymasters. I have referred to the Convention
+at Chicago graced by Parnell&#8217;s envoys, and to the wild boast that the
+English &#8216;government of Ireland was to be made impossible;&#8217; the treasonable
+aspect of the conspiracy became at once manifest. The League was assisted
+by another season of distress, from 1886 to 1888; the number of its
+adherents greatly increased; it began, like its predecessor, to defy the
+authority of the State. I have already dealt with this movement on its
+political side; I shall not repeat what I have already written: how the
+League endeavoured to stir up disorder in Ireland; how it declared open
+war against the Castle; how it tried to terrorise the ministers of the
+law; how it made &#8216;boycotting&#8217; more effective than it had ever been; how,
+if responsible for many grave deeds of blood, it mainly relied on this
+malign influence, which tortured hundreds of victims in many districts,
+and was fitly compared to &#8216;the pestilence that walks in darkness;&#8217; how Mr.
+Gladstone and the Opposition, to the disgrace of both, gave the conspiracy
+their support and excused its crimes; and how it was ere long put down by
+Mr. Balfour strongly seconded by Rome. But I must say a word on the
+agrarian side of the movement; for this illustrated the increased
+ingenuity of the League. Some of its leaders issued a mandate against the
+payment of rent, except upon reductions to an enormous extent; should the
+landlords refuse, the tenants, on every estate, were to lodge their rents
+into what was called the &#8216;War chest,&#8217; a common fund to be held in trust;
+the object of this being to prevent the secret payment of rent, which had
+repeatedly, we have seen, taken place, and to put a stop to &#8216;defection
+from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> cause.&#8217; The &#8216;Plan of Campaign&#8217; as was its name, was thus ushered
+on; it was a criminal plot of the very basest kind; but though it proved
+successful in some instances, and it caused much agrarian disorder and
+crime, it was, on the whole, a comparative failure. The peasantry,
+close-fisted and shrewd, distrusted the so-called &#8216;trustees of the War
+chest;&#8217; they generally declined to put their money in it; the &#8216;Plan&#8217; was
+only carried out on few estates, though it compelled many landlords to
+make reductions of rent; it is remarkable that Parnell did not approve of
+the swindle. Long, however, before the defeat of the League, there had
+been a thousand instances of agrarian crime: five thousand miserable
+beings had been &#8216;boycotted,&#8217; in many cases with frightful results; a
+thousand had been placed under the protection of the police. As had
+happened during the <i>r&eacute;gime</i> of the Land League, these victims were nearly
+all of the humble classes.</p>
+
+<p>In 1887 another change was made in the Irish land system, essentially a
+development of the Land Act of 1881. That measure, I have said, applied to
+tenants at will only, that is, liable to be dispossessed by a notice to
+quit; it did not apply to tenants under leasehold tenures. A sharp
+distinction, therefore, was drawn between the two classes; a farmer, with
+land on one side of a ditch, could secure the advantages of the &#8216;Three
+F&#8217;s;&#8217; his neighbour, on the other side, could not; the distinction was so
+palpably harsh, that many landlords in Ireland saw its injustice, and
+enabled leasehold tenants to obtain the benefits of the law. An Act,
+prepared by Lord Salisbury&#8217;s Government, brought ordinary Irish
+leaseholders within the Land Act of 1881; these were given a right to have
+&#8216;fair rents&#8217; fixed, and &#8216;fixity of tenure&#8217; and &#8216;free sale&#8217; under certain
+conditions. The Act of 1887, also, empowered the Courts to set aside
+perpetual leases unfairly obtained; and it relaxed the restrictions of the
+Act of 1881 with respect to subletting and subdivision, and the exclusion
+of &#8216;town parks.&#8217; It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> improved, moreover, the law of ejectment,
+facilitating the vindication of the rights of the landlord; and&mdash;a strange
+provision&mdash;it enabled a middleman, in certain events, to creep out of his
+contract, and to free himself from the rent due to his superior landlord.
+In consequence of the fall of prices that had lately occurred, and the
+depression of agriculture that had been the result, the Act, too, reduced,
+for a short period of time, &#8216;fair rents&#8217; that had been already fixed; and
+it contained other enactments wholly in the interest of the occupier of
+the Irish soil. Regarded as a whole, something was to be said for the
+measure, on the principles of the legislation of 1881; but the liberation
+of the middleman from the payment of a debt has been attended with grave
+wrong, and was an ominous precedent leading to others of the kind. The new
+law was, of course, another inroad on the rights of the Irish landlord,
+another innovation made against his interests; it has certainly
+strengthened his claim to compensation for the loss of his property,
+acknowledged by Mr. Gladstone to be unquestionable, should it be
+reasonably made out. For the rest, the National League made a boast that
+the Act had been wrung by its efforts from a foreign Parliament; the Act
+certainly, like that of 1881, was a concession, derogating from the rights
+of a powerless class, in the hope of weakening a conspiracy against the
+State, by detaching from it large classes supported by it, and handing
+over to these what had belonged to the Irish landed gentry.<a name='fna_82' id='fna_82' href='#f_82'><small>[82]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The Land Act of 1887, it has been alleged, was the principal cause that
+disorder in Ireland was suppressed, and that comparative peace was
+restored. The measure may have had effects in this direction; but these
+assuredly were not great; the number of leaseholders was not large; the
+reductions made in &#8216;fair rents&#8217; were temporary and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> small. In truth, as
+agrarian war, stirred up by the Land League, did not diminish when the Act
+of 1881 was passed, but was brought to an end by what is called coercion,
+the agrarian war, stirred up by the National League, was quelled, not by
+the Act of 1887, but by resolute government, assisted by a repressive
+measure infinitely less stringent than that of 1882, and, in some degree,
+I have said, by Rome. It is worse than unwise to ignore plain facts; grave
+outbreaks of disorder and crime in Ireland can only be put down by severe
+means, and invariably have been put down by these; that &#8216;force is no
+remedy&#8217; is mere false sentiment. The violence, nay, the power, of the
+National League decreased rapidly and greatly after about 1889; the
+conspiracy seemed well-nigh to have dwindled away. This was partly because
+Parnell, negotiating with Mr. Gladstone, in the hope of obtaining Home
+Rule, discouraged agitation of every kind in Ireland, and in order to
+hoodwink the English people, and to bring about the &#8216;Union of Hearts,&#8217;
+represented, with his followers, that Ireland was at perfect peace, and
+only awaited &#8216;self-government&#8217; to be completely happy. But infinitely the
+most potent reason was that the fall of Parnell almost broke up the
+League; his creatures split into angry factions, exasperated against each
+other by furious discord; as the result the organisation of the League was
+shattered; the peasantry and the Catholic priesthood fell away from it. At
+the same time the Fenians in the United States, much its best supporters,
+withdrew the subsidies they had hitherto lavished; the League became
+penniless and almost powerless. By 1895 the conspiracy showed scarcely a
+sign of life; agrarian crime had sunk to a very low ebb; there was no sign
+of a movement against the payment of rent; order prevailed, it may be
+said, throughout the community. The conspiracy, nevertheless, was not
+dead; its leaders, if quiescent, had not disappeared; well-informed
+observers knew that the end had not come. I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> described in another
+chapter, by what means, and through what conditions, it revived gradually
+under Lord Salisbury&#8217;s third Government, and acquired strength that may be
+on the increase; it is not yet formidable, in any real sense, and its
+leaders are not to be named with Parnell; it is not receiving funds as yet
+from America; but the United Irish League is its true successor; and this
+commands eighty votes in the House of Commons. Time only can show if a
+period of agrarian strife and crime may not be about to open again for
+Ireland; it is foolish optimism to assert that this is impossible, or to
+contend that the agrarian legislation of the last twenty years, as regards
+the Irish land, will necessarily, or even probably, produce this fortunate
+result.</p>
+
+<p>In 1891 another change was effected in Irish landed relations, as usual in
+the interest of the tenant, and against his landlord. Middleman tenures
+had well-nigh been extinguished; but some hundreds, probably, were still
+to be found; and as a middleman, through the legislation of 1887, was
+enabled to repudiate his contract, in certain cases, and to escape the
+payment of rent to his superior landlord, he was now to obtain an
+advantage in other instances. The large majority of this class of
+intermediate owners, originally created in the eighteenth century, held,
+at least, in present times, by perpetual leases, which had long ago, as a
+rule, been converted into estates in fee farm, that is, estates in fee,
+subject to a perpetual rent; Parliament passed an Act in 1891, enlarged
+and amended five years afterwards, declaring that, in cases in which
+tenants of this kind were &#8216;in <i>bon&acirc; fide</i> occupation&#8217; of lands, under
+rents which, in the judgment of the Land Commission, should be &#8216;a full
+agricultural rent,&#8217; they might either agree with their landlords to redeem
+the rent at a price to be determined by that tribunal, or, should the
+landlords refuse their consent, might have &#8216;fair rents&#8217; fixed as in the
+instance of common farming tenants.<a name='fna_83' id='fna_83' href='#f_83'><small>[83]</small></a> The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> application of this law could
+not extend far, for tenants of this description were very few; but it
+asserted a strange, and, I think, a most vicious principle. The Act
+practically forced a superior landlord, often a poor man, either to accept
+a price assessed by a Court over which he had no control, in lieu of a
+rent, in all probability reasonably well secured, or, as an alternative,
+to submit to have a &#8216;fair rent&#8217; fixed on the land, the rent to be
+discharged from improvements made by the tenant. If, therefore, a tenant
+of this kind had built, say, a valuable house, on his holding, which would
+thus largely add to the security for the rent, this&mdash;at least, so it is
+generally believed&mdash;was not to be taken into account in fixing &#8216;the fair
+rent;&#8217; and this principle, it may confidently be predicted, will be
+extended further. Should a tenant, at a &#8216;fair rent,&#8217; in this predicament,
+be evicted for the failure to pay the rent, a law, in all human
+probability, will be made, to obtain for him compensation, under the Act
+of 1870, from the benefits of which he would be, as affairs stand,
+excluded. The result might be that if, as would often happen, the
+improvements he had made were of great value&mdash;his interest, in the land,
+being a perpetual interest&mdash;the sum the landlord would be adjudged to pay,
+might swallow up the whole value of the rent, and practically confiscate
+his whole property.<a name='fna_84' id='fna_84' href='#f_84'><small>[84]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>In 1896 another inroad was made on the rights of Irish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> landlords, and
+another dole given to the tenant class in Ireland; the descent to Avernus
+had proved easy; a Conservative Government had followed it since 1887.
+This fresh legislation was mainly in the interest of the Presbyterian
+farmers of Ulster, who had supported the Union almost to a man, and
+possessed no little political weight; but who, always separated more or
+less from their landlords, had shown dissatisfaction with the fixing of
+&#8216;fair rents,&#8217; and had begun to cry out for what is called &#8216;the compulsory
+purchase&#8217; of the estates of their landlords, a policy on which I shall
+comment afterwards. The Bill contained just and well-devised provisions;
+it improved the procedure for fixing &#8216;fair rents,&#8217; if not nearly as
+thoroughly as it ought to have done; it protected the leases creating
+&#8216;fixity,&#8217; under the new tenure&mdash;Mr. Gladstone, flying in the face of the
+ablest lawyers, had passionately declared that these were sacrosanct&mdash;in
+instances in which these might have been annulled; it proposed, what I had
+always considered right, that old arrears of rent ought not to be allowed
+to hang over the heads of tenants, and that rent could not be recovered on
+eviction, if due for upward of two years.<a name='fna_85' id='fna_85' href='#f_85'><small>[85]</small></a> But the Bill abounded in
+principles dangerous and false; it was, taken as a whole, a mischievous
+measure; it was another mine sprung upon the Irish landed gentry. Lands
+hitherto excluded from the benefits of the &#8216;Three F&#8217;s,&#8217; under the Acts of
+1881 and 1887&mdash;that is, demesnes, town parks, residential, and pastoral
+holdings&mdash;were largely brought within the scope of the Bill, that is, they
+were made subject to &#8216;fair rents,&#8217; and, if held by tenants, were
+practically taken away from the landlords; the provisions of the Bill, as
+to demesnes, were especially harsh; many a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> mansion and demesne, which
+might happen to be let, would really become the property of the tenant,
+the owner being put off with a rent-charge. The worst proposals of this
+measure, however, were those relating to improvements made by tenants,
+exempted from rent, we have seen, by the Act of 1881. The Courts of
+Justice in Ireland had rightly declared with one voice, that improvements
+of this kind were not to be discharged from rent, unless they were the
+improvements treated by the Act of 1870, that is, rents might be charged
+on tenants&#8217; improvements, if these did not fall within the definition laid
+down by that law, or if they were outside the limitations it had imposed,
+in order to shut out obsolete and unjust claims, which might harass and do
+grievous wrong to landlords. All this was completely changed by the new
+measure; the definition of improvements was wholly altered, in order to
+secure their being exempted from rent; the restrictions in point of time,
+and many other matters, as regards claims for improvements, were largely
+swept away, and the power of &#8216;contracting out&#8217; of such claims was still
+further abridged. The whole law, in a word, as to tenants&#8217; improvements,
+as these were to create exemption from rent, was placed on altogether a
+new basis; this was detrimental in every respect to the landlord, and gave
+advantages to the tenant, in my judgment, utterly unjust.<a name='fna_86' id='fna_86' href='#f_86'><small>[86]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The Bill contained other provisions, all in the same direction, that is,
+for the advantage of the Irish tenant, and to his landlord&#8217;s loss,
+especially one relaxing the law as to the subdivision and subletting of
+farms, an inveterate and very pernicious practice. It introduced, also, a
+new principle, on which I shall say some words afterwards, with respect to
+another experiment on the Irish land, that is, what is called Land
+Purchase, under conditions, not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> thought of before, until they were laid
+down by a Conservative Government. The measure was hustled through the
+House of Commons with such indecorous haste, that Sir Edward Carson, now a
+law-officer of the Crown, walked out of that Assembly to express his
+disgust; it narrowly escaped defeat in the House of Lords, loyal as the
+Peers to Lord Salisbury are; indeed, though hardly debated, its vices were
+soon made manifest. It is unnecessary to point out what the general
+character of the Act is; it enlarged very considerably the sphere of the
+&#8216;Three F&#8217;s,&#8217; greatly increasing the wrong done to the Irish landlord, by
+doing away with the restrictions, placed by Mr. Gladstone, in 1870, on
+illegitimate claims in respect of improvements; its direct tendency was to
+reduce rents wholesale, and to promote more litigation between landlord
+and tenant; and if it encouraged tenants to make improvements on their
+farms, its plain effect, I will not say its purpose, was to &#8216;improve the
+Irish landlords out of their estates,&#8217; the contemptuous phrase of a great
+master of Equity. Its mischief, however, went a great deal further;
+tenants making improvements are only exempted from rent, in respect of
+these, by this Act; they are not within the protection of the Act of 1870,
+if improvements of any kind are excluded by it; if a tenant, therefore,
+makes an improvement on his farm, which is not &#8216;suitable&#8217; to it in a real
+sense, say, builds a mansion upon a petty holding, he will not be entitled
+to compensation, should he quit it, even though dispossessed for
+non-payment of his rent. But tenants, in these circumstances, like those I
+have referred to before, would assuredly proclaim that they had here a
+great and real grievance; and they would be relieved from it, doubtless,
+by another law, giving them compensation, perhaps, to their landlord&#8217;s
+ruin. A dangerous principle is thus hidden within the Act; this will
+probably be asserted against the owners of ground rents, not only in
+Ireland, but in England and Scotland; and the law,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> taken as a whole, has
+strengthened the claim of the Irish landed gentry to be indemnified, as
+was solemnly promised, for what they have suffered from the legislation
+begun in 1881.</p>
+
+<p>While the Irish land system was thus being dealt with, on the side of
+occupation, during many years, experiments were made on it, likewise on
+the side of ownership. Resenting the legislation that had produced the
+&#8216;Three F&#8217;s,&#8217; Conservative politicians took it into their heads that Mr.
+Gladstone had &#8216;created&#8217; &#8216;dual ownership,&#8217; as they gave it the name, in
+Ireland; they insisted that this was simply an intolerable thing.
+Unfortunately Mr. Gladstone had no more &#8216;created dual ownership&#8217; than he
+had created the mountains and lakes of Ireland; he had only developed the
+joint ownership, which the Irish tenant possessed in his holding, in
+thousands of instances, if he had developed it under the very worst
+conditions. This theory, however, at which Burke would have laughed with
+contempt, and which revealed the incapacity to understand Irish land
+tenure, ingrained, it would appear, in the English mind, was eagerly taken
+up and found much support; it was resolved to extend the process of
+converting tenants in Ireland into owners of their farms, by a method
+hitherto untried, and unknown in any part of Europe. Under the Church
+Disestablishment Act, and the Land Acts of 1870 and 1881, the State had
+advanced money to the occupier of the Irish soil, in order to enable him
+to acquire his farm; but it had made it incumbent on him to contribute
+part of the price; the transaction, therefore, was, in a real sense, a
+purchase. This, the only security for honesty and thrift, was taken away
+in 1885; Parliament passed an Act enabling the Irish tenant to become
+owner of his holding without paying down a shilling; the State was to
+advance the whole price; and the State was to be repaid by a terminable
+annuity, charged on the land, and extinguished at the end of less than
+half a century. This<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> terminable annuity was to be much less than a true
+rent, or even than a &#8216;fair rent&#8217; adjusted by the State; the transaction,
+therefore, was not a purchase, but a gift, akin to a bribe, another
+largess bestowed on the tenant class in Ireland, and another injury, as I
+shall prove, inflicted on the Irish landed gentry. This &#8216;Land Purchase,&#8217;
+as it was falsely called, was to be voluntary on the part of landlord and
+tenant; it was to be conducted on the footing of free contract, as had
+been the case under the preceding statutes; the State was to obtain a
+guarantee from the landlord; and Parliament voted &pound;5,000,000 to carry out
+this policy.</p>
+
+<p>Exactly as had happened in the case of the Encumbered Estates Act, this
+scheme of &#8216;Land Purchase&#8217; was pronounced successful; some scores of
+landlords sold land, some hundreds of tenants bought it; the real nature
+of the proceeding and its inevitable results were ignored; it was even
+boasted that &#8216;dual ownership&#8217; would be got rid of, nay, that the Irish
+Land Question was being finally &#8216;settled.&#8217; But when the first sum of
+&pound;5,000,000 had been expended, and Parliament was asked to vote a second
+sum, it began to hesitate as to this dealing with the Irish land; the
+British taxpayer demurred and growled; with a true instinct he disliked
+the security; it was found very difficult to procure the funds required,
+large as the majority was of Lord Salisbury&#8217;s Government. His Ministry,
+however, adhered to the new policy; and Parliament enacted a measure in
+1891, which I have always thought unconstitutional in the highest degree,
+not to speak of the evils it was certain to produce. By this Act a sum of
+about &pound;30,000,000 was made forthcoming to facilitate &#8216;Land Purchase,&#8217; to
+abolish &#8216;dual ownership,&#8217; and to change Irish tenants into owners of land;
+this sum was to be secured by the methods before referred to, that is, by
+terminable annuities less than any equitable rent, and by guarantees on
+the part of selling landlords; but, furthermore, a whole series of funds,
+devoted to Ireland, for Irish purposes, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> absolutely essential to her
+most important needs, were appropriated to make good any default on the
+part of &#8216;purchasing&#8217; tenants, in the payment of annuities charged on their
+farms; and even the Irish counties were rendered liable in the last
+resort. Should, therefore, tenants in Ireland, who had acquired the
+ownership of their farms, refuse to pay those annuities on any pretence,
+say, through an appeal made by a Land League conspiracy&mdash;the manifesto
+against all rent cannot be forgotten&mdash;this extraordinary spectacle would
+then be seen: the State would have a right to seize upon the grants made
+for National schools and lunatic asylums throughout Ireland; these
+institutions would be shut up; children and madmen would be let loose
+through the country; and the owner of an Irish estate would have to pay
+for the dishonesty perhaps of his former tenants. The late Lord Randolph
+Churchill severely condemned this scheme; I agree with him it was utterly
+unjust, and but too characteristic of the contempt of the rights of
+Ireland, unhappily often displayed by British statesmen.</p>
+
+<p>Only a sum, it will be observed, of about &pound;40,000,000, that is, two of
+&pound;5,000,000, and some &pound;30,000,000 more, has thus been made available for
+&#8216;Land Purchase;&#8217; this obviously could not transfer even a fourth part of
+the Irish land, valued, we have seen, by Mr. Gladstone at &pound;300,000,000&mdash;in
+a remarkable speech in reply to Lord George Hamilton&mdash;and almost certainly
+worth from &pound;150,000,000 to &pound;200,000,000. The process of doing away with
+&#8216;dual ownership&#8217; and making tenants in Ireland owners of their farms,
+having been pronounced by its authors slow, the Act of 1896, referred to
+before, enabled the landlord&#8217;s guarantee to be dispensed with, and
+provided that, in the case of hopelessly embarrassed landlords, whose
+estates were being offered for sale in the Courts, the tenants should
+virtually have a right of pre-emption, thus asserting a principle, on
+which I shall dwell afterwards, and known as the &#8216;Compulsory<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> Purchase&#8217; of
+the Irish land. I shall point out, in another chapter, the present and the
+inevitable future results of this policy of so-styled &#8216;Land Purchase;&#8217;
+suffice it to say here, that, in my judgment, it betrays utter ignorance
+of the Irish land system, and of the customs and inclinations of the Irish
+peasant; that it proceeds on an essentially immoral principle, the bribery
+of a class to promote its welfare; that, from the very nature of the case,
+it cannot abolish &#8216;dual ownership;&#8217; that, human creatures being what they
+are, it cannot, as is being already proved, establish a thriving body of
+occupying owners on the Irish soil; that it must create sharp and unjust
+distinctions in Irish land tenure, iniquitous to the landlord and to every
+tenant, who may be excluded from its benefits; that it must directly tend,
+as it is even now tending, to arouse a cry for a wholesale confiscation of
+Irish estates, the most shameful and wrongful Ireland has yet witnessed;
+and that so far from settling the Irish Land Question, it must necessarily
+unsettle it from top to bottom. As respects the legislation I have briefly
+described, on the side of the occupation of the Irish land&mdash;by many
+degrees the most important&mdash;I shall also comment upon its results in a
+subsequent chapter, after examining its administration by the tribunal it
+has set up. But a word may be said, in this place, on its essential
+character: from 1881 to the present time, it is absolutely without a
+precedent in civilised lands; it has trampled on economic science and the
+truths it teaches, as, indeed, its chief author made his boast; it has
+created a mode of land tenure in Ireland not in accord with fact, which
+has virtually deprived the Irish landlord of real ownership in his estate,
+has turned him into a kind of annuitant, and has virtually changed the
+Irish tenant into a kind of owner, but under conditions absolutely bad;
+its inevitable tendency was to cut down rents wholesale, without regard to
+the simplest justice; it established a system of mischievous litigation
+between landlord and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> tenant, demoralising and increasing the division of
+classes; it exhibited, on an enormous scale, characteristic contempt of
+Irish rights of property; and finally, if Parliamentary pledges are to be
+fulfilled, and gross wrong is not to be consecrated by law, it has given
+the Irish landlord a great and legitimate claim to compensation from the
+State. As we survey this unwise and destructive medley of law, we are
+forcibly reminded of the words of Burke:&mdash;&#8216;I am unalterably persuaded that
+the attempt to oppress, degrade, impoverish, confiscate, and extinguish
+the original gentlemen, and landed property of a whole nation, cannot be
+justified under any form it may assume.&#8217;<a name='fna_87' id='fna_87' href='#f_87'><small>[87]</small></a></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<p class="center"><span class="large">THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (<i>continued</i>)&mdash;THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE IRISH LAND ACTS</span></p>
+
+<div class="note"><p class="hang">The administration of the Land Act of 1870 in the main
+good&mdash;Difficulty about claims for tenants&#8217; improvements&mdash;The
+administration of the Land Act of 1881, and of its supplements&mdash;The
+Land Commission and its Sub-Commissions&mdash;Allowances to be made for
+these tribunals&mdash;Principles which the Land Commission should have
+adopted in fixing &#8216;fair rents&#8217;&mdash;The procedure and practice it ought to
+have established&mdash;It made mistakes as to both&mdash;The nature of the
+Sub-Commission Courts&mdash;This was objectionable in the highest
+degree&mdash;These Courts have, however unconsciously, done grave wrong to
+Irish landlords&mdash;Causes of this&mdash;Characteristics of their
+proceedings&mdash;They disregarded the principles they ought to have
+followed, and adopted faulty and erroneous methods&mdash;Different
+illustrations of these grave mistakes&mdash;The Land Commission and appeals
+as to &#8216;fair rent&#8217;&mdash;Importance of this subject&mdash;Faulty procedure of the
+Land Commission in appeals&mdash;Valuers&mdash;The second Land Commission&mdash;Its
+procedure worse than that of the first&mdash;Theory of occupation
+right&mdash;This another wrong done to landlords&mdash;The Fry Commission and
+its report&mdash;Confiscation of the property of Irish landlords&mdash;The
+proofs of this&mdash;Apologies made for the Land Commission&mdash;The
+administration of the Land Purchase Acts.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>I turn to the administration of the new Irish Land Code, of which I have
+described the distinctive features. The County Courts of Ireland, I have
+said, were entrusted with the task of carrying out the Land Act of 1870;
+the principal duty of the judges was to determine rights, under the Ulster
+and analogous Customs in the south, and to declare the sums to be paid to
+tenants, when leaving their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> holdings, for compensation for improvements,
+and in respect of disturbance. As evictions were by no means frequent, in
+the period between 1870 and 1879, the litigation before these tribunals,
+under these different heads, though by no means trivial, was not
+excessive; the applications on the part of tenants were not very numerous;
+there was ample time to consider the law, whether in the subordinate or
+the appellate Courts; and though there was much difference of opinion as
+to the amount of compensation to be given to suitors, the administration
+of the Act was not seriously impugned,<a name='fna_88' id='fna_88' href='#f_88'><small>[88]</small></a> and, on the whole, was
+reasonable and just. The most remarkable circumstance in the inquiries
+held before the Courts was, certainly, the extravagance of the claims put
+forward, on account of tenants&#8217; improvements, circumscribed as these were
+by the limitations of the law; everything in the nature of an agricultural
+work was called an improvement, from repairing an old fence to cleaning an
+old drain; hours and days were lost in endeavours to disentangle the
+truth, and to arrive at sound and legal conclusions. I could fill scores
+of pages with descriptions of demands of this kind, usually pressed with
+reckless and hard swearing; they ought to have been a warning, as
+unhappily they were not, not to break down the restrictions contained in
+the Act of 1870, and not to extend legislation, in this direction, against
+the rights of the landlord. I confine myself to a single example: I tried
+a case, in 1895, in which a tenant&#8217;s claims, under the Act of 1870, were
+&pound;1130; I cut these down to &pound;164; after deducting &pound;155 found due to the
+landlord, I adjudged to the tenant a sum of less than &pound;10; and there was
+no appeal from the decision I pronounced.<a name='fna_89' id='fna_89' href='#f_89'><small>[89]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The Land Act of 1870 has been well-nigh superseded by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> the great measure
+of 1881, and by the legislation which has been its supplement. The
+administration of this part of the new Land Code, by many degrees the most
+important, was given, as I have pointed out before, to a wholly new
+tribunal, the Land Commission, and to Sub-Commissions dependent on it; a
+concurrent jurisdiction was given to the Irish County Courts; but they
+have had very little to do in this province. The principal work of the
+Land Commission has been to fix &#8216;fair rents,&#8217; and to make statutory
+leases, &#8216;fixity of tenure,&#8217; in a word, in a kind of disguise, and thus to
+give effect to the policy adopted by Mr. Gladstone in 1881. The three
+original members of the Land Commission, in all respects its directors,
+were the late Mr. Justice O&#8217;Hagan, the late Mr. E. F. Litton, and the late
+Mr. John E. Vernon; Lord Salisbury denounced these appointments in
+emphatic language, as being against the just rights of Irish
+landlords;<a name='fna_90' id='fna_90' href='#f_90'><small>[90]</small></a> the charge was not without plausible grounds at least, for
+Mr. Justice O&#8217;Hagan had been one of the &#8216;Young Ireland&#8217; party, and Mr.
+Litton had been a strong tenant-right advocate. These two gentlemen,
+nevertheless, were most honourable men, and capable, if not very
+distinguished, lawyers; Mr. Vernon was an excellent and experienced
+country gentleman, if, in politics, of the Liberal faith; and as all three
+have long ago passed away, it would be unjust to make charges of
+illegitimate conduct, even if they may not have been wholly free from
+unconscious bias. Great allowance ought to be made, in common justice, for
+the Commissioners in the situation that had been made for them, and regard
+being had to their most arduous duties.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> To fix &#8216;fair rent,&#8217; even
+approximately, was difficult in the extreme; as Judge Longfield predicted
+many years before, and every well-informed Irishman knew, the adjustment
+of rent, through the agency of the State, would inevitably cause a general
+lowering of rents. Again, the Commissioners were, from the outset,
+harassed by a rush of applications to fix &#8216;fair rents;&#8217; these came in,
+within a few weeks, in thousands; they were tempted, therefore, to set
+about their work at once, without taking the careful precautions, or
+entering into all the considerations, the nature of their duty required.
+Two circumstances, also, no doubt, had effect on their minds; the Land
+League was creating a Reign of Terror, and destroying the property of the
+Irish landlords; the Commissioners probably hoped that they would weaken
+the power of the League, by, so to speak, bidding against it, and cutting
+rents down. Above all, the Land Commission, like the Encumbered Estates
+Commission, was a tribunal set up to carry out a policy, that is, in word,
+to abate rents; and all experience, Irish experience notably, proves that
+such a body of men usually fulfils its mission.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gladstone, we have seen, had expressed a belief that &#8216;fair rents,&#8217; as
+a rule, would be fixed by contract; that the Act of 1881 would produce
+this result; and that this part of the work of the Land Commission,
+accordingly, would not be very great. Unquestionably, too, with his
+leading followers, he was convinced that rents in Ireland would not be
+largely reduced;<a name='fna_91' id='fna_91' href='#f_91'><small>[91]</small></a> it is important to bear<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> this distinctly in mind,
+regard being had to subsequent events. These anticipations were to prove
+vain; but the Land Commissioners possibly may have shared his views, and
+may have resolved to act upon them, before they first addressed themselves
+to the task of &#8216;fixing fair rents.&#8217; After experience, it is easy to be
+wise; but we can now clearly discern what they ought to have done,
+considering the heavy work they were soon to find imposed on them. Their
+first duty should have been to establish some standard, which would make a
+reasonable criterion of rent; the means to accomplish this end were not
+wanting. Mr. Law, the Irish Attorney-General of Mr. Gladstone, one of the
+most distinguished lawyers of his day, and afterwards a holder of the
+Great Seal of Ireland, had made a definition of &#8216;fair rent&#8217; in the House
+of Commons; &#8216;a fair rent was to be a competition rent minus the yearly
+value of the tenant&#8217;s interest in the holding; that was what was intended,
+and anything else would be monstrously unjust.&#8217;<a name='fna_92' id='fna_92' href='#f_92'><small>[92]</small></a> For some reason that
+has not transpired, this definition did not find a place in the Act; but
+the authority of its framer was great; it must have been known to the Land
+Commissioners; had they adopted it, and based their decisions upon it,
+things would have been very different from what they are at the present
+time. But there were other tests to indicate a standard of rent, to be
+regarded at least, if not conclusive. The valuation of the lands of
+Ireland made for the assessment of rates, Griffith&#8217;s valuation, as it was
+commonly called, which Parnell had made a measure of &#8216;fair rent,&#8217; would
+certainly have been of real use, though it varied greatly in different
+counties; and the Commission appointed by Mr. Gladstone, only a few months
+before, had, I have said, reported, that Ireland, as a whole, was in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> no
+sense an over-rented land. There was another consideration, as regards
+Irish rents, which the Land Commissioners ought to have borne in mind. The
+rents on the estates of the great landlords, and of the gentry of old
+descent, were, as a rule, low; the rents of the purchasers under the
+Encumbered Estates Acts were high, nay, excessive, in not a few instances.</p>
+
+<p>Other circumstances, moreover, of great importance, ought to have been
+taken into account, with respect to this subject. The rental of Ireland
+was not as high as it had been before the Great Famine; where rents,
+therefore, had not been increased, and had been regularly paid for a long
+series of years, there was the strongest possible presumption that these
+would be &#8216;fair.&#8217; Again, the material progress of Ireland had been great
+during the forty preceding years: the wages of labour had, indeed, risen;
+but owing to the introduction of good farm machinery, the cost of
+production, in agriculture, had diminished; the extension of the railway
+system had opened new markets, and had brought even Connaught within a few
+hours of Great Britain; steam navigation had multiplied and improved; the
+modes of husbandry and the breeds of stock of all kinds had become
+infinitely better than they had been; and prices of late had been very
+high. These were all elements to be regarded in the determination of &#8216;fair
+rent;&#8217; they ought to have been examined with care; and inquiries on these
+matters should have extended over a long space of time. Moreover, as the
+Land Act of 1881 discharged improvements made by tenants from rent, as
+these were defined and limited by the Act of 1870, the greatest pains
+ought to have been taken that claims for exemption should be strictly
+dealt with, and not permitted to run riot, especially as it was notorious
+that demands of this kind, made under the law already in force, were
+usually excessive, supported by untrue statements, and by no means easy to
+resist and disprove. Another fact, also,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> of the gravest moment, ought to
+have been thoroughly considered, as regards this question. As improvements
+made by tenants were not to be charged with rent, it was but equitable
+that the lands they might hold should be valued as if in their normal
+state; that if these had been deteriorated, either through wilful
+misconduct, or gross neglect, their occupiers were not to make profit of
+their own wrong; that deterioration, in a word, was not to be allowed to
+work rent down, and was to be taken into account, in adjudicating upon
+&#8216;fair rent.&#8217; This was the more necessary because it was well known that
+numbers of farms in Ireland had been more or less run out; and especially
+because, as in the case of the ryot of Bengal, under the Permanent
+Settlement of Lord Cornwallis, an Irish tenant would be strongly tempted
+to injure his lands, if he believed that, when &#8216;a fair rent&#8217; should be
+fixed on them, he would be permitted to take advantage of his own default.
+It should be added that, in the fixing of &#8216;fair rents,&#8217; the large sums
+which, in many instances, Irish landlords had laid out in improving their
+estates, notably since the years that succeeded the Famine, ought, as a
+matter of course, to have been kept in mind.</p>
+
+<p>These were the general principles which should have guided the Land
+Commission in approaching the question of fixing &#8216;fair rent.&#8217; There was
+nothing in the Act of 1881 to prevent the Land Commissioners, as a Court
+of first instance, adjudicating directly in cases of this kind, or to
+compel them to refer these to their Sub-Commissions; indeed the plain
+intention of the law was in a contrary sense. Had the Land Commissioners
+adopted this course&mdash;and this, I venture to say, was their obvious
+duty&mdash;they would, no doubt, have considered the questions before them at
+length, and with close attention; have made their inquiries go back many
+years, and have laid down, in elaborate judgments, the maxims and rules to
+be applied in the fixing of &#8216;fair rent.&#8217; The evidence that would have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+come before them would have been of two kinds: that which depended upon
+the statements of valuers, on the side of landlords and tenants alike;
+this, of course, would be of great importance; but it should have been
+borne in mind that it would be biassed evidence; and that, in the existing
+state of Ireland, and of Irish opinion, the statements of tenants&#8217; valuers
+would require to be strictly watched. The other head of evidence was of a
+much more trustworthy kind; it was indicated by the circumstances of the
+cases being heard, and was necessarily suggested by the inquiries
+themselves. This class of evidence would be desired from a consideration
+of the rate of rent in the neighbourhood or even of adjoining lands, in a
+word, of what may be called the market price of rent; from an examination
+of what a reasonable rent would be, payable by a solvent tenant to a
+fair-minded landlord; and even from a review of rent fixed by the
+competition of bidders for land, these circumstances, in every given case,
+being, of course, controlled by a due regard being had, in the words of
+the law, for the &#8216;tenant&#8217;s interest.&#8217; There was another and very important
+test; the sums paid in Ulster and elsewhere on the transfer of farms were
+usually large, sometimes not less than a third or even a half of the value
+of the fee simple; and as these sums were always subject to the existing
+rents, the first charges on the lands being sold, this would afford a
+strong presumption that such rents would be &#8216;fair.&#8217; No doubt the Act of
+1881 declared that such payments were not to be taken into account, <i>per
+se</i>, and apart from other considerations in the actual fixing of rent, so
+far as regards a given farm; but the law certainly allowed&mdash;and it has
+always been so held&mdash;that payments of this kind might be kept in view in
+forming, generally, an estimate of what a &#8216;fair rent&#8217; should be.<a name='fna_93' id='fna_93' href='#f_93'><small>[93]</small></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>The Land Commissioners, but from a different point of view, might have
+learned something from Parnell in this matter. They were, no doubt,
+harassed by the prospect of the task before them; but had they taken a
+certain number of &#8216;test cases,&#8217; and investigated them as a Court of first
+instance, they would have laid down principles to be followed in the
+fixing of &#8216;fair rent;&#8217; have explained these in well-considered judgments,
+going over the whole field of inquiry; and, so far as in them lay, have
+tried to do justice. Even if they had not adopted this course, one of
+their members, as the Act of 1881 provided, might have taken part for some
+time with their subordinates in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> adjustment of rent; this would have
+been in accord with Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s assertions that the Land Commission
+was to be the real arbiter of rent. Unfortunately the Commissioners acted
+quite otherwise; their conduct, palliate as you may, was an abdication of
+a plain duty, on the plea that they were overwhelmed by the work before
+them. Not one of them ever sat in a Court of first instance to fix &#8216;fair
+rents;&#8217; they delegated this the most important of all their functions to
+their Sub-Commissions, to which they thus committed the charge of
+adjusting rent throughout the whole of Ireland. These Sub-Commissions
+formed Courts, each composed of three members, one a legal Commissioner
+and two laymen; the Sub-Commissioners were nominees of the Government,
+whether appointed on the recommendation of the Land Commission or not is
+not certain; the only qualifications for the legal Commissioners were that
+they should be barristers or solicitors of six years&#8217; standing, and for
+the lay Commissioners that they should have some knowledge of land. These
+were strange tribunals to deal with property worth hundreds of millions;
+but this was only a part of what must be called a scandal most
+discreditable to those responsible for it. The Sub-Commissioners, one and
+all, were much underpaid; their salaries were inadequate to secure fitting
+men; and, one and all, they were at the sufferance of the men at the
+Castle, liable to be dismissed at a moment&#8217;s notice, and without the
+independence which is the best guarantee of justice. Some of the
+Sub-Commissioners, indeed, were only paid for the job, by the day; they
+had, therefore, a direct personal interest to reduce rents, in order to
+make work for themselves and to retain their places. Even in Ireland such
+tribunals were never set on foot, since Cromwell assembled his Courts of
+Claims to give their sanction to his huge forfeitures; that they were ever
+thought of is one of the many proofs of the disregard shown to property in
+land in Ireland. No wonder that it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> significantly remarked: &#8216;The whole
+spirit of our judicial institutions suggests that officers with such
+extensive powers should be selected with the greatest care and with
+reference to their possession of high qualifications, and that they should
+be placed in a position of independence, and should, so far as possible,
+be lifted above the suspicions that surround them.&#8217;<a name='fna_94' id='fna_94' href='#f_94'><small>[94]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>Sixty or seventy officials of this type&mdash;the number was afterwards largely
+increased&mdash;were thus, in the significant words of one, &#8216;let loose over
+Ireland&#8217; to deal with estates; it is very remarkable that they have never
+received instructions from the Land Commission how to perform their
+duties. The procedure of the Courts of the Sub-Commissions was, under
+existing conditions, as well devised as could be fairly expected. The
+three Commissioners, who formed a Court, nearly always sate together, and
+heard the evidence brought before them as to what were &#8216;fair rents;&#8217; the
+legal Commissioner decided questions of law; and, this evidence having
+been taken, the two lay Commissioners inspected the farms, the subjects of
+the previous inquiries, and having conferred with their legal colleague,
+determined with him what should be their &#8216;fair rents.&#8217; This was the
+ordinary if not the universal practice; if some deviations have been made
+from it, these cannot be deemed of very great importance. Grave complaints
+have been made, in not a few instances, of the lay Commissioners, when
+engaged in examining lands; it has been said that they often neglected and
+&#8216;scamped&#8217; their work; but these charges have been hardly, if at all,
+sustained; my own experience&mdash;and it is tolerably large&mdash;is that the
+Commissioners performed their functions with diligence and care, and
+sometimes gave proof of real knowledge of husbandry.<a name='fna_95' id='fna_95' href='#f_95'><small>[95]</small></a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> But it was
+utterly impossible that tribunals of this kind, not composed of experts of
+a high order, dependent upon the breath of the Castle, without regulations
+to direct their conduct, and acting, without concert, in many districts,
+could adjust rent in a satisfactory way, and in conformity with true
+methods, especially as the work they had to do was excessive; indeed, they
+sometimes fixed &#8216;fair rents&#8217; by dozens in a day. It was equally impossible
+that the Sub-Commissions&mdash;and to do their members justice they never made
+the attempt&mdash;could take into account all the manifold and far-reaching
+elements which enter into the question of &#8216;fair rent,&#8217; and could set
+forth, in exhaustive judgments, the principles applicable to a most
+intricate problem. On the contrary, as a rule, and no doubt wisely, they
+avoided topics which might have tasked the highest judicial powers; they
+decided the cases before them summarily, and with little reflection,
+certainly without the protracted examination required to establish settled
+rules and doctrines. And the result has been that they disregarded, and
+even set at nought, a whole series of considerations, of supreme
+importance, with reference to the fixing of &#8216;fair rent;&#8217; and, however
+unconsciously and innocently, they have been the authors, in the first
+instance at least, of the gravest injustice, and of wrong, done wholesale,
+to the landed gentry of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>To make this plain, let us glance back at the principles which assuredly
+ought to have been kept in view, in coming to sound conclusions on the
+subject of &#8216;fair rent.&#8217; It will be seen that the Sub-Commissioners either
+gave little or no attention to these, or directly violated them in,
+perhaps, tens of thousands of cases. They have never attempted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> to
+establish some kind of standard, which would form a general measure of
+&#8216;fair rent;&#8217; they have completely ignored the definition of Mr. Law,
+precise and most valuable as it was; they have treated &#8216;Griffith&#8217;s
+valuation&#8217; as though it did not exist; they have regarded the Report of
+Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s Commission, declaring that Ireland was not excessively
+rented, as mere waste paper; they have apparently taken hardly any account
+of the well-known distinction between the low rentals of the great and old
+landlords, and the rack-rents too often exacted by purchasers under the
+Encumbered Estates Acts. So, too, it would seem, they have refused to
+consider the strong presumption that rents would be &#8216;fair&#8217; if not raised
+during a long series of years, and if reasonably well paid, within that
+period; and they certainly have given no real weight, as an element in
+adjusting rent, to the agricultural progress made by Ireland since the
+Great Famine. Innumerable complaints have been made against their
+decisions as to the exemption of tenants&#8217; improvements from rent; but my
+belief is that they gave great attention to this subject; the wrong that
+has been done was owing to the difficulty of the law, and of its
+application to given cases; and the law, besides, was not, I think, just.
+On the correlative and most important question of the deterioration of
+farms through the default of tenants, they have hardly ever inquired into
+this; they have repeatedly done the landlords wrong; they have made grave
+and palpable mistakes; and in many instances they have made no allowances
+for the expenditure of landlords upon their estates. Having thus refused
+to follow the principles which ought to have been their guide, they have
+widely deviated in the actual fixing of &#8216;fair rents&#8217; from rules and
+methods they should have observed and made effective. They have given too
+much weight to the class of evidence that was least important and most
+open to question; they have attached little and sometimes no value to the
+class of evidence by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> far the most trustworthy, and that ought to possess
+the greatest influence. This has especially been the case, as we shall
+see, with respect to the sums paid on the transfer of farms, the strongest
+possible indication that their rents must be &#8216;fair,&#8217; on the ordinary
+principles of human nature, and giving the purchasers credit for the
+simplest common sense.</p>
+
+<p>These are grave charges against quasi-judicial bodies; let us see if they
+are not completely justified. The Sub-Commissioners, I have said, have
+taken no heed of Mr. Law&#8217;s definition of &#8216;fair rent;&#8217; but they have acted
+as though they set it at defiance; they have ignored the principle of
+competition in fixing &#8216;fair&#8217; rents. Unquestionably, as Mr. Law pointed
+out, a deduction should be made from a competition rent, regard being had
+to &#8216;the tenant&#8217;s interest,&#8217; that is, to his rights in respect of
+improvements, and perhaps to his rights on account of his tenure, a lease
+renewable every fifteen years, when a &#8216;fair rent&#8217; is being fixed on his
+farm; but why the very idea of competition, that is, of market value, was
+to be excluded as an element in estimating &#8216;fair rent,&#8217; is what men of
+common sense have never understood. This, in fact, was a portentous
+mistake, with consequences of a far-reaching kind; you might as well argue
+that because two partners had an interest in a fee simple estate, or two
+peasants had each a share in a cow, the price of the land or the cow was
+not to depend on what would be given for it at an auction mart or a county
+fair. Yet this was a position the Sub-Commissions have always taken; they
+have always insisted that competition had nothing to do with &#8216;fair rent.&#8217;
+The evidence on this subject is conclusive; I can only take a few samples
+from the statements of a cloud of witnesses, who really seem to make a
+boast of their faith. Colonel Bayley, a Sub-Commissioner of large
+experience, has laid it down that the &#8216;difference between a competition
+rent and the fair rent would be more than 20 per cent.; it would,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> I
+think, be more than that; there would be between 30 and 75 per cent.
+difference between the fair rent and the competition rent.&#8217;<a name='fna_96' id='fna_96' href='#f_96'><small>[96]</small></a> Mr.
+Roberts, another Sub-Commissioner, has deposed to much the same effect:
+&#8216;Decidedly, I believe that if the land was put in the market it would
+bring 25 per cent. more than the rent I put on.&#8217;<a name='fna_97' id='fna_97' href='#f_97'><small>[97]</small></a> So, too, Mr. Bailey,
+a legal Sub-Commissioner, very much respected, has alleged: &#8216;It would be
+most misleading to take the evidence of letting value in the
+neighbourhood, thus bringing in competition value, which we rigorously
+exclude in fair-rent cases.&#8217;<a name='fna_98' id='fna_98' href='#f_98'><small>[98]</small></a> Mr. Bomford, a well-known
+Sub-Commissioner, has said, in much the same sense: &#8216;We do not take the
+competition rent, and cannot take it into consideration, when fixing what
+the fair rent should be. Then you utterly exclude, when you come to the
+fixing of the fair rent, the element of competition?&mdash;Yes, except in one
+matter, when we have town parks.&#8217;<a name='fna_99' id='fna_99' href='#f_99'><small>[99]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>Let us now see what distinctions, in fixing &#8216;fair rents,&#8217; the
+Sub-Commissioners have drawn between landlords whose rentals were low and
+landlords whose rentals were really high; and how they have dealt with
+rents, paid for a long space of time, without having been raised; this is
+a fair index of the equity of their proceedings. It should be remarked, at
+the outset, that it soon appeared that rents had only been increased in
+comparatively few instances, going back over a series of years; yet, as a
+rule, nearly all rents were indiscriminately reduced. No attempt has been
+made, by any official of the Land Commission, to answer this damaging
+charge made, in 1897, at a judicial inquiry held upon the subject: &#8216;The
+result of that calculation, the accuracy of which cannot be challenged,
+shows<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> that, as the result of all the cases that were heard, in only 8 per
+cent. of them was any increase of rent for many years prior to 1881
+proved. But whether the Sub-Commissioners are dealing with an estate on
+which for centuries the rents had remained unchanged, and on which the
+tenants had been fairly treated, or whether they were dealing with estates
+that had come into the hands of speculators by purchase in the Landed
+Estates Court, in all cases the average result was the same. They deducted
+something between 15 and 20 per cent. from the existing rent, no matter
+how long it had existed, and no matter upon what estate it was being
+paid.&#8217;<a name='fna_100' id='fna_100' href='#f_100'><small>[100]</small></a> This significant evidence, too, points to the same conclusion:
+&#8216;There is nothing to justify the reductions that have been made in the
+rents of good landlords, who did not raise their rents in the good years.
+In fact, the landlords who did raise their rents got off a great deal
+better, at the hands of the Sub-Commissioners, than the good landlords who
+did not raise them.&#8217;<a name='fna_101' id='fna_101' href='#f_101'><small>[101]</small></a> And Mr. Lecky, a calm-minded observer, if there
+ever was one, has added these striking and pregnant remarks: &#8216;The
+landlords who have suffered least have probably been those who simplified
+their properties by the wholesale evictions, the harsh clearances, that
+too often followed the Famine. Next in the scale come those who exacted
+extreme rack-rents from their tenants. These rents had been received for
+many years, and though they were ultimately reduced more than rents which
+had been always low, they still, in innumerable instances, remained higher
+than the others. The large class who regarded land simply as a source of
+revenue, and, without doing anything harsh, or extortionate, or unjust,
+took no part in its management, have suffered very moderately. It is the
+improving landlord, who took a real interest in his estate, who sank large
+sums in draining and other purposes of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> improvement, who exercised a
+constant and beneficent influence over his tenants, who has suffered most
+from the legislation that reduced him to a mere powerless rent-charger,
+and, in most cases, rendered the sums he had expended an absolute
+loss.&#8217;<a name='fna_102' id='fna_102' href='#f_102'><small>[102]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The Sub-Commissions dealt with the subject of the exemption of tenants&#8217;
+improvements from rent, on the whole, as fairly, I think, as could be
+expected; and on the different questions of law that arose, appeals ran
+from them to the Land Commission, which usually investigated these cases
+at length. But this part of the law, really an excrescence on the Act of
+1881, was unfair to the landlords, in the circumstances in which they were
+placed; they were confronted by innumerable and often obsolete and
+worthless claims, which they had only seldom the means of refuting; and if
+the demoralisation and false swearing under the Act of 1870 was bad, they
+were infinitely worse under the Act of 1881. A witty Irishman, indeed,
+once said that he could wish no severer punishment for Mr. Gladstone than
+to see him in a Sub-Commission Court listening to those wrongful
+statements; the mischief has, of course, been aggravated since the Act of
+1896 has made the basis for the exemption larger and more ill-defined. The
+Sub-Commissions, I have said, were gravely in error, almost, as a rule,
+with respect to the deterioration of land, as an element to be considered
+in fixing rent; in this respect gross injustice has been done to
+landlords. There is scarcely any proof that, even in a single instance,
+the Sub-Commissioners valued land &#8216;for fair rent,&#8217; as in its normal state;
+and yet, assuredly, this was what ought to have been done, if a premium
+was not to be put on misconduct, and because farms had been injured and
+exhausted in hundreds, throughout Ireland. The deterioration was usually
+of two kinds&mdash;wilful waste committed in order to work down rent, and
+passive waste<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> caused by negligence and bad farming. Out of many
+instances, under the first head, I shall refer to one; the
+Sub-Commissioners usually gave little or no attention to wrongs of this
+kind; in this instance they enabled the tenant to make money by his own
+misdeeds; they reduced the rent nearly 30 per cent.: &#8216;The dykes were full
+of stuff and choked, and the sluice-gate, which we had repaired at our own
+expense, was all choked up, and the water had been left on the land as
+long as it could stay on it. I complained and remonstrated with the
+tenant. I sent for Madden, and in Mr. Lyle&#8217;s presence I stated this to
+him. His answer to me was that he was not such a damned fool as to have
+his land looking well when the Commissioners came to look at it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;<span class="smcap">Sir E. Fry</span>: Did that case come before the Sub-commissioner Court?&mdash;It
+did.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Did you give evidence of what the tenant said?&mdash;Yes, sir....</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;<span class="smcap">Mr. Campbell</span>: I will tell you, sir, what they did.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;How much did they reduce the first judicial rent?&mdash;They reduced the first
+judicial rent; they cut it down from &pound;70 10<i>s.</i> to &pound;51.&#8217;<a name='fna_103' id='fna_103' href='#f_103'><small>[103]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>As for passive waste, that is, the bad cultivation of farms, the proof is
+conclusive that it has been seldom, if ever, considered by the
+Sub-Commissions in fixing &#8216;fair rents.&#8217; If we bear in mind that many
+thousands of acres in Ireland have been well-nigh destroyed by the burning
+done by tenants, and that hundreds of thousands have been run out by
+slovenly farming, the injury thus done to landlords has been enormous,
+especially as tenants&#8217; improvements have been exempted from rent against
+them; the &#8216;candle,&#8217;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> it has been justly said, &#8216;has been melted down at
+both ends.&#8217; I cite two instances, out of hundreds, of the injustice thus
+done; it has been proved over and over again that, in the case of two
+adjoining farms, in all respects of the same natural quality, the rent on
+that which was deteriorated was fixed at a much lower rate than the rent
+on that which was in good heart; in other words, the landlord was
+despoiled of the difference, and the tenant had the benefit of his bad
+husbandry. I take, almost at random, a case in Ulster: &#8216;The Commissioners
+always value the land as they see it. I have two cases on my property in
+one townland. One tenant was an industrious, hard-working man, who had his
+farm in very good order. The second tenant, his wife had died, he was in
+poverty, with a lot of young children, and he himself was not quite &#8220;all
+there.&#8221; These two holdings came at the same time before the
+Sub-Commissioners, and the rents were cut down in each case. When the
+thing was over, I said to Quinn, who was one of the tenants, &#8220;Are you
+satisfied with your reduction?&#8221; &#8220;How can I be satisfied,&#8221; he said, &#8220;when
+my rent is at the same rate as Hurson&#8217;s rent?&#8221; I looked at the return and
+saw he was quite right.... The deteriorated farm was cut down considerably
+more than the cultivated farm.&#8217; Another remarkable case occurred in the
+west: &#8216;I had a case, I think decided this year; a farm that was divided
+between two sons fifteen or twenty years ago; the father divided the land
+before I came into the management of the property.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Did they get an equal portion? was it divided into halves?&mdash;Into halves,
+and paid an equal rent.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Before the Act of 1881?&mdash;Before the Act of 1881.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;And was the land of uniform quality?&mdash;Yes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Had one of these men, before he went into Court, greatly deteriorated the
+land?&mdash;Yes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Had the other attended to it?&mdash;He had attended to it; he looked after the
+land very well indeed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>&#8216;What reduction did the man who had deteriorated his half get?&mdash;The man
+who had deteriorated his half got 17&#189; per cent, reduction.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;What did the other get?&mdash;The other got 7&#189; per cent.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;The industrious tenant got 7&#189;?&mdash;He got 7&#189;.&#8217;<a name='fna_104' id='fna_104' href='#f_104'><small>[104]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>This was obviously gross and crying injustice; but two apologies have been
+made for acts of this kind. It is said that were a deteriorated farm
+rented as if it were in a normal state, the tenant could not afford to pay
+the &#8216;fair rent,&#8217; in other words, the landlord is to be despoiled for the
+tenant&#8217;s neglect. It is said again that the Sub-Commissioners are bound to
+value the land as they find it, and cannot estimate it at its intrinsic
+worth, that is, they are under no obligation to ascertain the truth, and
+do their duty. Yet this sophistry has been gravely put forward as a
+justification for palpable wrong, through which the property of landlords
+has been filched away wholesale: &#8216;The land to this day has suffered a very
+serious deterioration in value; but we did not deal with that as against
+the present tenant ...&#8217;<a name='fna_105' id='fna_105' href='#f_105'><small>[105]</small></a> &#8216;Have you frequently asked the
+Sub-Commissioners why they do not attach sufficient importance to
+deterioration?&mdash;No, but I heard them saying one reason was that if they
+put the rent of the farm as if it had been fairly treated, the tenant
+would not be able to pay that rent now in the deteriorated state.&#8217;<a name='fna_106' id='fna_106' href='#f_106'><small>[106]</small></a>
+The general result of these proceedings as regards exhausted farms has
+been thus described: &#8216;My view with reference to deterioration is this. Bad
+tenants, who had ill-treated and worn out their land, undoubtedly, in my
+opinion, have obtained larger reductions than they would have got had they
+farmed well. Probably the reason is that were the Land Commissioners to
+put a rent on the land according to its natural capacity, before a
+deterioration, it would be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> an impossible rent for a broken-down bad
+tenant to pay. This stereotypes the rent in such cases at a figure
+unfairly low to the landlord; tends to lower the standard of fair rent
+generally; is a premium on bad farming; and places tenants under a serious
+temptation to ill-treat their land, so as to secure a larger reduction
+from the Land Court than otherwise could be obtainable.&#8217;<a name='fna_107' id='fna_107' href='#f_107'><small>[107]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The Sub-Commissions appear to have disregarded the just rights of
+landlords in another important respect. Unquestionably, in the great mass
+of instances, as is inevitable when the land is held in small farms, the
+Irish tenant had made the improvements on his holding; but the landed
+gentry, as I have pointed out, had done a good deal since the Great
+Famine. There is nevertheless cogent evidence that, in &#8216;fixing fair
+rents,&#8217; the Sub-Commissions took hardly any account of the expenditure of
+landlords under this head. In the case of the estate of the late Mr.
+Talbot Crosbie, one of the best breeders of prize stock in the Three
+Kingdoms, and a country gentleman of parts and intelligence, these
+significant facts were conclusively proved: &#8216;Table E gives the cases of
+eight holdings upon which there was an expenditure by the landlord of
+&pound;1936?&mdash;Yes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;The old rent was &pound;688?&mdash;Yes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;That was reduced by the Sub-Commissioners to &pound;493?&mdash;Yes. A reduction of
+about 30 per cent.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Notwithstanding the outlay by the landlord in the interval of nearly
+&pound;2000?&mdash;Yes, that is it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Table F is a list of eleven farms, on which there was practically no
+expenditure by the landlord?&mdash;Quite so, no recent expenditure. That is,
+between 1863 and 1887?&mdash;There was a good deal done in the famine time, but
+I did not take account of that.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>&#8216;You had no evidence in these eleven cases of expenditure for many years
+prior to the fixing of the rent?&mdash;No. In these cases the old rents tot up
+to &pound;361?&mdash;Yes. And the reductions only brought them to &pound;280?&mdash;A reduction
+of 18 per cent.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;In other words, on the unimproved farms the reductions only average 18,
+while on the improved farms they went as high as 30 per cent.?&mdash;Quite so.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;<span class="smcap">Sir E. Fry</span>: Were these two sets of farms different classes of
+farms?&mdash;They were practically of the same class.&#8217;<a name='fna_108' id='fna_108' href='#f_108'><small>[108]</small></a> In the same way, in
+the case of the estate of Lord Leconfield, a great and excellent landlord
+in the County Clare, the Sub-Commission made no real allowance for a sum
+of &pound;20,500 expended on twenty-seven farms. &#8216;Am I right in saying that from
+1852 to 1881 there was spent by Lord Leconfield &pound;20,500 in these
+twenty-seven cases?&mdash;The return speaks for itself. That is the result of
+it.&#8217; &#8216;No. 4: As an example of the reductions of the Sub-Commissioners were
+the rents put back to what they had been in 1852?&mdash;Very nearly. There is a
+difference, I think, of about &#189; per cent.?&mdash;About &#189; per cent. The rent
+in 1852 was &pound;2524, and the judicial rents on these farms was &pound;2632.&#8217;<a name='fna_109' id='fna_109' href='#f_109'><small>[109]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>I pass on to the methods pursued by the Sub-Commissioners in actually
+fixing &#8216;fair rents.&#8217; As I have said, they usually heard the cases at
+length in Court; they usually devoted attention to them. I do not think
+they set much store on the reports of valuers, on the part either of
+landlords or tenants; they formed their decisions, as a general rule, on
+the inspections made by the lay Commissioners of the lands they visited.
+This was a much better method, as I shall point out afterwards, than that
+adopted by their superiors; but obviously inspections of this kind made by
+officials without local knowledge of the farms, which they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> examined and
+valued, could not be a sufficient, or a satisfactory, way to fix &#8216;fair
+rents.&#8217; The great error, however, made, in this matter, by the
+Sub-Commissions&mdash;and in this respect they had the countenance of the
+higher tribunal&mdash;was that they had little or no regard for the evidence
+which in adjusting rent was assuredly of the greatest importance. They
+rejected, we have seen, the principle of competition in adjudicating on
+rent; in fixing the &#8216;fair rents&#8217; of holdings before them, they refused to
+consider the rents of the neighbourhood and of adjoining lands, that is,
+to consider the price of the market. Yet this was but a trifling compared
+to their capital mistake, one that, indeed, can hardly be explained: in
+investigating the subject of &#8216;fair rent,&#8217; they would not take into account
+sums paid on the transfer of farms, that is, their tenant right, in other
+words, as an indication of what ought to be their &#8216;fair rents.&#8217; If we bear
+in mind, as I have said before, that these sums were given subject to the
+existing rents, which always formed the first charge on the lands, it is
+most difficult to understand, as we have seen, how this circumstance did
+not create a very strong presumption that the rents in question must be
+&#8216;fair&#8217; from the very nature of the case, assuming the Irish tenant to be a
+rational being. The sums paid for this tenant right were sometimes
+enormous, not uncommonly equal to one-third or one-half of the value of
+the fee; I illustrate my meaning from the evidence, taken with reference
+to the estate of Lord Downshire, one of the largest and best managed in
+Ulster: &#8216;What would you say the tenants&#8217; interest would be worth on the
+Downshire estate?&mdash;Well, judging from the average prices obtained by
+tenants on transfers, my opinion is that the tenants&#8217; interest would be
+worth &pound;1,000,000.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;On the Downshire estate alone?&mdash;Yes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Now, could that value in the tenants, or that interest in the tenants,
+exist, unless the rents at which they were holding were low rents?&mdash;No,
+the prices of tenant right are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> incompatible with high rents. Does it in
+your opinion point to their being lower than the commercial rents?&mdash;Yes,
+they are lower.&#8217;<a name='fna_110' id='fna_110' href='#f_110'><small>[110]</small></a> And will it be believed that on this very estate, in
+the case of thirteen farms, held at the rents fixed by the landlords, the
+tenant right realised &pound;7296, and yet the Sub-Commission reduced the rents
+more than 20 per cent.? In other words, they declared that the old rents
+were not fair, though these lands, when transferred, fetched &pound;7296 paid by
+their purchasers, subject to the rents in question!<a name='fna_111' id='fna_111' href='#f_111'><small>[111]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The Downshire was only one of many scores of estates in which the tenant
+right was exceedingly high, that is, the sums paid, at existing rents, on
+the transfer of farms, were very great, yet in all these instances this
+striking fact was not taken into account. It cannot cause surprise that,
+at a judicial inquiry held afterwards to review the subject, tenants&#8217;
+advocates endeavoured to exclude the evidence which, in the judgment of
+plain men of sense, affords almost a decisive indication as to whether
+given rents are &#8216;fair.&#8217; It has been argued, however, that the price of
+tenant right, that is, the sums paid by incoming to outgoing tenants, on
+the sale of farms, at the current rents, ought to form no element in the
+fixing of &#8216;fair rent;&#8217; it is only just to set forth the reasons. Mr.
+Bailey, the able legal Sub-Commissioner, referred to before, has explained
+them in this passage: &#8216;Do you attend to tenant right in considering the
+fair rent?&mdash;No, we do not. The view we take of it is this. The tenant
+right paid for land is paid for something of an altogether different
+character from the rent of the land.... When a tenant sells his interest
+in his holding, he sells two things, first, the improvements on the
+holding, and secondly, his goodwill or share of the gross product of the
+holding.... When you put these two items together, viz. improvements and
+goodwill, it seems<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> to me that the prices paid for tenant right are not at
+all remarkable. Then your view is that the price paid for tenant right
+throws no light on what the fair rent ought to be?&mdash;No, no light at all.&#8217;
+Mr. Bailey has added these significant words: &#8216;The tenant does not buy at
+the rent which the tenement at present stands at, but he buys with a
+possible increase or reduction of the rent?&mdash;Quite so. And in latter years
+with the fall of prices he was buying with the expectation of a very
+considerable reduction?&mdash;Undoubtedly.&#8217;<a name='fna_112' id='fna_112' href='#f_112'><small>[112]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The first of these arguments appears to me to be wholly irrelevant to the
+real question. Undoubtedly the tenant right of a farm represents the
+tenant&#8217;s improvements and his interest in the land, and is completely
+distinct from the rent; and this is acquired on a sale by an incoming
+tenant. But the purchaser buys the tenant right, subject to the first
+charge, the rent; if the rent were excessive, or even high, either he
+would not buy at all, or he would pay a low price; when, therefore, we
+find the tenant right commanding very large sums, the conclusion is
+inevitable, that, taking human nature as it is, the rent must be in the
+nature of a &#8216;fair rent.&#8217; The Sub-Commissions rejected a plain inference
+they ought to have drawn; that they refused to give weight to an
+all-important fact cannot be justified in any sense; and the result has
+been that in hundreds of cases they have done grave wrong to landlords. As
+for the second argument, it is very probable that in many instances
+tenants purchased farms in the anticipation of a reduction of rent; they
+speculated&mdash;a significant fact&mdash;that the Sub-Commissions would &#8216;bear&#8217; the
+market; but even, on that supposition, this can hardly explain the huge
+sums paid for tenant right while the existing rents were current. For the
+rest, I refer to part of my own evidence given on this subject at the same
+inquiry; readers of ordinary intelligence may judge for themselves: &#8216;The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+first question I ask the tenant is, &#8220;How much will you take for the land,
+&pound;100, &pound;200, &pound;300; ten, fifteen, twenty, or forty years&#8217; rent?&#8221; But I never
+can get an answer. They say, &#8220;Oh, your honour, I am here to look after a
+&#8216;fair rent,&#8217; and I am not going to tell your honour what I am going to ask
+for the land.&#8221; However, I have a very shrewd notion.... You take into
+consideration in fixing the fair rent the price paid by the tenants?&mdash;Yes,
+the price which an incoming tenant would give, because I am not one of
+those who think that the Irish tenant is a fool; and when I find an
+incoming tenant giving ten, fifteen, twenty, and thirty years&#8217; purchase
+for a farm, I have a very shrewd suspicion that the rent is right.&#8217;<a name='fna_113' id='fna_113' href='#f_113'><small>[113]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>It was under these conditions, and by proceedings of this kind, that the
+Sub-Commissions, bodies of ill-paid men, dependent upon the will of the
+Government, and constituted to give effect to a policy, were sent
+throughout Ireland to &#8216;fix fair rents.&#8217; They had no assistance, we have
+seen, from the Land Commission; they often entertained very different
+views; but their uniform course was in the same direction; they
+indiscriminately abated rents, as they would abate a nuisance. In fact,
+they might have joined in the chorus of the doctors of Moli&egrave;re: &#8216;Et
+saignare, et purgare, et clyst&eacute;riasaire;&#8217; they applied the same remedies
+to all their victims, and brought them nearly all into the same weak and
+low condition. But there was a right of appeal from the Sub-Commissions to
+the Land Commission; and this tribunal, certainly designed to have
+absolute power in the determination of rent, ought surely to have been
+expected to redress injustice. I approach a part of the subject on which
+the plain truth must be told, without making personal imputations of any
+kind. Appeals from the Sub-Commissions were numbered by many thousands;
+and, as I have said&mdash;an iniquitous provision of the Act of 1881&mdash;the
+decisions of the Land Commission on the subject<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> of &#8216;fair rent&#8217; was made
+final, at least as regards the rate of rent; there was to be no further
+appeal to a higher tribunal. I quote these significant remarks on this
+restriction: &#8216;In an ordinary case, I need not tell you, sir, who are
+conversant with the procedure of Courts of Justice, a litigant, in a civil
+case, no matter how much the issue may be involved, has the right, if he
+thinks fit, of taking the case from one Court to another, until he reaches
+the highest tribunal of the land, the House of Lords. And as you know,
+there is a well-known case, which the House of Lords had to decide, in
+which the amount involved was one penny, an alleged overcharge on a
+railway ticket; but in these land cases, where there may be, and often is,
+a sum of &pound;200, &pound;300, or &pound;400 a year involved, because in some of the large
+farms in this country there have been reductions of &pound;300 and even of &pound;400
+in the rent, under the Act of Parliament they cannot go beyond the Head
+Land Commission, upon any question of value. That is the Act of Parliament
+whether it be right or wrong. There it is, and I am not here to discuss
+the policy of the Act. But when a rehearing is given by the Act of
+Parliament to the Land Commission, and when the Land Commission are
+constituted the final judges in such large and important matters, it is
+obviously of great importance that the final rehearing should be full, and
+in every respect what the Act of Parliament says it is to be, namely, a
+rehearing.&#8217;<a name='fna_114' id='fna_114' href='#f_114'><small>[114]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The Land Commission sometimes heard these appeals at length, though
+usually their proceedings were summary in the extreme. The Commissioners
+occasionally pronounced well-considered judgments, on the difficult
+questions of law that came before them, especially as regards the
+exemption of tenants&#8217; improvements from rent; in several instances the
+results were curious. The lay Commissioner now and then dissented from his
+legal colleagues; his plain common sense rejected theories in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> tenants&#8217;
+interests; his decisions were more than once confirmed, on these points of
+law, by the highest Court of Appeal in Ireland, a circumstance of no
+slight significance. Nineteen-twentieths, however, of these appeals were
+conversant only with the amount of &#8216;fair rent,&#8217; as to which the
+conclusions of the Land Commission could not be challenged. The Land
+Commissioners undoubtedly heard these cases, and sometimes had much
+evidence brought before them; in tolerably many instances they varied the
+&#8216;fair rents&#8217; fixed by the Sub-Commissions, if these variations were seldom
+important. But the Land Commission practically adopted, with scarcely a
+single exception, the errors of principle and the faulty methods which had
+marked the practice and the proceedings of the Sub-Commissions.<a name='fna_115' id='fna_115' href='#f_115'><small>[115]</small></a> They
+excluded the element of competition from the subject of &#8216;fair rent;&#8217; they
+never attempted to define &#8216;fair rent,&#8217; or to establish a standard by which
+to gauge it; they disregarded, to a considerable extent at least, the
+distinction between the rentals of the old and the new landlords; they
+paid little or no attention to the fact that rents had been paid for many
+years without an increase; they hardly ever took deterioration into
+account, or the expenditure made on their estates by landlords. And in the
+actual fixing of &#8216;fair rents&#8217; they virtually followed in the wake of their
+inferiors; they rejected, as a rule, the evidence that was most relevant;
+they refused to consider the rents of adjoining or neighbouring lands, in
+a word, the price of the market, in determining rent; above all, they gave
+scarcely any heed to the enormous sums paid for the tenant right of lands,
+as an indication that their rents were &#8216;fair.&#8217; On all these particulars,
+in a word, supremely important as they were, they almost said ditto to the
+Sub-Commissions; in these respects the appeals were well-nigh useless. It
+should be added that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> animus of the head of the Land Commission was
+significantly exhibited on one striking occasion. When opening the
+proceedings of the Land Commission, Mr. Justice O&#8217;Hagan pointedly laid it
+down, that the object of the Act of 1881 was &#8216;to make tenants live and
+thrive;&#8217; in other words, as Lord Salisbury indignantly remarked, to compel
+rent to gravitate to the level of the most indolent and worthless Irish
+peasant, and practically to discourage industry.</p>
+
+<p>These considerations indicate, to some extent at least, the nature and
+especially the value of these appeals. But this was not all, or nearly
+all; there was a grave miscarriage of the simplest justice in this
+important province. Appeals, I have said, came in, in thousands; the work
+thrown on the Land Commissioners was immense; as one of their present
+successors remarked, &#8216;If proper consideration&#8217; (had been) &#8216;given to all
+the appeals you would&#8217; (have) &#8216;wanted ten Appeal Courts to do it;&#8217;<a name='fna_116' id='fna_116' href='#f_116'><small>[116]</small></a> as
+was said again substantially, &#8216;Appeals would have crushed the Land
+Commissioners, had they not been crushed by them.&#8217;<a name='fna_117' id='fna_117' href='#f_117'><small>[117]</small></a> In this position
+of affairs, the Land Commissioners, no doubt with no bad or sinister
+purpose, adopted what must be called a device, to enable them quickly to
+dispose of appeals, nay, almost in a summary way. They were empowered,
+under the Act of 1881, to appoint &#8216;independent valuers&#8217; to examine lands,
+and to report on the subject of their &#8216;fair rents;&#8217; it was never
+contemplated that statements of this kind were to dispense with the duty
+of hearing appeals in detail, and pronouncing solemn judgments upon them;
+but, practically, the Land Commissioners, in the great mass of instances,
+when adjudicating on appeals, as regards &#8216;fair rents,&#8217; almost wholly
+relied on the reports of these valuers, who, be it observed, were in no
+sense witnesses, and were not subject to examination on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> part of the
+suitors before the Court. In a word, the Land Commissioners did not
+exclude other kinds of evidence; but unquestionably the dicta of the
+valuers, as a rule, determined the decisions they made on &#8216;fair rent.&#8217;
+This expedient greatly accelerated appeals; but it reduced the right of
+appeal well-nigh to a sham; and this procedure was by many degrees more
+repugnant to justice than that of the Sub-Commissions. In an inquiry held
+before the House of Lords in 1882, an eminent member of the Irish bar
+remarked, &#8216;It was the most unsatisfactory tribunal that I ever was before.
+What occurred was this: they took up the figures of the old rent, which we
+will say was &pound;100, and the valuation &pound;70, and the new rent &pound;80. Then they
+took up the valuer&#8217;s report, which was a document concealed from the
+parties. It was entirely for the information of the Court, and they turned
+round to me, as the landlord&#8217;s counsel, the landlord being the appellant,
+and said, &#8220;Can you go on with this appeal in the face of this document?&#8221;
+and they would show me the document.&#8217;<a name='fna_118' id='fna_118' href='#f_118'><small>[118]</small></a> And in the inquiry I have often
+referred to before, another distinguished lawyer has said, &#8216;I have been in
+cases where, in order to overcome the difficulty, I marshalled a perfect
+phalanx of witnesses, for the landlord, but it was all no use. They
+listened to them, I admit,&mdash;they suggested that I was wasting time, but I
+am not stating they did not hear them,&mdash;but in the end, in the morning,
+the announcement was made that the judicial rent was confirmed.&#8217;<a name='fna_119' id='fna_119' href='#f_119'><small>[119]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>As the general result these appeals, as it has been said, &#8216;were
+strangled;&#8217; in thousands of instances they were withdrawn, the decisions
+of the Land Commission being final; expedition was attained; but it was
+only attained at the cost of gross wrong done to the landlords, a singular
+exhibition in a Court of Justice. I quote the following&mdash;and it should be
+borne in mind that the Land Commissioners<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> have never attempted to explain
+this conduct, though the amplest opportunity was afforded, a few years
+ago: &#8216;The extraordinary and anomalous state of things is that the valuers,
+not being assessors, do not sit with the Commissioners, and do not hear
+the evidence, and yet they are not witnesses in the proper sense of the
+term, because they are neither examined nor cross-examined. Common sense
+and justice revolt at the idea, when it is the duty of the Land
+Commissioners, upon the rehearing of a case, to sit and go through the
+proceedings <i>de novo</i>, that they should receive the evidence of valuers,
+which is not laid before the parties, and that those valuers should not be
+examined and cross-examined in the regular way. There is another matter to
+which I would refer. You will find, what is, indeed, what you might
+expect, that when the Commissioners go to Dublin, or Cork, or elsewhere,
+with a list of two or three hundred cases to be heard by them, involving,
+it may be, thousands of pounds a year of rent, that list is gone through
+in two or three days, and why? Because all the parties present know that
+they are taking part in what really is a solemn farce, and that what will
+happen in the morning after the hearing of their case is just this: John
+Brown, landlord, James Fogarty, tenant; judicial rent affirmed; John
+Robinson, landlord, James McNorth, tenant; judicial rent affirmed.&#8217;<a name='fna_120' id='fna_120' href='#f_120'><small>[120]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The first set of Land Commissioners passed away; they were succeeded by a
+second Land Commission, the president of which was Mr. Justice Bewley, an
+accomplished, if not a very eminent, lawyer. This Commission, like the
+other, was composed of honourable men; it is only just to remark that it
+was bound by the bad precedents made by the tribunal which it had
+replaced. The procedure of the Sub-Commissions was, in some degree,
+improved; but the methods of the second Land Commission differed for the
+worse where they differed from the methods of its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> predecessor. The Land
+Commissioners appear to have not at all regarded the general principles in
+fixing &#8216;fair rent,&#8217; which ought to have had effect on their judgments;
+they gave less weight, than Mr. Justice O&#8217;Hagan, and his colleagues did,
+to the most important evidence, in this province, to which I have adverted
+before, and laid too much stress on the least important evidence. As has
+been truly remarked, &#8216;We believe that much more attention was paid in the
+early days of the Land Commission to the remaining kinds of popular
+evidence than has been the case of late years; and we are assured by one
+of the head Commissioners that the Act of 1896 has made a great change in
+the fixing of fair rents by placing an emphasis on the technical evidence,
+and throwing the popular evidence into the background.&#8217;<a name='fna_121' id='fna_121' href='#f_121'><small>[121]</small></a> The
+Commissioners, too, followed the bad example of the first Land Commission,
+in the province of appeals; they practically disregarded almost everything
+but the reports of their valuers, unchecked statements made by men who
+were not even witnesses, were not sworn, and were not examined&mdash;a
+procedure worthy of the Council of Ten at Venice; as before, the result
+was that appeals were made all but fruitless, in the Court of which the
+decisions were, in this respect, final.</p>
+
+<p>There was, too, another grave miscarriage of justice caused, perhaps, by a
+mistake made by the head of the second Land Commission. The Act of 1881
+provided that &#8216;fair rent&#8217; should be fixed, having due regard to the
+&#8216;interest&#8217; of the tenant on the land, that is, to his improvements, and
+perhaps to the mode of his tenure. Mr. Justice Bewley seems to have
+decided that another element ought to be taken into account, and should
+effect a reduction of rent; the tenant had &#8216;an occupation right&#8217; in his
+favour, over and above the &#8216;interest&#8217; the law gave him; by reason of this
+he had a right to have his rent cut down.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> The only plausible ground
+alleged for this doctrine was that landlords would usually accept a lower
+rent from a &#8216;sitting&#8217; tenant in possession than from an incoming tenant;
+in other words, their good nature was turned against them, and was to be
+made a pretext for their being despoiled. It is just to observe that Mr.
+Justice Bewley&#8217;s colleagues dissented from this curious view of the law;
+and the claim for &#8216;occupation right&#8217; has since been blown to the winds in
+the superior Courts of Ireland. But though many faint denials were made,
+some of the Sub-Commissioners acted upon Mr. Justice Bewley&#8217;s doctrine;
+the evidence is conclusive that this imaginary right was made the means of
+considerably reducing rent. Mr. Justice Bewley candidly admitted: &#8216;From
+the commencement, apparently, a number of the Sub-Commissioners have acted
+on the principle that there is a certain occupation interest, which every
+tenant has, varying according to circumstances, not any fixed amount, but
+varying, and that that is to be taken into account in fixing the fair
+rent.&#8217;<a name='fna_122' id='fna_122' href='#f_122'><small>[122]</small></a> This statement has been confirmed by a host of witnesses by no
+means willing in not a few instances. &#8216;Would you make a difference between
+the assessment of the fair rent in the case of a sitting tenant, and in
+the case of an incoming tenant&mdash;a stranger? Certainly. Can you give us any
+idea what that difference is, expressed in percentage?&mdash;I could not very
+well answer that question. It is a mental calculation, and a good deal
+would depend upon the length of the tenure of the tenant.&#8217;<a name='fna_123' id='fna_123' href='#f_123'><small>[123]</small></a> And again:
+&#8216;In your experience of the Land Commission Court, do you find the
+&#8220;occupation interest&#8221; has been taken into account in fixing the fair
+rent?&mdash;Yes, I cannot account for the reductions that have been made,
+except on that supposition.&#8217;<a name='fna_124' id='fna_124' href='#f_124'><small>[124]</small></a> And again: &#8216;As far as your experience<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+goes, do they invariably value the holdings on the principle of giving an
+occupation interest to the sitting tenant?&mdash;Yes, the tenants&#8217; valuers, as
+a rule, give 40 or 50 per cent. as the interest of the sitting tenant....
+Do you find that the Sub-Commissioners fix the rent on what the valuers
+state?&mdash;Well, no; that would be going too much out of the way.&#8217;<a name='fna_125' id='fna_125' href='#f_125'><small>[125]</small></a> And
+again: &#8216;Have you any doubt that the rents are fixed on the basis of the
+occupation interest in the sitting tenant?&mdash;I have none. I do not know how
+else the rents could have been arrived at.&#8217;<a name='fna_126' id='fna_126' href='#f_126'><small>[126]</small></a> And once more: &#8216;Did the
+Sub-Commissioners invariably take the occupation interest of the sitting
+tenant into account?&mdash;I think so.&#8217; I conclude with these remarks of Mr.
+Barnes, one of the best and most impartial of Irish valuers: &#8216;When I came
+to give evidence in Court I found that nothing else would be accepted as
+evidence unless based on occupation interest. It was almost the first
+question.... Whenever there was an answer made that the valuation was
+based on what the landlord would get for the land in his own hands, it was
+discounted at once.&#8217;<a name='fna_127' id='fna_127' href='#f_127'><small>[127]</small></a> No wonder that it has been alleged by the
+highest authority with respect to this claim, since proved to have been
+unfounded, guarded and cautious as the language is: &#8216;There is, however,
+reason to believe that this notion of an occupation interest existed in
+the minds of some of the early valuers, and did, in fact, influence them,
+and it is very possible that some cases in which the reductions there made
+appear startling, may be, in part, attributable to this doctrine.&#8217;<a name='fna_128' id='fna_128' href='#f_128'><small>[128]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>What amount of the rental of Ireland was unlawfully cut down owing to the
+theory of &#8216;occupation right,&#8217; it is, of course, impossible to ascertain.
+Reductions of rent, too, were probably unjustly made through the
+ignorance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> of the Land Commission as to agricultural matters. I refer to a
+grotesque instance of this: &#8216;You have marked a passage there in the
+judgment, which, according to you, shows that owing to their ignorance as
+experts they entirely mistook what six-course rotation meant?&mdash;Yes. The
+fact is they took it to be the same crop in the whole seventy acres, that
+instead of having so many different crops in this portion of the ground,
+it was to be put into one crop for the year, and that is what they call
+&#8220;rotation&#8221; in the Court of Rehearing.... It is plain enough, from the
+authorised report of the judgment, that they made that mistake?&mdash;It is
+clear as possible, and it was upon that that they threw me out. The tenant
+himself knew that it was all absurdity and mistake.&#8217;<a name='fna_129' id='fna_129' href='#f_129'><small>[129]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>A remarkable incident occurred in 1897 which threw a strong, if not a
+complete, light on the proceedings of the Land Commission and its
+Sub-Commissions in the adjustment of rent. In 1896 the time had come for
+renewing the first statutory leases, under the Act of 1881; the
+Commissioners suddenly made such enormous reductions of rent that persons
+who knew Ireland were simply astounded. The Irish landlords naturally were
+indignant; after some hesitation, and with plain reluctance, the
+Government gave its consent to a very imperfect inquiry. A Commission,
+presided over by Sir Edward Fry, a judge of the highest eminence, retired
+from office, and composed of four additional colleagues, two being
+well-known agricultural experts, was appointed to investigate the subject
+on the spot; but the scope of the inquiry was limited in the extreme; it
+was confined, in this respect, to examining the procedure and practice
+adopted in fixing &#8216;fair rents;&#8217; it did not extend to the conduct generally
+of the Land Commission and its dependent tribunals. The Commission was
+engaged nearly three months in its task; it held its sittings in different
+parts of Ireland; it had before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> it 183 witnesses; and restricted as it
+was in this province, it pronounced, in grave and judicial language, a
+marked censure on the methods that had been followed in fixing &#8216;fair
+rents&#8217; in Ireland. In fact, Sir Edward Fry and his colleagues confirmed,
+in many respects, the charges which I have made with regard to this whole
+system. No doubt they reported, in very guarded words, &#8216;that they were
+unable to conclude that the machinery of the Land Statutes has been
+uniformly worked with injustice towards landlords;&#8217;<a name='fna_130' id='fna_130' href='#f_130'><small>[130]</small></a> but as they
+pointedly refused to rehear a single case, in which the Land Commission
+and the Sub-Commissions had fixed a &#8216;fair rent,&#8217; this statement, ambiguous
+as it is, is of no real importance. In other particulars the expression of
+these opinions cannot be mistaken; to impartial minds it will appear
+decisive. They evidently thought that such wrong had been done to
+landlords owing to the want of a definition of &#8216;fair rent,&#8217; that they
+actually framed a definition of their own, in order to establish some kind
+of standard; this did not widely differ from that of Mr. Law, which, I
+have said, would have made things very different had it been adopted.<a name='fna_131' id='fna_131' href='#f_131'><small>[131]</small></a>
+They pointed out that the Land Commissioners should have assisted the
+Sub-Commissions in fixing &#8216;fair rents,&#8217; and should not have left them
+&#8216;like ships without a rudder or a compass on a stormy sea;&#8217; it is &#8216;a
+subject of regret,&#8217; they reported, &#8216;that in the early days of the system
+the Land Commissioners were unable to take a part in the tribunals of
+first instance; and that the whole original business was left to
+Sub-Commissions.&#8217;<a name='fna_132' id='fna_132' href='#f_132'><small>[132]</small></a> They strongly condemned the nature of the
+Sub-Commission Courts, as being composed of members inadequately paid and
+mere tenants at sufferance; and they put forward an elaborate scheme to
+make the administration of justice in these tribunals more above
+suspicion.<a name='fna_133' id='fna_133' href='#f_133'><small>[133]</small></a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> They evidently believed that the Land Commission and the
+Sub-Commissions did not give due weight to the class of evidence that was
+most important, and gave too much weight to that which was the least; and
+they made significant observations on this subject.<a name='fna_134' id='fna_134' href='#f_134'><small>[134]</small></a> On the whole,
+they arrived at the conclusion that the fixing of &#8216;fair rents&#8217; &#8216;gives
+opportunity for dissatisfaction, and leaves much more for improvement; ...
+and that the settlement of fair rents has been effected in an
+unsatisfactory manner, with diversity of opinion and practice, sometimes
+with carelessness, and sometimes with that bias towards one side or the
+other which exists in many honest minds.&#8217;<a name='fna_135' id='fna_135' href='#f_135'><small>[135]</small></a> But their strongest
+animadversion was found in the system, through which, I have said, the
+Land Commission really &#8216;strangled&#8217; appeals, though in this province its
+decisions were final: &#8216;An almost universal dissatisfaction is expressed
+with regard to these appeals, a dissatisfaction felt by some at least of
+the Commissioners themselves. No witness, with, perhaps, a single
+exception, spoke in favour of the existing system.&#8217;<a name='fna_136' id='fna_136' href='#f_136'><small>[136]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Justice Bewley has retired from office, and has been replaced by Mr.
+Justice Meredith, a capable and experienced lawyer. He has done, probably
+as much as in him lay, to alleviate some of the wrong done to Irish
+landlords; and for this he has been subjected to violent abuse, especially
+on the part of an advocate of Ulster farmers, whose tongue is at odds with
+his trade in temperance. But he is bound by the precedents set by those
+who have gone before him; and though the work of the Land Commission is
+now better done than it was before the Report of the Fry Commission
+appeared, and its general procedure has improved, little change has been
+effected in the reduction of rent in Ireland. The Government, as I have
+pointed out in a preceding chapter, has made a few<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> administrative reforms
+in the composition and the arrangement of the Sub-Commissions; but it has
+not taken a single step to give effect to the recommendations made by the
+Fry Commission, so far as these are of real importance; it has refused to
+legislate on the subject, and to bring in the measure that was required;
+it has even refused to set a further inquiry on foot. The general results
+of the labours of the Land Commission and of its subordinate tribunals in
+fixing &#8216;fair rents&#8217; may be summed up in a very few sentences. According to
+the Report of the Fry Commission, the tenants of rural holdings in Ireland
+are about 486,000 in number; 328,720 of these have had &#8216;fair rents&#8217; fixed,
+between August, 1881, and the end of March, 1900.<a name='fna_137' id='fna_137' href='#f_137'><small>[137]</small></a> The tenants, who
+have not had &#8216;fair rents&#8217; fixed, are probably either tenants of lands not
+within the Land Acts, or &#8216;future tenants&#8217; since 1881-82, or tenants too
+poor to pay law costs; but these, perhaps in nine cases out of ten, have
+indirectly had the benefit of the law, and have had their rents reduced
+like those of the large majority, by voluntary concessions on the part of
+landlords. The great mass of &#8216;fair rents&#8217; has been fixed by the Land
+Commission and its dependents, and the proceedings of these tribunals
+have, beyond question, formed a standard for the adjustment of rent;
+whether &#8216;fair rents&#8217; have been fixed by the County Courts,<a name='fna_138' id='fna_138' href='#f_138'><small>[138]</small></a> or by
+agreements between landlord and tenant, they have, in the main, conformed
+to the measure established by the Courts set up in 1881. The reductions of
+rent made, in every way, in the first statutory leases, were, on an
+average, rather more than 20 per cent. on the old rental;<a name='fna_139' id='fna_139' href='#f_139'><small>[139]</small></a> but those
+on the second statutory<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> leases have been 22 per cent. more,<a name='fna_140' id='fna_140' href='#f_140'><small>[140]</small></a> that is,
+the fixing of &#8216;fair rents,&#8217; so far as it has gone, has reduced rents
+rather more than 42 per cent. It may be asserted, with some confidence,
+that through the operation of the new Irish land code, taking in tenancies
+of all kinds, Irish rents have been cut down nearly 40 per cent.; little
+doubt can exist that they are now lower than they were in the day of
+Wakefield, and in some instances in the day of Arthur Young, when the
+price of Irish agricultural produce was less than half what it is at the
+present time.<a name='fna_141' id='fna_141' href='#f_141'><small>[141]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The agricultural rental of Ireland, therefore, in all probability, has
+been reduced almost 40 per cent., or will be in a short space of time; and
+as long as the present system of fixing &#8216;fair rent&#8217; continues, however it
+may be lowered, it will certainly not be raised. The Act of 1881, I have
+already said, would, by itself, necessarily reduce rents; but the faulty
+administration of it, on which I have dwelt, has reduced them far more
+than ought to have been the case. In fact, disguise it as you may, an
+immense confiscation, gradual, indeed, and veiled, but not the less real,
+has been made of the property of Irish landlords, even on the principles
+of a bad law; the evidence of this is, I believe, conclusive. Rents have
+been cut down indiscriminately in the great mass of instances; for
+example, rents in country districts only opened to good markets of late
+years, have been reduced quite as much as rents around Dublin, which had
+almost a monopoly of the best market until about 1855-60. But the proof of
+this spoliation is made most apparent by taking into account a single
+fact, and drawing the natural inference from it. The value of the
+landlords&#8217; interest in the land, before 1881, was from 20 to 25 years&#8217;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+purchase; it is now between 15 and 18; at the same time the value of the
+tenants&#8217; interest has, in thousands of cases, enormously increased. I
+refer to a few examples out of scores to be found in the evidence given to
+the Fry Commission. I take first an estate in Ulster: &#8216;I only remember one
+case of a holding before 1881 that went up (in a sale of the farm) to
+anything like 20 years&#8217; purchase of the rent, and I have several cases
+since then that have gone beyond it. I remember one case that struck me
+very forcibly because of the great amount the man got&mdash;20 years&#8217; purchase.
+Since then I have known, 29, 35, 36, 34 years&#8217; purchase to be given.&#8217; I
+turn now to two estates in the south of Ireland: &#8216;Charles Bolster, 112
+acres; rent &pound;79 5<i>s.</i>; sold for &pound;570 in 1889. Daniel Buckley, 9 acres, at
+rent of &pound;3 3<i>s.</i>; sold in 1889 for &pound;45. Christopher Crofts, 131 acres; old
+rent, &pound;86; judicial rent fixed in 1893, &pound;80; sold in 1889 for &pound;120.
+Timothy Reefe, 5 acres; rent, 29<i>s.</i>; sold in 1891 for &pound;47.&#8217; I pass on to
+the second estate: &#8216;Next case, 65 acres; old rent, &pound;60; judicial rent, &pound;56
+14<i>s.</i>, fixed in 1883 by agreement; sold in 1883 for &pound;330. Next, 76
+statute acres; old rent, &pound;115; judicial rent fixed in 1885 at &pound;108; sold
+in December, 1885, for &pound;1600.&#8217;<a name='fna_142' id='fna_142' href='#f_142'><small>[142]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>This great fall in the value of the fee simple in the Irish land, and this
+great rise in the value of the tenant right, coinciding with the general
+fixing of &#8216;fair rents,&#8217; distinctly point to a plain conclusion: the
+interest of the Irish landlord has been enormously reduced, a result never
+contemplated by the author of the Act of 1881. In truth, there has been
+little or no decline in the market price of land in Ireland; but property
+that ought to belong to the landlord has been improperly taken from him,
+and has been transferred to the tenant who had no right to it. Excuses,
+however, have been made for this wholesale abolition of rent; they are
+worthless, but may be briefly noticed. Ireland, it is said, is suffering,
+like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> England, from the agricultural depression of late years; and rents
+in Ireland have not been cut down more by the act of the State than they
+have been reduced in England by the voluntary acts of landlords. But
+agricultural depression in Ireland, a land of small holdings, and of
+pasturage, to a considerable extent, is not, by many degrees, as severe as
+in England, a land of large farms and largely of cereal culture; a signal
+proof of this is that, while in England, tenants have, in hundreds of
+instances, thrown up their farms, there has hardly been a case of the kind
+in Ireland, as appears from the Report of the Fry Commission. Besides, if
+agricultural prices have fallen in Ireland, compared to what they were,
+say, twenty-five years ago, they are higher than they were in the years,
+say, 1850-55, not to take into account the progress made by Ireland, in
+the last half-century, in crops, farm machinery, and the breeds of farming
+animals. As to the reduction of rents in England and Ireland, the supposed
+analogy completely fails. The rental of England rose greatly from 1850 to
+1880; there was no corresponding increase in Ireland; there was thus a
+margin for reduction, in the greater island, which in the lesser did not
+exist. Again, no comparison can be made between State-settled Irish rents
+and English rents lowered by the voluntary acts of landlords. &#8216;Fair rents&#8217;
+have practically been reduced for all time; the reduction of English rents
+is temporary, and can be at once annulled; this difference makes a
+supposed resemblance a very striking contrast. As to the argument that the
+Courts which have fixed &#8216;fair rents&#8217; have been composed of honourable men,
+and that it is extremely invidious to make charges against them, mere
+leather and prunella may be brushed aside. No one disputes the honour of
+the Land and the Sub-Commissioners, but it does not follow that they have
+not done injustice; no one has disputed the honour of the Commission which
+carried out the Encumbered Estates Act,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> and yet it repeatedly sold
+estates at less than half their value.</p>
+
+<p>The Irish landlords, I repeat, have been iniquitously despoiled; a huge
+confiscation has been made of their property. If the simplest right is to
+be done in this province, their claim to compensation has been rendered
+complete&mdash;apart from the utterances of Mr. Gladstone; should this be
+disregarded, Parliament will have been chargeable with a grave breach of
+faith, and a precedent will have been set from trampling on the just
+rights of property in the Three Kingdoms, which will be dangerous in the
+extreme. I pass on to consider the Irish land on the side of ownership,
+and the administration of the system of so-called &#8216;land purchase.&#8217; Of the
+total of &pound;40,000,000 alone available, some &pound;20,000,000 appear to have been
+expended; some 50,000 tenants have been made owners of their farms,
+without having paid a shilling of their own, that is, rather more than one
+in ten of the whole tenant class in Ireland. The politicians who declared
+against &#8216;dual ownership,&#8217; that bugbear of self-sufficient ignorance, can
+find little consolation in these figures; I shall comment afterwards on
+what this state of things has produced. The Government of Lord Salisbury
+still proposes to seek to accelerate &#8216;land purchase&#8217; of this kind; and
+loud complaints have been made of the law&#8217;s delay in not having made the
+process more speedy. I have had no experience in this matter, and shall,
+therefore, give no opinion on it; but it appears to me that there has been
+some want of care in making advances to these so-styled &#8216;purchasers;&#8217; not
+a few were insolvent when they acquired their farms, and many are now on
+the verge of bankruptcy. This, however, was perhaps inseparable from the
+system that has been pursued; it is only an additional proof of its
+essential vices.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<p class="center"><span class="large">THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (<i>continued</i>)&mdash;PROPOSED REFORM OF THE IRISH LAND SYSTEM</span></p>
+
+<div class="note"><p class="hang">Retrospect of the present Irish land system&mdash;Position of the Irish
+landlords&mdash;Position of the Irish tenant class&mdash;This not as
+advantageous as might be supposed&mdash;The effects of the land code on
+Irish agriculture injurious&mdash;The effects on the general Irish
+community&mdash;Confiscation, violation of contracts, shock given to
+credit, increased alienation of classes, and demoralisation&mdash;The land
+system considered on the side of ownership&mdash;&#8216;Voluntary
+purchase&#8217;&mdash;Mischief of this policy&mdash;It sets up a false standard
+against rent, and creates unjust distinctions between different
+classes of tenants&mdash;The results it has produced already&mdash;An instance
+of the system&mdash;The demand for the compulsory purchase of the Irish
+land caused by &#8216;voluntary purchase&#8217;&mdash;Compulsory purchase has some hold
+on opinion, but is an impossible, and would be a disgraceful and
+ruinous policy&mdash;It would ruin Irish landlords as a
+class&mdash;Instances&mdash;It would ultimately bring Ireland into the state in
+which she was before the Great Famine&mdash;Proposed plan for the reform of
+Irish land tenure&mdash;Questions as to the means of compensating Irish
+landlords, a deeply wronged order of men.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Having traced the attempts that have been made to reform Irish land
+tenure, in the last thirty years, and noticed the administration of the
+new Irish land code, I must, for the sake of clearness, take a short
+retrospect, and consider the Irish land system as it exists at this day; I
+shall review it on the side of occupation first, that is, in the relations
+of landlord and tenant. The agricultural rental of Ireland, we have seen,
+has been, or is being,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> reduced about 40 per cent. since 1881, through the
+operation of laws carried out by tribunals of the State; this proceeding,
+unexampled in civilised lands, has been the means, I have proved, of doing
+gross wrong to the Irish landed gentry. But this, if a signal, is only one
+of the many acts of injustice perpetrated on a cruelly injured body of
+men. The fee simple has been wrested from the Irish landlord, where he has
+been subjected to the legislation of late years; he has been deprived of
+the ownership which had been his birthright. An estate, nominally for
+fifteen years, but really capable of being renewed for ever, has been
+created against him by an unjust law; and this has been vested in his
+former tenants, subject to the mode of land tenure known as the &#8216;Three
+F&#8217;s,&#8217; the chief of these being &#8216;fair,&#8217; that is, State-settled rents, in
+the adjustment of which he has no voice. He may, no doubt, retain
+fragments of his old proprietary rights; parts of his estate may be
+excluded from the provisions of the law; he may be the lord of &#8216;future
+tenants;&#8217; he is left &#8216;royalties,&#8217; such as minerals, mines, and timber; he
+possesses most of his former legal remedies; and should the holders of the
+lands, which had been his own, who have obtained the benefits of the
+&#8216;Three F&#8217;s,&#8217; infringe the statutory conditions imposed on them, they may
+be dispossessed, and he may enter upon their farms again. But,
+notwithstanding exceptions and possibilities like these, the Irish
+landlord has, for practical purposes, been well-nigh assimilated to a
+rent-charger, and his tenants have been nearly converted into owners of
+the soil, an utter revolution in the whole land system, in truth, turning
+it upside down. The status, indeed, of the Irish landed gentry now bears a
+strong resemblance to that of the chief landlords of the eighteenth
+century, who, separating themselves altogether from their lands, let them
+in perpetuity at low rents, and, as a necessary consequence, produced the
+middleman, the pest, as he has rightly been called, of Irish land tenure.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>The enormous and, as I believe, the unjust benefits secured by recent
+legislation to the Irish tenant, are not, however, so complete as they
+appear to be, and are not without disadvantages attendant on them. Tenants
+of holdings, to which the law does not apply, such as tenants of demesnes
+and large pastoral lands, if rightly excluded, nevertheless complain; and
+&#8216;future tenants,&#8217; and petty occupants, who cannot afford to seek &#8216;fair
+rents&#8217; from the Courts, have, from their point of view, solid grounds of
+complaint. The scope of the new land code is, therefore, to some extent,
+restricted; and if the law has actually caused a general reduction of
+rents, it has not secured the &#8216;Three F&#8217;s&#8217; for a considerable body of
+farmers, not improbably a fourth or fifth part of the class as a whole.
+And even the occupiers of the Irish soil, who have obtained the advantages
+of the new mode of tenure, have not obtained these without a certain kind
+of drawback. Completely separated as they now are from their former
+landlords, they cannot expect indulgences from a class which considers
+itself to have been shamefully wronged; the allowances, which, whatever
+may be said, had been made to them, in thousands of cases, have, as a
+rule, been altogether withdrawn; they get no help in making improvements;
+they are usually obliged regularly to pay their &#8216;fair rents;&#8217; above all,
+landlords, of a strict or harsh nature, are sometimes on the look-out to
+see if they do not violate the statutory conditions to which they are
+subject, in order to convert them into &#8216;future tenants,&#8217; outside of the
+protection of the law, and even to reacquire their lands. These
+circumstances are not without adverse effects; though unquestionably they
+are far more than countervailed by the change which has been wrought in
+Irish land tenure, and has given the Irish tenant the benefits already
+described. Yet, even from this point of view, the law does not operate as
+unreservedly in his favour as might be supposed. He has his &#8216;fair rent,&#8217;
+probably much too low;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> his &#8216;fixity of tenure,&#8217; a perpetuity in all but
+name; his right to &#8216;free sale,&#8217; sometimes worth thousands of pounds. But,
+as a rule, he can only gain these advantages at the cost of a lawsuit
+recurring at short intervals of time, with the vexation and mischief this
+brings with it, a lawsuit, too, of which the results may be more or less
+doubtful. If, too, he is a saving and thrifty man he will hardly be able
+to acquire lands for himself, as, in consequence of the right of &#8216;free
+sale,&#8217; the tenant right of these will have become immensely high; he will
+be confined, in most instances, to the farm he holds. On the other hand,
+if he be dishonest or imprudent, he will be tempted to run out and even to
+injure his land, in order to effect a reduction of rent, or to sublet or
+mortgage it should an opportunity be found.</p>
+
+<p>The new Irish land code has thus had this special feature: it has done
+infinite harm to the despoiled landlord, but the tenant has not gained the
+expected benefits. Let us now see what effect it has had on the great
+industry on which the Irish landed classes depend, the main source of the
+wealth of their country. Unquestionably, as I have remarked, over and over
+again, the tenant in Ireland makes, for the most part, the plant of his
+farm a necessary incident of the small-farm system; but the Irish landed
+gentry, in the last half century, have done a great deal in the work of
+improvement. Whatever interested calumny may falsely assert, they have
+expended millions, as unerring statistics show, in planting, enclosure,
+and, especially, in arterial drainage, this last beyond the reach of the
+common peasant; they have, in thousands of instances, made the breeds of
+stock better; they have made large allowances as regards farm buildings.
+All this is now a thing of the past; the sometime landowner, in a real
+sense, has been divorced from his former estate; law has prohibited him
+from doing anything for it; his only interest is to collect the
+rent-charge called, in mockery, &#8216;fair rent.&#8217; On the other hand, tenants in
+Ireland have, in a great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> many cases&mdash;I have briefly glanced at the
+conclusive evidence&mdash;positively wasted or neglected their holdings, for
+the express purpose of working rent down; this shameful expedient has been
+hardly checked; the deterioration of a large area of land has been thus
+accomplished. And, at the same time, as &#8216;fair rent&#8217; is much lower than the
+rent of the market, a considerable minority of this class have sublet or
+mortgaged their lands, in order to get advances of which they stand in
+need; this, no doubt, is a violation of the law; but it is a violation
+difficult to prove, and they run the risk. In this way, as I have shown,
+in a preceding chapter, the husbandry of Ireland has declined of late
+years; woodland has been cut down recklessly to a great extent; main
+drainage has been largely neglected, a ruinous thing in a wet climate; in
+thousands of cases the farming of tenants at &#8216;fair rents&#8217; is wretched. The
+face of the country reveals these facts: Ireland is worse cultivated than
+it was twenty years ago; indeed, the best farming, in the island, by many
+degrees, is that conducted by a small number of men of substance, who
+still hold on the footing of free contract, having settled with their
+landlords, and taken out leases, a significant commentary on Irish
+legislation since 1881.</p>
+
+<p>This subject, however, must be considered from a broader point of view,
+and with reference to the community of Ireland, as a whole. A great
+confiscation, I have said, has been wrought in the Irish land; the immense
+fall in the value of the landlord&#8217;s estate, and the immense rise in the
+value of the tenant right, prove that property belonging to one class has
+been transferred, wholesale, by law, to another, a result never
+contemplated by responsible statesmen. And confiscation has produced its
+inevitable effects; free dealing in land has been prevented; except to his
+former tenants an Irish country gentleman cannot sell what remains to him
+of his former estate, and that through the system of &#8216;land purchase;&#8217;
+capital shuns the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> Irish soil as if it were a quicksand; trustees and
+mortgagees will not invest in it; in a word, as respects the class which
+had been its owners, the Irish land has been bound in a kind of pernicious
+mortmain. It is unnecessary to dwell on the resulting evils; one of the
+sources of the wealth of Ireland has been made barren; a paralysis has
+fallen on a member of Irish industry; what is, perhaps, even worse, a
+sense of insecurity, of instability, of fear of unknown change, so widely
+prevails in Irish landed relations, that they have become completely
+unsettled, and are a mere chaos. And as vicious legislation has cut the
+old landlord off from his estate, has assimilated him to the chief lord of
+the eighteenth century, and is evolving, by degrees, the middleman, so the
+effects of confiscation, by keeping land out of commerce, have unnaturally
+limited and restricted its nominal ownership; in fact, many of the
+features of the detestable penal laws of Ireland are reappearing in the
+Irish land system, and are being reproduced by the modern Irish land code.
+Another mischievous effect of this code, in another direction, requires
+attention. The value of tenant right, we have seen, has enormously
+increased; the sums paid by incoming to outgoing tenants, on the transfer
+of farms, have, accordingly, become enormous; these purchasers, therefore,
+are being subjected to heavy outlays, practically in the nature of
+rack-rents, which hamper their industry, starve their capital, and most
+injuriously affect good husbandry. One class of the community is thus
+wronged for the behoof of another; and agriculture must, more or less,
+suffer.</p>
+
+<p>Not the least, however, of the manifold evils caused by this legislation
+have to be yet noticed. The ancient divisions of race and faith in the
+Irish land system still continue; what was most harsh and oppressive in
+them has been effaced; but they have become wider and more marked in the
+last twenty years; and this is largely to be ascribed to the present land
+code. A mode of land<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> tenure, which produces harassing litigation at short
+intervals of time, and makes landed relations cockpits for legal
+conflicts, necessarily sets the landed classes against each other; it has
+aggravated the old differences deep-rooted in the Irish soil. The
+Protestant gentleman and the Catholic peasant are more estranged from each
+other, in the southern provinces, than they have been, I believe, within
+living memory; the same remark, too, applies to Presbyterian Ulster, where
+the gentry belong, for the most part, to the late Established Church, and
+the tenant classes are of the faith of John Knox; the lines of distinction
+between these orders of men have deepened; and this alienation, concurring
+with another cause, has contributed to the cry for the confiscation of the
+Irish land, which is now being very generally raised, and to which I shall
+refer afterwards. Another mischief of this legislation, at which I have
+already glanced, is the widespread demoralisation it has caused, from the
+nature of the case. The litigation in the Courts where &#8216;fair rents&#8217; are
+being fixed, is often a miserable spectacle of hard and mendacious
+swearing productive of the worst effects on the human character. Peasants,
+as a rule, do not scruple to pledge their oaths that their rents ought to
+be at most a fourth of the rents they had paid for perhaps half a century;
+the witnesses they call as valuers usually repeat these statements. The
+claims, too, for exemption from rent, on account of improvements, are
+often ridiculous, often shameful; I have seen sums paid for manures twenty
+years old, gravely put forward as creating a claim for exemption; and the
+subject of the deterioration of farms is another fruitful source of
+falsehood. It is hardly necessary to comment on the results, as regards
+self-respect and the moral sense of men, which must follow proceedings of
+this kind, carried on, over whole counties, in thousands of cases; they
+are, inevitably, in a very high degree, unfortunate; but, when law
+encourages dishonesty, they were to be only expected.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>Such have been the fruits of the new Irish land code, on the side of the
+occupation of the Irish land. Legislation, essentially faulty and unwise,
+in conflict with economic science and the facts of the case, has taken
+from the Irish landlords their chief proprietary rights, and forcibly
+transferred these to their tenants; it has not conferred the benefits it
+intended on an unfairly favoured class; it has wrought a revolution in the
+Irish land system, in contravention to plain justice, and given it an
+unnatural and evil aspect; it has caused iniquitous confiscation on a vast
+scale and demoralisation profound and widespread, with the far-reaching
+inherent mischiefs; and bad administration has made bad laws worse.
+Political economy, spite of Mr. Gladstone, has not fled from this world at
+his bidding; she looks on, so to speak, at the ruins in Ireland produced
+by the violation of her most certain principles; I will add, she affirms
+the claim to compensation of the Irish landlord, if the simplest equity is
+not to be set at nought. As to the general situation evolved by the
+present Irish land code, I may refer to these pregnant words of Mr. Lecky:
+&#8216;It cannot be denied that this legislation has redressed some hard cases
+and benefited a large number of tenants; and as few men look beyond
+immediate consequences, or rightly estimate those which are indirect and
+remote, this fact is accepted by many as its justification. For my own
+part, I believe that it will one day be found that the evils resulting
+from this policy have greatly outweighed its benefits, and that they will
+fall far more heavily on another class than on the small class which was
+directly injured. In a poor country, where increased capital, improved
+credit, and secure industry are the greatest needs, it has shaken to the
+very basis the idea of the sanctity and obligation of contract; made it
+almost impossible to borrow any considerable sum on Irish land;
+effectually stopped the influx of English gold; paralysed or prevented
+nearly all industrial undertakings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> stretching into a distant future. It
+has reacted powerfully upon trade, and thus contributed to impoverish the
+Irish towns, while it has withdrawn the whole rental of Ireland from the
+improvement of the soil, as the landlord can have no further inducement or
+obligation to spend money on his estate. In combination, also, with the
+Home Rule movement, it has driven much capital out of the land.&#8217;<a name='fna_143' id='fna_143' href='#f_143'><small>[143]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>I pass on to the legislation of late years, with respect to the Irish
+land, on the side of ownership. I have briefly described what that
+legislation is: a Conservative Ministry, impressed with the wrong idea
+that Mr. Gladstone had &#8216;created dual ownership,&#8217; by the ill-conceived
+measure of 1881, resolved to abolish this evil thing if they could, though
+it is the natural mould of Irish land tenure; and Parliament has allotted
+&pound;40,000,000 to attain this object, through the operation of what is
+falsely called &#8216;land purchase.&#8217; The mode of proceeding has been explained:
+an Irish landlord, who desires to sell his estate to his tenants, can
+obtain an advance for this purpose from the State, through the agency of
+the Land Commission; the tenants are then made owners of their farms,
+without contributing any moneys of their own, and hold at terminable
+annuities much lower than even &#8216;fair rents.&#8217; The transaction, therefore,
+we have seen, is, in no sense, a purchase; it is a gift, in the nature of
+a bribe; it is completely different from the policy of John Bright and the
+sales of land made to tenants before 1885, in which these men paid part of
+the price at least, the only real security for thrift and honesty. Of the
+&pound;40,000,000, nearly half, I have said, has been spent; and out of the
+486,000 agricultural Irish tenants, some 50,000 have acquired their
+holdings, in fee, under these conditions. The law thus applies to a mere
+fraction of the class; it is idle to assert that this can do much to
+extinguish &#8216;dual ownership&#8217; in all Ireland; the sum required would be many
+times more than that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> which alone has been made available; and the
+process, at the present rate of &#8216;purchases,&#8217; would not be accomplished
+within a century. We may, therefore, pass away from this part of the
+subject; but let us see how &#8216;land purchase,&#8217; effected in this way, bears
+on the position of the Irish landed gentry. The immense majority of this
+order of men still cling to their native country and their homes; they
+hate the idea of parting with the rights they retain in the land, trampled
+down and injured as they have been; this is especially the case with the
+best and most solvent landlords. But as the terminable annuities payable
+on &#8216;land purchase&#8217; are not nearly so high as even very low rents, not to
+speak of the other conditions of this mode of tenure, it follows that
+tenants who have thus been made owners are infinitely better off than
+tenants still subject to rent; one class has great advantages, of which
+the other is deprived; as a necessary consequence an artificial standard
+is set up against rent, which does wrong to the landlord, from the nature
+of the case; gives every tenant on his estate a grievance; and not
+improbably may expose him to a determined refusal to pay any rent
+whatever.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Land purchase,&#8217; therefore&mdash;the name is a mere untruth&mdash;has been a failure
+as regards &#8216;dual ownership;&#8217; and it is establishing against the Irish
+landlord a false measure of rent, analogous to a base coinage, a strange
+achievement of a Conservative Government. Let us next consider what has
+been the working of this economic nostrum, with respect to the class, for
+the benefit of which it was first prescribed, and which has reaped the
+advantages it gives. The tenants, who have been made owners of their
+farms, have, as a rule, discharged their obligations to the State very
+well, though I could point to not a few exceptions; and there have been
+strikes against the payment of the terminable annuities in some instances.
+This may be sufficient for official bureaucrats; it is not sufficient for
+those who know Ireland, and can impartially watch the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> course of events.
+It was fondly expected that &#8216;land purchase,&#8217; that is, bribing tenants in
+Ireland to become owners of their farms, would create a powerful body of
+freeholders loyal to the State; but this has already been seen to be a
+mere delusion. As Parnell predicted would be the case, these &#8216;purchasers&#8217;
+are &#8216;patriotic&#8217; in the highest degree; they fill the ranks of the United
+Irish League, that is, of a conspiracy against our rule in Ireland, and
+are numbered among its most efficient agents; human nature being what it
+actually is, this is precisely what was to be expected. It was confidently
+foretold, again, that these &#8216;purchasers&#8217; would form a thriving class of
+model farmers; and that their lands would be patterns of admirable and
+improved peasant husbandry, but this forecast is being, in a great degree,
+falsified. These men, &#8216;rocked and dandled into their possessions,&#8217; in the
+words of Burke, without a single guarantee for common prudence, and
+especially without an effort of their own, have, in hundreds of instances,
+turned out sorry failures; and it has been the almost universal practice
+of the whole class to cut down every tree that grows on their lands, an
+act of ruinous waste in a rain-drenched climate. Besides, as freehold
+ownership is not an Irish idea&mdash;indeed, is opposed to Irish ideas&mdash;these
+&#8216;purchasers&#8217; have, in many cases, following the example of tenants &#8216;at
+fair rents,&#8217; subdivided, sublet, or mortgaged their holdings; instead of
+remaining owners in a true sense, they are becoming middlemen lording it
+over rack-rented serfs. The agriculture, too, of hundreds of these farms
+is slovenly in the extreme, for bribery does not promote industry; what is
+&#8216;easy got, easy goes&#8217; is a true proverb; and, in addition, a number of
+these men were really insolvent when they were made &#8216;purchasers.&#8217; That
+Ireland will blossom like a rose, under these conditions, is seen even now
+to be a chimera; and there is much reason to believe that many of these
+&#8216;purchasers&#8217; have become the prey of the race of local usurers, a
+consummation that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> might have been predicted. &#8216;I shall sell my estate,&#8217; a
+witty Irishman once remarked, &#8216;but I will keep two loan offices and four
+public-houses; and in two generations my &#8220;purchasing&#8221; tenants will be too
+happy to resell their lands to my grandsons.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>A singular instance of &#8216;land purchase,&#8217; and, indeed, of the working of
+another part of the land code, has come under my notice of late; I can
+answer for the accuracy of what I write; scores of similar cases could be,
+probably, found. In 1852, an industrious Scottish tradesman invested the
+savings of years of his life in buying a chief rent under the Encumbered
+Estates Act; he gave &pound;5000 for a perpetual rent-charge of &pound;192, that is,
+not quite 4 per cent. on his capital. The tenant of the lands subject to
+the rent was a middleman, with an estate of about &pound;3000 a year; he had
+sublet the lands to a tenant in occupation of them, a slovenly,
+ill-conditioned, and indolent farmer. The Land Act of 1887 passed; the
+wealthy middleman, an excellent &#8216;mark&#8217; for the chief rent, who, therefore,
+had been obliged to pay the &pound;192 a year, was empowered by the new law to
+evade his contract, and practically to get rid of his interest; the owner
+of the chief rent, therefore, had only the tenant in occupation to look to
+for the discharge of his claim. This person was succeeded by his son, a
+good-for-nothing and drunken man, who soon became head over ears in debt;
+but he was declared &#8216;a purchaser&#8217; by the Land Commission, and, subject to
+a terminable annuity, was made owner of the lands. But the advance made
+was not more than &pound;2300; the representative of the hardworking Scotchman,
+who had bought property, as secure, at the time, as Consols, was a loser
+of more than half of his capital; he was simply cheated out of &pound;2700,
+through the operation of an iniquitous law; his indignant protests may
+well be conceived. The subsequent history of this so-styled &#8216;purchase&#8217; is
+significant, and not without interest. The worthless owner took possession
+of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> the lands; his first step was to cut down the woodland, until he was
+stopped by a creditor to whom he owed a mortgage. Since that time he has
+become insolvent in all but name, and cannot pay the annuity due to the
+State; the Land Commission has been trying to sell the lands; but the
+attempt has, hitherto, been a failure; the lands have been &#8216;boycotted,&#8217;
+and the market has been closed against a sale. These proceedings do not
+require a word of comment; they strikingly illustrate how the agrarian
+code of Ireland makes havoc of capital, annuls contracts, and confiscates
+property for the behoof of dishonest thriftlessness. Meanwhile the happy
+middleman enjoys his &pound;3000 a year; I dare say he licks his lips as he
+thinks of the Land Act of 1887, which scattered a just liability to the
+winds.</p>
+
+<p>The most remarkable and the worst effect&mdash;with a revolutionary tendency in
+no doubtful sense&mdash;of this mischievous system has, however, to be still
+noticed. About one out of ten of the agricultural tenants of Ireland have
+&#8216;purchased&#8217; their farms in the way described; the fund available for &#8216;land
+purchase&#8217; cannot include more than one in five; and the process is and
+must be slow, owing to the law&#8217;s delay. Legislation, therefore, with a
+singular want of insight, has drawn, and is drawing, an unjust distinction
+between &#8216;purchasing&#8217; and rent-paying tenants; it is dividing them into a
+small favoured class, and a multitude harshly left out in the cold&mdash;fat
+sheep in one fold, lean goats in another; as the inevitable result, the
+rent-paying tenant resents the benefits obtained by &#8216;the purchaser;&#8217; and
+the immense majority of the farmers of Ireland are made discontented with
+their lot, from their point of view not without reason. It is idle to say
+to this great body of men that they have already gained advantages from
+the State, on which they never reckoned thirty years ago, and that they
+have the &#8216;Three F&#8217;s,&#8217; and all that the phrase implies; those who have
+secured much<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> are eager to secure more; the unfair distinction arbitrarily
+made against them is unintelligible and exasperating, man being what he
+is. The policy of &#8216;voluntary purchase,&#8217; as it is called, has, accordingly,
+from the very nature of the case, provoked and called into being the cry
+for the &#8216;compulsory purchase&#8217; of the Irish land, now being heard far and
+wide in Ireland&mdash;that is, for the forcible expropriation of all Irish
+landlords, and for placing all their tenants, in their stead, as owners of
+their estates. This demand has as yet been rejected by statesmen, and is,
+I believe, both hopeless and shameful; but it has, nevertheless, some
+logic on its side; it is a corollary from legislation essentially bad;
+and, backed as it is by a large force of Irish opinion, it cannot be
+ignored or treated with contempt. It is simply extraordinary that many
+Irish landlords have been encouraging, and still encourage, &#8216;voluntary
+purchase,&#8217; on its existing lines, and will not perceive that it leads to
+&#8216;compulsory purchase;&#8217; either from a desire to dispose of parts of their
+estates, or from motives not easy to understand, they are promoting a
+revolution, which, if accomplished, would assure their ruin, as I shall
+conclusively prove afterwards. But the well-informed and most thoughtful
+members of their class are not flies lured into a bottle by a bit of
+sugar; they are alive to all that is involved in what is called &#8216;land
+purchase.&#8217; Many years ago, when Parliament was voting funds for &#8216;voluntary
+purchase,&#8217; on the present system, I indicated what would be the results; I
+only claim credit for some share of common sense: &#8216;Law will have been
+severing the occupiers of the soil by an arbitrary process into a pampered
+caste, marked off from a disfavoured multitude; and, as a necessary
+consequence, the mass of tenants, kept in an inferior position, will be
+filled with discontent&mdash;and from their point of view with perfect
+justice&mdash;when, as the advances from the State run short, their prospects
+of &#8220;land purchase&#8221; shall wane and diminish. An &#8220;ugly rush&#8221; will be made
+throughout the country to force<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> landlords, as a class, to sell, in order
+to get a chance of buying; in Ulster the cry for &#8220;compulsory purchase,&#8221;
+already heard, will swell high and fierce.&#8217;<a name='fna_144' id='fna_144' href='#f_144'><small>[144]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>These, therefore, have been the fruits of the system called &#8216;land
+purchase&#8217; with euphemistic falsehood. &#8216;Compulsory purchase,&#8217; a demand
+caused by an unwise policy, is a question that must be fairly discussed;
+it is nothing to the purpose that it has as yet made little way in
+Parliament. This claim would have been regarded as sheer insanity thirty
+years ago; it was scouted by John Bright as in the highest degree
+mischievous, though John Bright was the first statesman who proposed
+making tenants in Ireland owners of their farms, but through a real, not a
+sham, mode of purchase. The compulsory purchase of the rented land of
+Ireland is a policy that has advocates even in England and Scotland; and
+it is lamentable to observe how British opinion seems to take little heed
+how a measure of this kind would affect the position of the Irish
+landlord, another of the many instances of its habitual disregard of the
+plainest rights of property in land in Ireland. A set of doctrinaires,
+ignorant of Irish nature and of the Irish land, imagine that &#8216;the creation
+of a peasant proprietary,&#8217; in all parts of Ireland, as the cant phrase is,
+would, in any case, make the Union secure, and would promote tranquillity,
+industry, and content. Some politicians still cherish the fond belief,
+that thrusting Irish tenants, wholesale, into the place of their
+landlords, by an act of violence without a parallel, would make Irish
+government and administration more easy; and shut their eyes to the nature
+of this policy. English and Scottish capitalists, who have made advances
+on Irish estates, see in compulsory purchase the best probable means of
+realising<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> securities now in danger; a few great absentee landlords, eager
+to part with their possessions in Ireland, at almost any price, are
+possibly not opposed to this scheme; and so maybe a few bankrupt Irish
+landlords, hoping to get a trifle out of a general shipwreck. The demand,
+however, for compulsory purchase has its only real strength in Ireland;
+and unquestionably it is widespread and far-reaching. The conspiracy
+against British rule in Ireland, which has made the annihilation of Irish
+&#8216;landlordism&#8217; one of its main objects, calls for compulsory purchase, as a
+matter of course; it finds no difficulty in banding together the peasantry
+of the southern provinces in support of a cry which means for this class
+an improvement in their lot, and appeals to deep-rooted sentiments of
+human nature. The Irish Catholic priesthood, too, back the movement to a
+man, and so do the local Nationalist boards; for obvious reasons, both
+these orders of men seek to drive the Irish landed gentry from their
+homes, and to replace them by dependents in sympathy with them. The demand
+has also extended to Ulster, chiefly on account of the harsh distinction
+drawn between &#8216;purchasing&#8217; and &#8216;non-purchasing&#8217; tenants; it is economic
+rather than social or political; but the cry for compulsory purchase is
+perhaps loudest in parts of the northern province. Its principal champion,
+at present, is an enthusiast, sincere, indeed, if without judgment and
+insight; but he is sustained by bodies of farmers formidable in numbers at
+least.</p>
+
+<p>The sharp and, as I think, the unfair distinction drawn by the present law
+between tenant &#8216;purchasers&#8217; and tenants still subject to the payment of
+rent, has created, it cannot be said too often, the demand for the
+compulsory purchase of the Irish land, and for this Lord Salisbury&#8217;s
+Government is largely responsible. But because an Irish peasant, on one
+side of a fence, cannot obtain the benefits of land tenure, which his
+neighbour, on the other side,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> has obtained, and may even have a right to
+complain, it does not follow that compulsory purchase is a possible, or
+aught but a disgraceful policy; other interests and considerations must be
+taken into account. Let us first see how compulsory purchase would affect
+the financial position of the Three Kingdoms. Great as the prosperity of
+the Empire is, the strain on its resources is immense; the expenditure of
+the State at home is vast, and on the increase; the war in South Africa,
+and the settlement of that huge region, will cost unknown millions; the
+reform of our military and even of our naval system, necessary to our
+safety, will be a weighty burden for years; every Chancellor of the
+Exchequer has declared that fiscal economy, as far as possible, is his
+first duty. But what does the compulsory purchase of the Irish land
+involve, and what, confessedly, are its essential conditions? Mr.
+Gladstone, I have said, asserted, long ago, that the value of the
+agricultural area of Ireland was &pound;300,000,000; this estimate, I believe,
+is too high; but, in the opinion of competent judges, it cannot be deemed
+less than &pound;150,000,000. But the forcible expropriation of the Irish landed
+gentry on every principle of civilised law, as, indeed, Sir Michael Hicks
+Beach has already insisted, would imply giving them a large additional
+bonus; this probably would not be less than &pound;50,000,000; the sum,
+therefore, required for compulsory purchase, would, it may be assumed, be
+not less than &pound;200,000,000. Now, can any one imagine that the general
+taxpayer, in the financial situation in which we are, and shall be for
+years, will make himself liable for this colossal charge, equal to the
+ransom Germany extorted from France, in order to bribe Irish peasants into
+the ownership of their farms, and to effect an agrarian revolution, in
+which he has no interest? I should like to see the Minister who would go
+to the country on such an insane policy, and who would call on the hardly
+taxed millions of England,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> Scotland, and Ireland, to burn huge holes in
+their pockets for such an object, for simply robbing Peter to pay Paul,
+and that without a pretence of right, or any conceivable good. And what
+security would the Irish land afford for the payment of this enormous
+impost? The terminable annuities due from the &#8216;purchasing&#8217; tenants would,
+it has pleasantly been said, be a sufficient guarantee; but men of common
+sense are not to be caught by chaff; the idea is a vain and worthless
+delusion. The &#8216;No Rent Manifesto&#8217; and the &#8216;Plan of Campaign&#8217; were
+movements of Irish peasants, so to speak, of yesterday; what if another
+Parnell were to arise and to issue a ukase that &#8216;a foreign and alien
+Government had no right to an unjust tribute;&#8217; and how could this be
+collected by a Department of an absentee State?</p>
+
+<p>The general taxpayer, therefore, who, thirteen years ago, grumbled at a
+demand of &pound;5,000,000 only, will assuredly not fling &pound;200,000,000, or half
+that sum, into the Serbonian bog of the Irish land. It is hardly necessary
+to dwell on so small a fact, &#8216;that compulsory purchase would reduce the
+income tax of Ireland about one-half, for nine-tenths of the tenant
+&#8216;purchasers&#8217; would be below its level;&#8217; but even this cannot be left out of
+sight. Conservative statesmen, it should be added, are especially bound to
+reject this scheme; in 1886 they denounced, in emphatic language, Mr.
+Gladstone&#8217;s far less dangerous plan of making the State liable for
+&pound;50,000,000, to buy out Irish landlords; flagrant inconsistency in
+politics should be eschewed. The probably fixed purpose of the general
+taxpayer not to mulct himself heavily to fling the Irish soil to a mass of
+peasants, is doubtless, and I say it with regret, the best security
+against the destruction of the Irish landlords; this despoiled and
+maltreated body of men just now fill the place in Irish affairs of the
+&#8216;Injured Lady&#8217; of Swift&#8217;s satire, gravely told by her lover across the
+Channel that &#8216;I had cost him ten times more than I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> was worth to maintain
+me, and that it had been much better for him if I had been damned, or
+burnt, or thrown to the bottom of the sea.&#8217;<a name='fna_145' id='fna_145' href='#f_145'><small>[145]</small></a> Nevertheless, I have
+faith in right-minded Englishmen, however prejudiced or ill-informed about
+an unpopular class, if plain facts and figures are set before them; let us
+see how it would fare with the Irish landlord were he forcibly
+expropriated under compulsory purchase. I will take the case of an Irish
+country gentleman, who, in the period between 1868 and 1878, had an income
+from his estate of &pound;1500 a year, subject to a family charge of &pound;10,000 at
+4 per cent., that is, had a net annual income of &pound;1100. Owing to the
+depression of agriculture since 1879, his rents would have naturally
+fallen about &pound;300 a year; but let us suppose that, through the operation
+of the new Irish land code, they have been cut down to &#8216;fair rents&#8217; of
+&pound;900 a year only. His annual income, therefore, would be &pound;900 less by
+&pound;400, that is, he would still have &pound;500 a year he could call his own; how
+would it be with him were he forcibly sold out? Admit that his estate
+would fetch eighteen years&#8217; purchase&mdash;the present average rate is
+seventeen&mdash;that is, would realise &pound;16,200; deducting, say, &pound;200 for law
+costs, this would be a net residue of &pound;16,000. But the family charge would
+absorb &pound;10,000; the surplus would be &pound;6000 only, producing, let us
+calculate, &pound;4 per cent.; this ruined man, therefore, who, little more than
+twenty years ago, possessed an income of &pound;1100 a year, would be left &pound;240
+at the very utmost. I have taken care to understate the case; I challenge
+attention to my figures; I ask honest Englishmen would not this be sheer
+robbery, accomplished, to the disgrace of the State, in its name?</p>
+
+<p>It has been urged, however&mdash;and to those who know the facts, the statement
+is cruel and shameful mockery&mdash;that the Irish landlord would only lose his
+rented lands, and that &#8216;he could live happily on the demesne land, which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
+he would still retain.&#8217; This would be simply impossible in the case of
+nineteen-twentieths of the class; they would not have the means to keep
+their demesnes up; they would be compelled to part with them at almost any
+price; and the few, who would have the means, would, all but certainly,
+with their beggared fellows, leave a country in which they had been foully
+betrayed. It is notorious, indeed, that Irish Nationalist leaders, knowing
+what compulsory purchase means, have marked down the demesnes of the Irish
+landed gentry as their prey; associates of American Fenians and of the
+Clan na Gael are to revel in the mansions of the Geraldines, the Butlers,
+the O&#8217;Connors, the O&#8217;Neills, as Jacobins revelled in the mansions of the
+La Tremouilles and the De Noailles. But man does not live by bread alone;
+the material ruin of the Irish landlord would be bad enough; but the moral
+consequences of his expropriation must not be left out of sight. Few of
+the purchasers under the Encumbered Estates Acts care probably much about
+the lands they have bought; the same remark probably applies to most Irish
+absentees. But an immense majority of the Irish landed gentry are deeply
+attached to their hearths and their homes; they are bound to their lands
+by innumerable ties; they have been brought up with the sentiments which
+property in land creates; in the pathetic words of an old chronicler,
+&#8216;They do not wish to pray in foreign churches, or to lie in foreign
+graves;&#8217; their hope has been to live and die amidst their ancestral
+surroundings. The State has, in a special manner, encouraged this belief;
+it rooted the Irish landlord in the soil to be its supporter; is it to
+expel him from the position it has made for him, without a thought of the
+shock to his best feelings this must produce? Would not such an act be
+dishonourable, nay, infamous? Let us hear what the deepest of our
+political thinkers, Burke, has written upon a somewhat parallel case:
+&#8216;When men are encouraged to go into a certain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> mode of life by the
+existing laws, and protected in that mode as in a lawful occupation&mdash;when
+they have accommodated all their ideas, and all their habits to it, ... I
+am sure it is unjust in legislature, by an arbitrary act, to offer a
+sudden violence to their minds and their feelings; forcibly to degrade
+them from their state and condition, and to stigmatise with shame and
+infamy that character and those customs, which before had been made the
+measure of their happiness and honour. If to this be added an expulsion
+from their habitations, and a confiscation of all their goods, I am not
+sagacious enough to discover how this despotick sport, made of the
+feelings, consciences, prejudices, and properties of men, can be
+discriminated from the rankest tyranny.&#8217;<a name='fna_146' id='fna_146' href='#f_146'><small>[146]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>I have referred to an instance, within my knowledge, of the operation of
+the new Irish land code, in the case of a middleman, his under-tenant, and
+a despoiled owner of a rent. I now refer to an instance, also within my
+knowledge, of what compulsory purchase would do in the case of an Irish
+landlord. This person is a scion of one of the princely Irish-Milesian
+houses; his forefathers were lords of a tract extending from the Boyne to
+the Shannon. They belonged to one of the famous &#8216;five bloods of Ireland,&#8217;
+acknowledged to be half-royal by Henry of Anjou; they intermarried with
+the great Norman-Irish <i>noblesse</i>; one of their matronage was half-sister
+of Surrey&#8217;s fair Geraldine; the ruins of the abbeys they founded are still
+to be seen. Their domains were torn from them in the reign of Mary Tudor;
+but they fought stubbornly with their tribe in the great Desmond war; they
+retained, though proscribed, the rank of princes, until the close of the
+sixteenth century; leaders of the house then carried their swords into
+foreign armies, and have given a field marshal to Austria and grandees to
+Spain. The direct line of the chiefs, however, remained in Ireland; it
+vegetated in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> obscurity until the Irish rising of 1689-90; one of its
+members then appeared in the Parliament of James II. in Dublin, and
+perished, at the head of his regiment, it is said, at Aughrim. The
+fortunes of his descendants are not without interest; one is believed to
+have been a companion-in-arms of Villars at Malplaquet and D&eacute;nain; two of
+his remote offspring, the tradition exists, perished in the ranks of
+Napoleon&#8217;s armies. But the heir of the family bowed under the yoke of the
+Irish penal laws, and became a Protestant, at least in name; his near
+kindred gave Ireland Anthony Malone, one of the most illustrious Irishmen
+of the eighteenth century, and gave England the best commentator on her
+most immortal poet. One of his representatives, the person of whom I
+write, still possesses a fragment of the immense possessions his fathers
+ruled; of more than thirty of their castles he has the wreck of one; a
+scroll on the roof of his house bears the touching legend that he has
+sprung from the loins of the old Milesian princes. He is not wholly
+unknown as an Irish landlord of this day; curiously, too, his rental has
+been hardly reduced by the visitations of the Land and the
+Sub-Commissions. Is this scion of the best and the most ancient <i>noblesse</i>
+of Ireland to be banished in his old age from his home, and to be replaced
+in it by ornaments of the Land, the National, and the United Irish
+Leagues, for this would be one result of compulsory purchase?</p>
+
+<p>Let us imagine, however, that, owing to the malign influence which,
+Spenser said, attends England in Irish affairs, the Irish landed gentry
+were removed from the land, and their former tenants were put in their
+place as owners. What would be the consequences, economic, social,
+political, of this sudden agrarian revolution in one of the Three
+Kingdoms? The distribution of the Irish soil between the classes which
+would possess it, would be unfavourable, in the highest degree, to the
+establishment of a &#8216;peasant proprietary,&#8217; the common name in use on this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+subject. Of the 486,000 tenant farmers in Ireland, some 132,000 hold
+patches of from less than one to five acres in extent; are these to be
+stereotyped as real land owners? More than 90,000 occupy from fifty to
+five hundred acres and upwards; these include the great graziers of the
+rich tracts of pasturage; do these supply elements of a &#8216;peasant
+proprietary&#8217; in any rational sense? The only class which even on
+plausible, <i>a priori</i> grounds could be made occupying owners of the land
+would contain much less than 300,000 families; and probably it occupies
+less than two-thirds of the island as a whole. Are all these bodies of men
+to be lumped, so to speak, together, and universally to receive the
+ownership of the soil; would not compulsory purchase, even on these
+conditions, be the sheerest folly? Furthermore, the configuration of
+Ireland and her climate make it next to impossible that a &#8216;peasant
+proprietary&#8217; could generally thrive within her borders; Nature herself
+forbids an attempt to carry out, on a large scale, a settlement of the
+kind. The central area of the island is a low watershed of wide extent,
+from which a succession of streams descends through vast tracts of morass
+and bog; in other parts of the country there are large and deep rivers,
+curving as they approach the sea, and flowing through mountain spaces; the
+lands they traverse are swampy, and require main drainage; a large part of
+Ireland is composed of wild hill ranges only fit for the rearing of young
+and coarse breeds of cattle; she possesses a fine area of the best
+pasturage, confined, however, to a few counties; her true agricultural
+area is comparatively small. Her climate, moreover, is wet to a proverb;
+torrents of rain from the Atlantic fall on her plains for months; above
+all, her inland towns are far from each other, and petty; scarcely one is
+peopled by more than 10,000 souls. Any well-informed and right-judging
+person who knows the conditions under which a &#8216;peasant proprietary&#8217; can
+alone flourish, must know that, from the nature of the case, it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> would be
+a failure, in the circumstances in which it would be necessarily placed,
+were it forcibly established in every part of Ireland. Ireland has little
+in common with Belgium, with Northern Italy, with France; this settlement
+of confiscation would go the way of the Englishry of the Middle Ages and
+the Cromwellian colonists.</p>
+
+<p>The most conclusive argument against compulsory purchase has,
+nevertheless, to be yet put forward. The state of things &#8216;voluntary
+purchase&#8217; is evolving would assuredly be aggravated a hundred-fold were
+every tenant in Ireland made the owner of his farm by a revolutionary act
+on the part of the State. It is significant, in the highest degree, that
+from the time of the &#8216;New Departure&#8217; to this hour, the conspiracy against
+our rule in Ireland has clamoured for the expropriation of the Irish
+landed gentry by force, and for the conversion of their tenants into
+possessors of these estates; far better informed than British statesmen,
+it has rightly calculated that this violent change would increase the
+&#8216;Nationalist&#8217; sympathies of the Irish peasant; and this opinion is being
+confirmed, to a great extent, by the results of &#8216;voluntary purchase&#8217; being
+now developed. The coarse materialist view that bribery will make a class
+law-abiding and loyal, is opposed to human nature and fact; bribery will
+not efface ideas, feelings, and tendencies, deep-rooted in history and
+ancient tradition; above all, if it is a concession to agitation and a
+rebellious movement, it will only quicken the animosity to the State and
+the greed of the favoured class. Parnell, I have said, had his mind made
+up on this subject; he always insisted that the Irish tenant, wherever his
+holding had been made his own, would be &#8216;more true to the cause than
+ever;&#8217; it is curious that the confident prediction of a most able man
+appears to have been persistently ignored. For the rest, the mischief
+&#8216;voluntary purchase&#8217; is already doing would be enormously aggravated by
+the effects of compulsory purchase. The Irish tenant farmers, made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> owners
+of the land everywhere, would, like the present &#8216;purchasers,&#8217; cut down
+woodland wholesale; the country would be disafforested over an immense
+area; the consequences to agriculture would be as bad as possible.
+Arterial and main drainage too would, as a rule, be neglected; but these
+would, comparatively, be trifling results; the compulsory purchaser would
+deal with the land as their &#8216;voluntary&#8217; fellows are now largely dealing,
+but, in all probability, more generally, and in much a greater proportion.
+Holding as they would nine-tenths of the Irish soil at terminable
+annuities much lower than any rent, they would inevitably subdivide,
+sublet, and mortgage their farms in tens of thousands of cases; they would
+become middlemen, over whole counties, the harsh oppressors of a multitude
+ground down by rack-rents; the worst kind of &#8216;landlordism&#8217; would be
+reproduced in the worst aspect. The tendency of events is even now
+confirming what I wrote a long time ago on this subject: &#8216;Freehold
+ownership, therefore, would disappear more or less quickly over extensive
+tracts, the &#8220;yeomen&#8221; would become a diminishing quantity, and these would
+be replaced by a new class of landlords with tenants at competition rents,
+that is, determined by the land hunger of the Celt. The transformation
+would inevitably go on, for its causes would operate with intense force;
+and before many years probably two-thirds of Ireland would have become a
+land of mere peasant landlords placed over a mass of rack-rented
+tenants.&#8217;<a name='fna_147' id='fna_147' href='#f_147'><small>[147]</small></a> The creation of a universal &#8216;peasant proprietary,&#8217; by
+force, would, in fact, bring the Irish land system back by degrees into
+the state in which it was before the Great Famine, when millions of
+serfdom squatted on the soil, disorganising agriculture and preventing
+social progress.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>These considerations, however, by no means exhaust the case against the
+compulsory purchase of the rented land of Ireland. Irish landlords have
+been decried, for an evil purpose, during many years; their position is
+difficult and open to attack; but if they are an unpopular class, they
+have been a civilising influence in Ireland of real value, the most
+civilising influence, perhaps, in her three southern provinces. Their
+annihilation, despoiled and impoverished as they are, would still withdraw
+a large fund from Irish rural labour; and it would be most injurious to
+agriculture in many ways, especially as regards main and arterial
+drainage, an absolute necessity for the Irish soil, and scarcely possible
+except under a system of large estates. Their extinction, too, Englishmen
+ought not to forget, would deprive the State of one of its mainstays in
+Ireland; the idea to the contrary growing up is a mere delusion; it was
+not for nothing that Parnell and Davitt described this order of men as
+&#8216;the British garrison&#8217; and insisted that were it once out of the fortress
+the power of England in Ireland would certainly perish. The conversion of
+Irish farmers universally into landowners would also have a ruinous effect
+on many Irish industries. It would do infinite harm to many branches of
+commerce, especially to trades of the higher type; it would be disastrous
+to such towns as Dublin and Belfast, already beginning to protest against
+it; and, whatever may be said, the prospect of it is dreaded by
+agricultural Irish labourers as a class, which has always been ill-treated
+by their masters, the farmers, though, owing to the influence of priests
+and demagogues, they are unwilling to express the sentiments they really
+feel. Compulsory purchase, in fact, is by no means so generally asked for
+in Ireland as is supposed; her representation demands it by a great
+majority of votes; but this representation, as I have pointed out before,
+is not a true index of Irish opinion. Another consideration, too, should
+be taken into account<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> in coming to a reasonable conclusion on this
+subject. The land system of England and Scotland, from a variety of causes
+sufficiently known, is essentially different from that of Ireland;
+politically, socially, economically, it has little in common with it. But
+were Parliament to declare that the whole tenant class of Ireland were to
+be transformed into fee simple owners, subject only to renders, much less
+than true rents, and payable for a short space of time, I much doubt if
+English and Scottish tenants would acquiesce, and would not agitate for
+legislation of a similar kind, especially as British agriculture is still
+heavily depressed. Leaseholders of large houses in towns, for long terms
+of years, at ground rents, and a whole class of builders, assuredly would
+join in such a demand; the contagion of revolution and socialism is always
+perilous. English and Scottish landlords have usually played the part of
+the Jew to the Samaritan as regards their Irish fellows; but &#8216;proximus
+ardet Ucalegon&#8217; might be borne in mind.<a name='fna_148' id='fna_148' href='#f_148'><small>[148]</small></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257 &amp; 258]</a></span>The Irish land system, therefore, from every point of view, is simply in a
+deplorable state; it is an economic and social chaos, pregnant with
+mischiefs and dangers of many kinds. Confiscation has wrought its work on
+the Irish landlord; has shaken the structure of Irish society; and has
+produced its inevitable results in banishing capital from the land, and in
+dealing a weighty blow to Irish credit. The legislation of 1881, and of
+subsequent years, has conferred immense advantages on the tenant class in
+Ireland; but these have fallen short of what might be supposed; this class
+declares itself to be dissatisfied with its lot; it is clamouring for the
+wholesale transfer to itself of the rented lands of Ireland, through what
+is known as compulsory purchase, that is, corruption and spoliation
+combined in an act of the State. And these efforts of legislation,
+essentially unwise, in direct conflict with fact and economic science, a
+mere makeshift to stave off agitation and trouble, are, in all
+probability, by no means the worst. Demoralisation has spread throughout
+Irish landed relations, affecting them, unfortunately, in many ways;
+divisions of class have been made worse, as well as the old divisions of
+race and faith; respect for contracts and obligations has been destroyed;
+dishonesty and thriftlessness have been favoured, and industry and honesty
+not encouraged; an evil spirit of discontent and desire for change is
+abroad; agriculture is plainly on the decline; there is nothing secure or
+settled in the land. Vicious as the Irish land system unquestionably was
+before Mr. Gladstone first took it in hand, I believe that, having regard
+to the general interests of the State, it is still more vicious at the
+present time; it has been transformed, but, on the whole, transformed for
+the worse. As I wrote before, when commenting on the position of affairs
+in Ireland, before the Land Act of 1870, a revolution only could have
+removed the deep-rooted ills in all that related to the land; a revolution
+alone could remove them now. But in the one instance, as in the other, the
+evil caused by a revolution would be infinitely greater than the good; a
+new agrarian<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> revolution in Ireland would be a curse to her; it is better,
+as Burke has remarked, to try to repair even ruins than to blot out every
+trace of the edifice. Still, taking it as we find it, can nothing be done
+to amend, in some measure, at least, the existing land system? Much of it,
+I admit, must be left untouched; the principle of settling rent, through
+the agency of the State, false as it is, must continue to work; the
+principle of so-called &#8216;land purchase&#8217; must, within reasonable limits, be
+still given free scope. But something in the nature of reform is, I think,
+possible; the discussion of the subject may be of use; I contribute my
+mite to it, if with unfeigned diffidence.</p>
+
+<p>In order to find out the truth, and thoroughly to clear the ground, a
+Commission, I suggest, ought to be appointed, as important as the Devon
+Commission of nearly sixty years ago; it should investigate the Irish Land
+Question in all its branches. Its President should be a great English
+nobleman&mdash;the nation would have confidence in the Duke of Bedford, a
+princely and most liberal English landlord; but the judicial element
+should be strong in it; English and Irish judges should be among its
+members; it should include trained agricultural experts: it should have
+representatives of Irish landlords and tenants. It should examine the
+Irish land system as this existed before 1870; should review the whole
+series of Irish Land Acts, from 1870 to the present time, and inquire into
+their results and tendencies; should carefully consider the operation of
+the tribunals selected to carry out the new Irish land code, especially as
+regards the fixing of &#8216;fair rents,&#8217; and that not with respect to their
+procedure only, an unjust limit imposed on the Fry Commission, but with
+respect to the principles that have been adopted and the methods pursued;
+it should deal exhaustively with the subject of so-called &#8216;land purchase,&#8217;
+and see whether it has not directly led to the demand for compulsory
+purchase; it should take evidence as to &#8216;peasant proprietary&#8217; and its
+creation; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> it should make a complete and searching report, with a view
+to the legislation it might recommend. And if I am not altogether
+mistaken, such a Commission would state, in emphatic language, that the
+present Irish land code was ill designed, even if it cannot be now much
+changed; that its administration has been attended with grave errors; that
+cruel wrong has been done to Irish landlords, while Irish tenants have not
+obtained what was hoped for; that the economic and social results have
+been deplorable; that if &#8216;land purchase&#8217; cannot be stopped, it is a bad
+expedient on its present lines, and that the cry for compulsory purchase
+has been its evident effect; and that extensive, still more universal
+peasant ownership, is an impossible and would be a pernicious policy.
+Finally, if I am not much mistaken again, such a Commission would report
+that a reform of the Irish land system, if very difficult, should be
+attempted; and that, in its main scope and operation at least, it should
+be carried out on the side of land tenure, that is, in the relations of
+landlord and tenant, as has been the opinion of every thinker from Burke
+onwards, who has not been swayed by the exigencies of agitation, or of
+party politics.</p>
+
+<p>I proceed briefly to put my scheme forward, assuming that I have made a
+reasonably correct forecast. I may say it has been a subject of reflection
+during many years, indeed, since the legislation of 1881; Mr. Gladstone,
+in his place in the House of Commons, pointedly approved of a tract in
+which I set forth my views; and so, curiously enough, did Parnell. It is
+impossible, I have said, to transform the existing system of Irish land
+tenure; a wide departure from it cannot be made; but improvement is really
+feasible within certain limits. My object would be to get rid of palpable
+evils, inseparable from the present state of things; to make the positions
+of both Irish landlords and tenants in some degree better than they now
+are; to place the Irish land system on a somewhat less<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> precarious basis.
+In the first place, the law as to the exemption of tenants&#8217; improvements
+from rent, an excrescence on the Land Act of 1881, and made extravagant by
+the Land Act of 1896, should be restricted in its application to some
+extent; as it stands, it is a fruitful cause of injustice, of
+demoralisation, and of hard swearing, producing endless litigation to very
+little purpose; claims in respect of improvements ought to be more
+limited, in point of time, than they are; a check should be placed on
+obsolete and illusory claims; this would be advantageous, I think, to all
+interests involved. Again, it would be impracticable to exclude from the
+operation of the present land code lands that have been already brought
+within its scope; but a more precise definition should be made of the
+lands that are intended to be now excluded&mdash;demesnes, town parks,
+residential holdings, and large pastoral farms; the decisions of the
+Courts, in this province, are very perplexing; a good definition would
+make litigation very considerably less. These changes, I am convinced,
+would do much appreciable good; but I would go a long way farther in
+attempting to make the status of both landlord and tenant in Ireland less
+insecure and vexatious than it now is. In the first place, leaving lands
+now excluded out, I would make all agricultural and pastoral Irish tenants
+entitled to the tenure of the &#8216;Three F&#8217;s,&#8217; removing the prohibition as to
+&#8216;future tenants,&#8217; a distinction that never ought to have been made, and,
+as far as possible, securing this mode of tenure to the poorest tenants,
+by means to which I shall advert afterwards. In the next place, I would
+make an earnest effort to lessen the ruinous litigation and the
+instability caused by the statutory leases renewable at short intervals of
+time. The tenant should have &#8216;fixity of tenure&#8217; in a real sense; the
+estate created in his favour against the landlord ought not to be one of
+fifteen years only, however indefinitely it may be extended; I would
+prefer to see it an estate for ever; but, as in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> present state of
+agriculture, there would be objections to this, on account of the
+uncertainty of the rate of rent, it might be an estate for a limited term.
+But the term ought not to be less than thirty years at least, renewable,
+of course, like the shorter term of fifteen; this would quiet possession
+and get rid of lawsuits for the period of a generation of men. The tenant
+should retain his right of &#8216;free sale;&#8217; but I would make the conditions
+less stringent than they are under the existing law.</p>
+
+<p>The position of the Irish tenant would thus be greatly improved; the
+sphere of the &#8216;Three F&#8217;s&#8217; would be largely extended; he would have &#8216;fixity
+of tenure,&#8217; for a long time, at least, without the hazard and loss of
+litigation every fifteen years; his right of &#8216;free sale&#8217; would be less
+restricted; and he would have distinct advantages, as respects &#8216;fair
+rent,&#8217; under the part of my plan I am about to explain. I turn to the
+position of the Irish &#8216;landlord&#8217;&mdash;I still use this expression and that of
+&#8216;tenant,&#8217; though both words are hardly applicable to existing facts; this,
+too, in my judgment, would be made much better. The estate that is now
+created against him would still be preserved; I wish it were a perpetual
+estate, but it would be one for thirty years at least; he would,
+therefore, remain assimilated to a rent-charger, as he is at present. But
+like his tenant he would be comparatively free from lawsuits; he would be
+less harassed by claims in respect of improvements; he would have, in many
+particulars, a more stable tenure. He should, of course, retain the
+&#8216;royalties&#8217; still reserved to him&mdash;mines, minerals, timber, and such
+things; and he should have the title to the statutory conditions he now
+has; but as his reversionary rights would be somewhat lessened, he should
+be compensated for these by a small money payment. With one great
+exception he should have the legal remedies to enforce the rights he now
+possesses; and that exception would be of great importance. I have always
+thought the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> law of ejectment for non-payment of rent harsh; it is an
+innovation on the ancient Common Law; it sometimes causes forfeitures far
+from just; it is not properly applicable to tenancies of long duration. I
+would certainly abolish this mode of procedure; I would instead of it give
+the landlord a power to sell the tenant&#8217;s lands, by a procedure analogous
+to that of bankruptcy, should default be made in the payment of the rent,
+or rather the rent-charge that might be due. The advantage to both
+landlord and tenant would be great: the first would have a remedy more
+expeditious and just than he has; the second, should the land be sold and
+lost to him, would, as a rule, have a surplus over and above his debts;
+unlike what is sometimes the case in evictions, he would realise for
+himself his whole legitimate interest in the land. This single reform
+would do much to make &#8216;fair rent&#8217; a less onerous charge than it now is.</p>
+
+<p>By these means the status of the Irish landlord would be made by many
+degrees more secure; the Irish tenant would acquire an interest in the
+land much more durable and stable than he has now, in fact, nearly
+equivalent to full ownership, subject to a rent-charge; and if his
+interest were made a perpetuity, as I hope would be the case at last, he
+would be assimilated to an owner subject to a perpetual rent, or to an
+English copyholder subject to a similar render. This is the position Burke
+proposed he should have, considerably more than a century ago;<a name='fna_149' id='fna_149' href='#f_149'><small>[149]</small></a> it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> is
+that which has been advocated by John Stuart Mill, and, I am happy to add,
+by Mr. John Morley; it is the only position, compatible with common sense
+and justice, which the new Irish land code has left possible, for I put
+the quackery of compulsory purchase out of sight, and voluntary purchase
+is a bad half-measure. The great subject of fixing rent by the State would
+remain; for, unjustifiable as this expedient is, it is impossible, after
+what has happened, to dispense with it. Without imputing personal motives
+or moral blame to any one, the Land Commission and its Sub-Commissions
+ought, I am convinced, to cease to be the agency to fix &#8216;fair rents;&#8217;
+however unconsciously, in my judgment, they have often proceeded on false
+principles, and have done immense, if not wilful wrong; they are decried
+by landlords and tenants alike in Ireland. Besides, there is a
+constitutional objection to their adjusting rent; the Land Commission is
+entrusted with the task of carrying out &#8216;land purchase;&#8217; it has a direct
+inducement to whittle rents away, in order to facilitate the sale of land;
+its interest and its duty are thus placed in conflict. Be this as it may,
+my plan for fixing &#8216;fair rents&#8217; in Ireland by the State would be
+altogether different. In the first place, a definition of &#8216;fair rent&#8217;
+should be made by statute, and should dominate, so to speak, the subject;
+the omission of this criterion has caused grave injustice. This having
+been made, I would adjust Irish rents by a method much better, I believe,
+than that now in existence. A body of competent and well-paid valuers of
+land should be <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>formed&mdash;there would be no difficulty about this in
+Ireland; these men should visit, when required, estates; and having heard
+what landlords and tenants had to say on the spot, should declare what
+they consider the &#8216;fair rents&#8217; of farms, making a deduction for
+improvements as arranged by a reformed law, and taking waste and
+deterioration into account. The reports made by the valuers should be
+complete and explicit; they would probably satisfy landlords and tenants
+in most instances; but dissatisfied persons should have a right to an
+appeal, which should be a full rehearing of all the facts in issue; but
+the appeal should be at the peril of costs against unsuccessful suitors.
+The tribunals to decide the appeals should, I suggest, be composed of two
+eminent judges, for each of the four provinces, assisted by trained
+agricultural experts; but the authority of the judges should prevail on
+all questions. From these Courts a further appeal should run to the Court
+of Appeal in Ireland, on all matters of law and fact, and ultimately
+should run to the House of Lords; the present restricted appeal to the
+Land Commission has been little better than a sorry mockery of right.</p>
+
+<p>The scheme I propose has obvious defects; it sanctions the vicious
+principle of State-settled rents, a thing unknown in lands outside of
+Ireland, a defiance of the simplest axioms of economic science. But it
+endeavours at least to improve a bad system of tenure dealing with
+accomplished facts now beyond recall; I certainly think it would make the
+relations of Irish landlords and tenants better than they are, and would
+tend to place both classes in the positions which, as affairs now stand,
+they will probably, in the long run, occupy. As regards &#8216;alternative
+policies,&#8217; as they have been called, I have set forth the reasons that the
+compulsory purchase of the Irish land would be, I believe, impossible,
+and, were it possible, would be a confiscation of the foullest kind,
+ruinous to Great Britain and Ireland alike. I have also shown how<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> the
+present system of so-styled &#8216;voluntary purchase&#8217; is, in my judgment,
+essentially immoral, and pregnant with dangers; and I have indicated the
+results being already produced. That system, however, must go on; for the
+present it cannot be arrested; a Conservative Government still pins its
+faith on it, as a Whig Government, half a century ago, pinned its faith on
+the Encumbered Estates Act; but a &#8216;peasant proprietary&#8217; rooted in
+corruption will hardly succeed, and &#8216;voluntary purchase&#8217; draws the worst
+kind of distinctions in Irish land tenure. The acceleration, indeed, of
+this &#8216;remedy&#8217; has been deemed advisable; and as long as the sum voted by
+Parliament is not expended, the system evidently must continue in force.
+Some of its evils, however, would be lessened were the State to reserve to
+itself the woodland, which tenant &#8216;purchasers,&#8217; as a rule, cut down and
+sell; and if tenants proved to be solvent were compelled to advance part
+of the money required to transfer their lands to themselves. It is
+revolting to my mind to see a wealthy Irish farmer bribed into the
+ownership of his farm by an Act of the State, without having paid a
+shilling of the price. I commend this spectacle to the hard-pressed
+general taxpayer.</p>
+
+<p>I need hardly say that, under the scheme I propose, existing interests of
+tenants should remain intact, and statutory leases should be allowed to
+come to an end, before a change should be made by law in the position they
+hold. The question of compensating the Irish landlords would remain; a
+very few words on this will suffice. I must remind the reader, as I have
+already shown, that the Land Act of 1881 was passed on the condition that,
+should experience prove that real injury had been done to this order of
+men, their right to indemnity would be plain; Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s language was
+unequivocal; the House of Commons approved. Nor can any reasonable doubt
+exist that the course of legislation from 1881 to 1896 has confiscated the
+property of the class to an immense extent;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> the simple fact that the
+value in Ireland of the fee simple in land has been reduced by a third at
+least, and that the value of the tenant right has been increased in about
+the same proportion, points to a conclusion evident to impartial minds. I
+am satisfied as to what would be the report on this subject of the
+Commission I should wish to see appointed; it could not avoid drawing an
+inference that cannot be resisted. The question, therefore, will have to
+be faced; the good faith of Parliament is virtually at stake; and if a
+pledge made in the name of the State is not to be broken, the right of the
+Irish landlords to compensation is complete. Independently, too, of
+considerations of this kind, it is a recognised principle that should a
+policy have caused loss to a class, the State is morally bound to make the
+loss up; a violation of this principle is unjust and dangerous alike. I
+quote from John Stuart Mill on this very question: &#8216;The principle of
+property gives the landowners no right to the land, but only a right to
+compensation for whatever portion of their interest in the land it may be
+the policy of the State to deprive them of. To that their claim is
+indefeasible. It is due to landowners and to owners of any property
+whatever, recognised as such by the State, that they should not be
+dispossessed of it without receiving its pecuniary value, or an annual
+income equal to what they have derived from it. If the land was bought
+with the produce of the labour of themselves or their ancestors,
+compensation is due to them on that ground; even if otherwise, it is still
+due on the ground of prescription. Nor can it ever be necessary for
+accomplishing an object by which the community altogether will gain, that
+a particular portion of the community should be immolated. When the
+property is of a kind to which peculiar affections attach themselves, the
+compensation ought to exceed a bare pecuniary equivalent.... The
+legislature, which, if it pleased, might convert the whole body of
+landlords into fundholders or pensioners, might,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> <i>&agrave; fortiori</i>, commute
+the average receipts of Irish landowners into a fixed rent-charge, and
+raise the tenants into proprietors; supposing always that the full market
+value of the land was tendered to the landlords, in case they preferred
+that to accepting the conditions proposed.&#8217;<a name='fna_150' id='fna_150' href='#f_150'><small>[150]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>Assuming, then, the case for compensating the Irish landlords to have been
+made out, compensation can be afforded without the loss of a shilling to
+the State. The <i>bon&acirc; fide</i> encumbrances on their estates, that is, those
+which represent advances in cash, are now at an interest of from 4 to 5
+per cent.; the State could pay off those which were perfectly secure at an
+interest of 2&#188; per cent., and could make the landlords chargeable with
+interest at 3 per cent., in order to provide against possible loss. As for
+encumbrances that were not perfectly secure, the State should only pay off
+what was well charged; but it should do this on the same conditions; and
+it should declare hopeless encumbrances extinct. This would be a
+considerable and just boon to the Irish landlords; the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> securities taken
+by the State should be in the form of debentures, which would pass from
+hand to hand in the market; and many owners of encumbrances would no doubt
+accept sums less than their full demands, for these, they well know, are
+at present in danger. I would go, however, farther in relieving the Irish
+landlords; their estates are subject to a mass of family charges created
+under a different order of things; if the State has arbitrarily cut down
+the fund set apart for these, by a wholesale reduction of rents, I cannot
+understand how it is not the simplest justice to cut the charges down in
+some fair proportion. At all events, I make these suggestions for what
+they may be worth; if right is to be done to the Irish landed gentry, and
+a gross breach of public faith is not to be made, some relief of this kind
+should be extended to them. Very possibly this will not be afforded; but I
+venture to remind politicians that even an unpopular class cannot be
+cruelly wronged and sacrificed, without doing injury to all classes, and
+shaking to their foundations the clear rights of property. And I openly
+avow that, in my judgment, it would be in the highest degree against the
+national interest to annihilate this body of men, as must probably happen,
+should things in Ireland be left as they are. What if they are the heirs
+of conquest and confiscation in the past? Is that a reason for destroying
+them after the lapse of centuries, and when England planted them in the
+land to be her mainstay? What if, in instances, comparatively few in the
+extreme, they have abused the social trust imposed on them? Was not this
+because the opportunity was given by law, and was not the law the work of
+successive Parliaments? Is it not a fact that British ministers, so to
+speak, of yesterday, declared that they were secure in their proprietary
+rights; and that Mr. Gladstone solemnly acquitted them of what had been
+laid to their charge? On the other hand, have they not been for ages the
+staunchest friends of England<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> in Irish affairs, especially in troubled
+and perilous times? Is it for nothing that they have been called the
+British garrison by her foes, the strongest obstacle to rebellion and
+treason? And is a class, which has, on the whole, been a civilising
+influence, for many years, in Ireland, and which has given the State far
+more than a due proportion of worthies&mdash;warriors, orators, statesmen,
+thinkers, men of eminence in all the arts of life&mdash;to be sacrificed at the
+bidding of a conspiracy bent on subverting British rule in Ireland, or in
+deference to false and perilous theories?</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<p class="center"><span class="large">THE QUESTION OF THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND</span></p>
+
+<div class="note"><p class="hang">The subject briefly considered&mdash;Financial position of Ireland before
+1782, and under Grattan&#8217;s Parliament&mdash;Her taxation and debt small
+before 1798&mdash;Ireland financially a distinct country&mdash;At the Union,
+Pitt wished to &#8216;assimilate her in finance&#8217; with Great Britain, but
+this impossible, and why&mdash;Ireland&#8217;s contribution after the Union&mdash;This
+was unjust, but it left her financially a distinct country&mdash;Ireland
+made nearly bankrupt&mdash;The compromise of 1816&mdash;The Irish Exchequer
+closed, and the Irish and British debts consolidated&mdash;The object of
+the compromise was rather to relieve Ireland from her burdens than to
+assimilate her in finance with Great Britain&mdash;She still remained for
+many years financially distinct from Great Britain, and is so still to
+some extent&mdash;The conduct of Peel a striking proof of this&mdash;Mr.
+Gladstone imposes the income tax on Ireland, and her spirit duties are
+largely raised&mdash;Injustice of this policy&mdash;The Committee of
+1863-64&mdash;Ireland does not obtain financial justice&mdash;The Report of the
+Childers Commission made upon a reference by Mr. Gladstone following
+Mr. Goschen&mdash;The Commission declares that Ireland has been greatly
+overtaxed for many years&mdash;Evidence on which it has founded this
+conclusion&mdash;Examination of arguments to the contrary&mdash;Another
+Commission promised, but the promise not fulfilled&mdash;Importance of
+settling this question.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland have been a
+subject, at intervals of time, no doubt, of strong controversy during a
+whole century. I shall not harp on the saying of Johnson to an Irish
+friend, &#8216;Avoid a Union with England, she will only rob you;&#8217; but, in the
+opinion of well-informed Irishmen, the fiscal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> treatment of Ireland, since
+1800-01, strikingly illustrates the significant remark of Burke, &#8216;When any
+community is subordinately connected with another, the great danger of the
+connection is, the extreme pride and self-complacency of the superior,
+which, in all matters of controversy, will probably decide in its own
+favour.&#8217; There is no reason to impeach the good faith of Pitt and
+Castlereagh; but the financial arrangements they made for Ireland, when
+the Union became law, were denounced by the most distinguished Irishmen of
+the day; these imposed on Ireland an overwhelming burden, and, in fact,
+reduced her to the very edge of bankruptcy. A compromise was effected in
+1816-17; this has been described as a generous boon to Ireland; but it was
+at best a slight relief from injustice; and it weakened securities she had
+against fiscal exaction, while it involved her in liabilities which, if
+remote, were not the less possible. It is a most significant fact that
+Peel, who, as Chief Secretary from 1812 to 1818, was familiar with the
+economic state of Ireland, refused, though under the strongest
+inducements, to apply to Ireland the fiscal charges extended to her by one
+of his brilliant successors; the most sagacious financier of the
+nineteenth century played, in this matter, a very different part from the
+most impulsive and not the least unscrupulous. In 1853, and from thence in
+other years, Mr. Gladstone, in order to carry out a policy distinctly
+opposed to many Irish interests, subjected Ireland to a sudden and heavy
+load of taxation, exactly at the time when, for the plainest reasons, she
+ought to have been exempted from it; from that day to this, Irishmen, who
+understand the question, are agreed that this was gross, nay, cruel,
+injustice. The whole subject of British and Irish financial relations was
+sent by Mr. Gladstone to a Commission in 1893, here following the example
+of Mr. Goschen; a careful inquiry was held during many months; the Report
+of the Commission was startling and important in the extreme. This<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
+tribunal, mainly composed of eminent English experts, announced, and that
+almost with one voice, that Ireland was being enormously overtaxed, and
+had been for upwards of forty years; and it plainly intimated that a
+remedy for this wrong should be found. No real answer has been made to
+this remarkable judgment; the attempts at answers that have been made are
+nearly all mere trifling; Lord Salisbury&#8217;s Government evidently believes
+that an answer is not possible; it promised to appoint another Commission
+to investigate certain parts of the subject; years have passed, and it has
+not performed its promise. Meanwhile, even amidst the hurly-burly of Irish
+politics, Irishmen of all parties have united in a demand for redress; and
+if the demand is not pressed with extreme vehemence, it is sustained by
+all that is best in Irish opinion. It is obviously unwise, and it may
+become dangerous, to continue to ignore such a claim; in any event the
+financial relations of the Three Kingdoms are not the least important of
+&#8216;Present Irish Questions;&#8217; I shall briefly examine it in this chapter.</p>
+
+<p>It is unnecessary to dwell on the financial relations of Great Britain and
+Ireland before 1782 and the Union. England held the position of an
+absolutely dominant State before 1782, Ireland that of a conquered and
+despised colony; Ireland was under the control of the British Parliament,
+and was governed by English officials supreme at the Castle. Ireland was
+excluded from the foreign and colonial trade of Great Britain; her
+agriculture and manufactures were half destroyed by the selfish jealousy
+and greed of her imperious neighbour. She contributed, on the other hand,
+nothing to the treasury of the ruling power; she had little or no part in
+British wars, or in building up the edifice of the Empire, except through
+her soldiers in the British army; she was free from British debt and from
+British taxation. In these circumstances, grievous as was the incubus of
+Protestant ascendency upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> land, it is remarkable what material
+progress she made; her Parliament, though little more than a local vestry,
+unquestionably promoted her material welfare; she was very lightly taxed,
+and was free from debt for many years. She was still so completely
+distinct from Great Britain, that it was not until 1769 that her
+Parliament agreed that 15,000 men, of whom 12,000 were to remain in
+Ireland, should be enrolled for the defence of the State; before that
+time, she was only obliged to maintain a small British force within her
+borders. After a partial relaxation of the restraints on her commerce
+caused by the stress of the American War, and by the famous volunteer
+movement, Ireland obtained legislative independence in 1782; she ceased to
+be subject to the British Parliament, and to fill the position of a
+degraded colony; she became, in theory at least, an independent State in
+many respects. Her Parliament was all but sovereign in name; Ireland was
+now united to Great Britain only by the link of the Crown; by an executive
+always despatched from Downing Street; and, it must be added, by the
+corruption of her Houses of Lords and Commons. She was thus more than ever
+a distinct country; in fact, most British statesmen had soon perceived
+that the celebrated settlement of 1782 greatly weakened her old connection
+with England. She advanced, however, markedly in prosperity for many
+years, until the French Revolution arrested this; her debt was little more
+than &pound;2,000,000 for a long time, her taxation only about &pound;1,000,000. But
+by the close of the eighteenth century these figures had been disastrously
+changed; her debt had risen to upwards of &pound;28,000,000, her taxation to
+about &pound;2,500,000. This great increase had been partly caused by the costly
+expenditure of her transformed Parliament, which had spent considerable
+sums on public works, and on economic experiments of different kinds; but
+five-sixths of it was probably caused by the enormous charge incurred by
+the Rebellion of 1798&mdash;one of the most woeful tragedies<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> of Irish
+history&mdash;and by the suppression of that ill-starred movement.<a name='fna_151' id='fna_151' href='#f_151'><small>[151]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The Rebellion led at once to the Union; it precipitated what had perhaps
+become a necessity of State. The great measure of Pitt was badly designed,
+and was, moreover, tainted by a grave breach of faith; it was only what
+was called a &#8216;Protestant Union,&#8217; that is, it rested upon false and narrow
+foundations; it deceived Catholic Ireland, and did her gross wrong; above
+all, it did not effect its main object, and incorporate the lesser with
+the more powerful country. It left Ireland, hitherto completely distinct,
+still, to a very considerable extent, a distinct State; she retained a
+separate Government and Administration, separate Courts of Justice, a
+separate Exchequer for many years; this shadow of separation, as Foster,
+one of her ablest worthies, foretold, would give a demand for separation
+substance.<a name='fna_152' id='fna_152' href='#f_152'><small>[152]</small></a> The financial arrangements between Great Britain and
+Ireland were practically altogether the work of Pitt. A disciple of Adam
+Smith, the minister&#8217;s wish was to &#8216;assimilate the two countries in
+finance;&#8217; to place both under the same fiscal system, to make taxation in
+both uniform. But in 1800, the National Debt of Great Britain was more
+than &pound;446,000,000, and her taxation was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> about &pound;3 a head; the National
+Debt of Ireland, we have seen, was some &pound;28,000,000, and her taxation by
+the head not more than 10<i>s.</i>; this immense inequality made &#8216;assimilation
+in finance&#8217; impossible. Besides, Pitt, as a matter of course, knew that
+Great Britain was a very rich country, and Ireland perhaps the poorest in
+Europe; he was too great a financier to accept the false and shallow
+theory that, as between two communities wholly unequal in wealth, equal
+taxes were really equal burdens, and could be just; he had emphatically
+remarked in 1785, when his celebrated &#8216;Commercial Propositions&#8217; were
+opposed by the selfish monopolies of British commerce, &#8216;If one country
+exceeded another in wealth, population, and established commerce in a
+proportion of two to one, he was nearly convinced that that country would
+be able to bear near ten times the burden that the other would be equal
+to.&#8217;<a name='fna_153' id='fna_153' href='#f_153'><small>[153]</small></a> It had become necessary, therefore, at the time of the Union, to
+place the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland on a basis
+that had nothing in common with uniformity of taxation, and a common
+fiscal system; &#8216;assimilation in finance&#8217; was for the present to be
+indefinitely postponed.</p>
+
+<p>The financial settlement made at the Union distinctly embodied these
+principles, and was carried by Castlereagh through the Irish Parliament,
+by what methods history records with shame. Like Pitt, the Chief Secretary
+looked forward to a time when Great Britain and Ireland might be under the
+same fiscal system; but at this juncture, this consummation was, he
+acknowledged, hopeless. Ireland was, financially, to remain a separate
+country; she was to have a separate exchequer and separate taxes; her
+National Debt was to be kept distinct from that of Great Britain. She was
+to furnish only a contribution to the State; and Castlereagh declared,
+over and over again, that this contribution was to be only in proportion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
+to her means, and that in no event was she to be unduly taxed. &#8216;The great
+point to be ascertained is the best criterion that can be found of the
+relative means of the two countries, in order to fix the relative
+proportions of their contributions.... As to the future, it is expected
+that the two countries will move forward together, and unite with regard
+to their expenses in the measure of their relative abilities.&#8217; By a
+comparison made between British and Irish imports and exports, and between
+the values of certain commodities, Castlereagh came to the conclusion that
+the contributions which Great Britain and Ireland ought to be expected to
+make for the general support and administration of the State, should be,
+respectively, fifteen- and two-seventeenths, that is, Great Britain was to
+pay about 88 per cent., and Ireland about 12 per cent. of the sum total.
+This proportion was to be made liable to revision at the end of twenty
+years; for this provision, Castlereagh remarked, gave &#8216;Ireland the utmost
+possible security that she cannot be taxed beyond the measure of her
+comparative ability, and that the ratio of her contributions must ever
+correspond with her relative wealth and prosperity;&#8217; and then followed
+arrangements which undoubtedly had the &#8216;assimilation of Great Britain and
+Ireland in finance&#8217; remotely in view; but subject to limitations that
+would preserve for Ireland her fiscal rights, and would secure her from
+taxation beyond her means, and unjust. It was proposed that if, at some
+future time, the debts of both countries should be discharged, or if their
+debts and their contributions were in the same proportion, Great Britain
+and Ireland might be &#8216;assimilated in finance,&#8217; and placed under the same
+fiscal system; but this was to be on two express conditions, that the
+circumstances of the two countries should admit of this change, and that,
+in any case, should the change be made, Ireland&mdash;as was the case of
+Scotland when her Union took place-should have the benefit of such
+&#8216;exemptions and abatements&#8217; of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> taxation as might be deemed proper, and
+the circumstances of the situation might allow. The meaning of the
+technical words, &#8216;exemptions and abatements,&#8217; interpreted of late years in
+a pettifogging sense, was fully recognised at the time, and for a long
+subsequent period, indeed, has been recognised to this day by most of our
+leading statesmen, namely, that Ireland was not to be taxed unfairly or
+beyond her resources, as Castlereagh had repeatedly promised.<a name='fna_154' id='fna_154' href='#f_154'><small>[154]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The Opposition in the Irish Parliament had many able lawyers&mdash;the names of
+Saurin, of Plunket, of Bushe are still known to fame; it is to be
+regretted, perhaps, that these powerful minds did not examine with more
+jealousy the conditions under which Great Britain and Ireland might be
+&#8216;assimilated in finance,&#8217; distant as the contingency appeared to be; did
+not criticise more sharply words that might be wrested from their accepted
+sense; and trusted too much to Castlereagh&#8217;s phrases. But the attention of
+the Opposition was rather directed to the Union in its political than in
+its financial aspect; it rather denounced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> the attempt to destroy the
+settlement of 1782 than scrutinised the terms of the fiscal system to be
+imposed on Ireland, at least, as these were concerned with the future. The
+arrangements, nevertheless, by which Ireland was to make the contribution
+of the two-seventeenths were fiercely assailed in both the Houses in
+College Green; Foster described the calculations of Pitt and Castlereagh
+as utterly false, and declared that the charge to be borne by Ireland was
+much too large; Grattan echoed this opinion in characteristic language:
+&#8216;Though I do not think the means of this country are unequal to any
+necessary expense, yet I do think they are inadequate to that contributory
+expense which the Union stipulates.... The attempt will exhaust the
+country, at the same time that it enslaves her. Colour it as you please,
+Ireland will pay more than she is able. Considering these the terms of the
+Union so far as they relate to revenue, they amount to a continuation of
+the double establishment, an increase of the separate establishment, and a
+military government, with a prospect of soon succeeding to the full taxes
+of England.&#8217;<a name='fna_155' id='fna_155' href='#f_155'><small>[155]</small></a> The Opposition, too, in the Irish House of Commons
+loudly protested: &#8216;Your Majesty&#8217;s faithful Commons are satisfied that this
+calculation is extremely erroneous; and that on a just and fair inquiry
+into the comparative means of each country, the Kingdom ought not, and is
+not able to contribute anything like that proportion.&#8217;<a name='fna_156' id='fna_156' href='#f_156'><small>[156]</small></a> And twenty
+Irish peers placed this emphatic protest on record; I have space for a few
+sentences only: &#8216;Under such circumstances, it appears to us that if this
+Kingdom should take upon herself irrevocably the payment of
+two-seventeenths of these expenses, she will not have means to perform her
+engagements unless by charging her landed property with 12<i>s.</i> or 13<i>s.</i>
+in the pound; it must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> end in the draining from her her last guinea, in
+totally annihilating her trade for want of capital, in rendering the taxes
+unproductive, and consequently in finally putting her in a state of
+bankruptcy. We think ourselves called upon to protest against a measure so
+ruinous to our country, and to place the responsibility of its
+consequences upon such persons as have brought it forward and supported
+it.&#8217;<a name='fna_157' id='fna_157' href='#f_157'><small>[157]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The Treaty of Union left Ireland, financially, still a separate country,
+paying a fixed contribution for the uses of the State. The great war with
+France soon broke out again; England was involved with Napoleon in a
+life-and-death struggle; her fiscal resources were strained to the utmost;
+her expenditure became prodigious for a series of years. In these
+circumstances, the debt of Ireland rose from &pound;28,000,000 to upwards of
+&pound;112,000,000; and her taxation from about &pound;2,500,000 to about &pound;4,500,000;
+while the debt of Great Britain advanced from some &pound;446,000,000 to some
+&pound;737,000,000, and her taxation from some &pound;24,000,000 to &pound;54,000,000; the
+taxation of Ireland being by the head about &pound;1 in 1816, that of Great
+Britain being about &pound;5, the figures sixteen years before being 10<i>s.</i> and
+&pound;3. The immense increase in the debt of Ireland, much greater in
+proportion than that of Great Britain, was certainly due to a large extent
+to the fact&mdash;and this was frankly admitted by Grattan&mdash;that the poorer
+country could not keep pace with the richer in the gigantic charges of the
+war; the case, it has justly been remarked, may be compared to a case of
+this kind: &#8216;If one man, A, who has been living at the rate of &pound;100 per
+annum, arranges to keep house with another man, B, who has for some time
+been living at the rate of &pound;700 per annum, and to spend &pound;1 for every &pound;7
+which B spends, then so long as B continues to live at the same rate as
+before, the expenses of A will not be increased. But if B begins to live
+at the rate of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> &pound;2100 a year, A will have to spend &pound;300 a year, and if his
+means are not sufficient for this, he must become bankrupt.&#8217;<a name='fna_158' id='fna_158' href='#f_158'><small>[158]</small></a>
+Allowing, nevertheless, for all this, it is not the less certain that the
+calculations of Pitt and Castlereagh were utterly falsified by the event,
+and that the warnings of Foster, Grattan, and other well-informed
+Irishmen, besides the protests made in the Irish Parliament, were verified
+to the fullest extent; as has been remarked by a distinguished English
+expert, &#8216;The calculations of Mr. Pitt and Lord Castlereagh, the ministers
+who promoted the Union, and who declared that Ireland would be able to
+pay, and ought to pay, two-seventeenths of the joint expenses of the
+United Kingdom, turned out to be mistaken, and the opinions of Mr.
+Grattan, Mr. Foster, and other Irish members, who denied that she would be
+able to contribute so large a proportion, are proved by the event to have
+been well founded.&#8217;<a name='fna_159' id='fna_159' href='#f_159'><small>[159]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>This contrast, it is hardly necessary to say, to persons acquainted with
+Irish history, is only one of the innumerable proofs of the ignorance of
+Ireland too common to British statesmen, and of their too common disregard
+of the best Irish opinion. In 1815-16, at the close of the war, Ireland
+was financially in a bankrupt condition; she could not pay the interest on
+her debt; she could not bear the weight of further taxation; she was
+exhausted and sucked dry by fiscal injustice. Her social state, too, had
+become very alarming; her population had rapidly increased, and, mainly
+depending on the frail potato, was already becoming an incubus on the
+land; the collapse of the high war prices had caused a sudden fall in
+rents and the wages of labour; there was general distress in several
+counties, and Whiteboy and agrarian disorder widely prevailed. The
+financial position of Ireland was necessarily taken up by Parliament; a
+Committee of the House of Commons was selected to report upon it. By<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> this
+time one of the contingencies had taken place for the possible
+&#8216;assimilation in finance&#8217; with Great Britain of the much weaker country;
+the contribution of Ireland, compared with her debt, was even in less
+proportion than the contribution of Great Britain to her own; she had been
+left far behind in the effort to pay her way. In this position of affairs
+the Committee made its report, after a long and careful examination of the
+case; the House of Commons passed these resolutions in May, 1816: &#8216;That it
+is the opinion of this Committee that the values of the respective debts
+of Great Britain and Ireland, estimated according to the provisions of the
+Acts of Union, have been, at a period subsequent to these Acts, in the
+same proportion to each other (within one-hundredth part of the said
+value), with the respective contributions of each country respectively,
+towards the annual expenditure of the United Kingdom; and that the
+respective circumstances of the two countries will henceforth admit of
+their contributing indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed upon the same
+articles upon each, to the future expenditure of the United Kingdom;
+subject only to such particular exemptions and abatements in Ireland and
+in Scotland as circumstances may appear from time to time to demand; and
+that it is no longer necessary to regulate the contribution of the two
+countries according to any specific proportion, or according to the rules
+prescribed by the Acts of Union, with respect to such proportions. That it
+is the opinion of this Committee, that it is expedient that all expenses
+henceforth to be incurred, together with the interest and charges of all
+debts hitherto contracted, shall be so defrayed indiscriminately by equal
+taxes to be imposed on the same articles in each country; and that from
+time to time, as circumstances may require, such taxes should be imposed
+and applied accordingly, subject only to such exemptions and abatements in
+Ireland and Scotland as circumstances may appear to demand. That it is
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> opinion of this Committee that such legislative measures should be
+adopted as may be necessary to carry into further effect the purposes of
+the said Acts of Union, by consolidating the public revenues of Great
+Britain and Ireland into one fund, and applying the same to the general
+services of the United Kingdom.&#8217;<a name='fna_160' id='fna_160' href='#f_160'><small>[160]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>These resolutions were partly embodied in an Act which received the Royal
+assent in June, 1816. By this law the separate exchequer of Ireland was
+shut up; there was to be but one exchequer for the Three Kingdoms; all the
+revenues of Great Britain and Ireland were thrown into a general fund to
+be applied to the requirements of the State; the separate debt of Ireland
+was fused into that of Great Britain, the two making a common National
+Debt. By these means Ireland was relieved from an intolerable load of
+debt; but those who contend that an immense boon was thus conferred on
+her, only illustrate the aphorism of Burke referred to before; the matter
+was decided by the opinion of the dominant power. Ireland, no doubt, was
+set free from an overwhelming burden; but the burden was one improperly
+cast on her by the Union; the relief was only a small redress of
+injustice.<a name='fna_161' id='fna_161' href='#f_161'><small>[161]</small></a> On the other hand, the arrangements of 1816 abolished the
+contribution of the two-seventeenths, and made Ireland less a separate
+country, financially, than she had been before; the resolutions of the
+House of Commons did not all become law, but they at least declared that
+she might become &#8216;assimilated in finance&#8217; to Great Britain at a convenient
+time, and thus diminished her security against undue taxation; and the
+amalgamation of her debt with that of Great Britain made her subject, at
+least conceivably, to a gigantic charge, for which she was not in any way
+liable. The compromise, however, effected at this time, rather
+contemplated the relief of Ireland from existing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> debt than her ultimate
+&#8216;assimilation in finance to Great Britain,&#8217; and the extension to both
+countries of the same fiscal system. For many years after 1816 Ireland
+remained, financially, completely distinct from Great Britain, and under a
+scheme of taxation altogether different. Nor is the reason difficult to
+seek; she was declared entitled, by the resolutions before mentioned, to
+the &#8216;exemptions and abatements&#8217; secured to her by the Treaty of Union; and
+the Parliament of that day respected the treaty, interpreting these terms
+in their true sense, that Ireland was not to be taxed beyond her means.
+Her fiscal wrongs, besides, from 1800 to 1816, were still fresh in the
+minds of statesmen; these did not wish to repeat injustice; above all, she
+had many representatives of real weight at Westminster&mdash;Grattan was a
+tower of strength in himself, and he had very able followers; these men
+would certainly have fiercely resented attempts to impair the financial
+rights of their country.</p>
+
+<p>The fiscal systems of Great Britain and Ireland, still altogether
+distinct, continued nearly on this footing for a series of years. Great
+Britain was gradually relieved from taxation peculiar to herself,
+amounting to very considerable sums; Ireland was not relieved in the same
+proportion; but this was hardly a real grievance; the taxation of Great
+Britain during the war had been enormously higher than that of Ireland. In
+1819-20 the charge on Great Britain, which had been about &pound;5 per head, had
+been reduced to &pound;3 13<i>s.</i>; that on Ireland, which had been about &pound;1 a
+head, had been reduced to 15<i>s.</i> 5<i>d.</i> There seems to have been little to
+complain of in these figures. Some steps, however, but tentative only,
+were made by degrees in &#8216;assimilating the two countries in finance,&#8217;
+according to the resolutions of 1816; the duties on tea were made equal
+for the Three Kingdoms, and the duties on tobacco, as early as 1819; but
+it deserves special notice that this policy was angrily opposed by many
+Irishmen in the House<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> of Commons, the most conspicuous of these being Sir
+John Newport, a real master of Irish finance, who had been Chancellor of
+the Irish Exchequer in 1806-07. Still, notwithstanding innovations like
+these, the fiscal systems of Great Britain and Ireland remained
+substantially distinct for a long period; this was notably made manifest
+as late as 1842. At this time the population of England was in an alarming
+state; the Chartist agitation was in full swing; British commerce was half
+strangled by heavy duties on foreign imports; the corn laws crippled and
+burdened industry. Peel was at the head of his great Ministry; he began to
+carry into effect the policy of free trade, inaugurated by Pitt, but
+unhappily delayed; in order to accomplish this he had to diminish or get
+rid of the charges on foreign imports, and generally to substitute direct
+for indirect taxation. He was under a strong temptation to &#8216;assimilate
+Great Britain and Ireland in finance;&#8217; but he had been a friend and
+colleague of Castlereagh; he understood the true import of the Treaty of
+Union; above all, he knew Ireland well for an Englishman; he had
+practically been her ruler for nearly six years. In these circumstances he
+imposed the income tax on Great Britain as an equivalent for many indirect
+taxes; but he pointedly abstained from extending the tax to Ireland; he
+felt that this would be an act of financial wrong; and though he increased
+for a short time the duty on Irish spirits, he took off the increase
+within a few months. The only &#8216;assimilation in finance&#8217; he effected was to
+make the stamp duties in Great Britain and Ireland equal, and this was
+rather a legal than an economic reform.</p>
+
+<p>The life of the great minister was prematurely cut short; time brought
+with it its changes on its wings. The statesman who had living traditions
+of the Union and its finance had passed away; O&#8217;Connell had disappeared
+from the scene; the representation of Ireland had fallen into a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
+deplorable state. Meanwhile the free trade policy of Peel had achieved
+great results in England and Scotland; free trade had given an immense
+impulse to our manufactures and our foreign commerce; the repeal of the
+corn laws had wonderfully quickened industry, and had been a magnificent
+boon to the mass of the people; the prosperity of Great Britain was
+advancing by leaps and bounds. The development of free trade was the
+object of nearly all our statesmen; to accomplish this it was essential
+still further to lessen or to abolish the duties on foreign imports, and
+to let in the raw materials of manufactures free; indirect taxation was
+still further to give place to direct. In 1853, and during part of the
+subsequent period, our finances were in the hands of a minister whose
+impulsive nature was upheld by a most imperious will, and who, whatever
+was his policy, seldom stuck at trifles. Apparently without mature
+reflection, and, it is to be hoped, with little knowledge of the facts of
+the case, Mr. Gladstone, setting the example of Peel at nought, suddenly
+subjected Ireland to the income tax, and began to raise the duties on
+Irish spirits; by 1860 these duties had been more than trebled; and the
+taxation of Ireland had been increased by upwards of two millions
+sterling. And what were the circumstances, during a large part of this
+period, of the country on which this enormous burden had been laid?
+Ireland, no doubt, had begun to revive from the effects of the catastrophe
+of 1845-47; but, compared with Great Britain, she was miserably poor; and
+the Great Famine had shaken her social structure to its base. Two millions
+of her population had fled from their homes into exile; a large part of
+the upper and of the middle classes had been involved in ruin; whole
+tracts of her lands were derelict wastes; her local taxation was
+exceedingly high. The imposition of this load of taxation on a country in
+such a condition, unjustifiable in the abstract, and from every point of
+view, was, in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> existing position of affairs, an act of cruel wrong; no
+wonder even one of Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s colleagues has remarked, measured as is
+his language, &#8216;We think that if the House of Commons, in the period 1853
+to 1860, when the great enhancement of taxation took place, had fully
+considered the circumstances of Ireland, they would not have felt
+themselves justified in increasing the taxation of that country by means
+of the income tax and the equalisation of the spirit duties.&#8217;<a name='fna_162' id='fna_162' href='#f_162'><small>[162]</small></a> At this
+time, in a word, the future Solon of Home Rule proved himself to be the
+merciless Draco of Irish finance.</p>
+
+<p>This great increase of taxation, to a considerable extent, &#8216;assimilated
+Ireland to Great Britain in finance;&#8217; placed the two countries under
+nearly the same fiscal system; made the taxes of each not far from equal.
+This assimilation, however, was still by no means complete&mdash;indeed, is not
+complete to the present day; Ireland has still fiscal privileges under the
+Treaty of Union; and this should be carefully borne in mind. Mr.
+Gladstone, moreover, when he made this increase, acknowledged that Ireland
+remained a distinct country, entitled to immunities of her own; when he
+made her liable to the income tax, he cancelled a debt of &pound;4,000,000 which
+he professed she owed; and if this was an illusory pretence, for her
+liability for this reason was more than doubtful, and the income tax she
+has since paid has exceeded &pound;23,000,000, still he distinctly admitted the
+principle&mdash;indeed, it has always been admitted by statesmen worthy of the
+name. The enormous new burdens imposed on Ireland, from 1853 to 1860,
+provoked widespread and profound discontent; a Parliamentary inquiry was
+conceded; a Committee of the House of Commons went into the subject in
+1863-64. But the representation of Ireland, I have said, was feeble; her
+complaints were stifled by the arts of the treasury; the arguments of her
+members were overborne by specious but utterly false<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> sophistry; the
+inquiry came to nothing as regards her interests. The question remained in
+abeyance for years; the Irish reforms of Mr. Gladstone, from 1869 to 1873,
+the troubles caused by the Land and the National Leagues, and the Home
+Rule agitation that followed, turned public attention away from the
+subject; but it was not forgotten by well-informed Irishmen; two real
+economists, Butt and Judge Longfield, insisted that Ireland had here a
+grievance; and this was the opinion of several independent gentlemen,
+survivors of the illustrious school of Grattan. At last Mr. Goschen,
+perhaps moved by remonstrances from Ireland being urged again, appointed a
+Committee of the House of Commons to examine into, and to report upon,
+&#8216;the equity of the financial relations in regard to the resources and the
+population of the Three Kingdoms;&#8217; Mr. Gladstone, in 1893, recurred to the
+subject, which, rather unaccountably, had been let drop. He directed a
+Commission of great authority, composed for the most part of expert
+Englishmen, and presided over by the late Mr. Childers, a Chancellor of
+the Exchequer of Mr. Gladstone, to inquire thoroughly into the whole
+question of the financial relations of Great Britain and Ireland, and
+fully to set forth the conclusions they should form. The scope of the
+investigation was to include the history of the subject since the Union; a
+consideration of the financial resources of Great Britain and Ireland
+regarded as distinct countries, and the principles to be kept in mind in
+forming a correct judgment; and, finally, the charge of Ireland with
+respect to the State, and the contribution which Ireland should make to
+it.<a name='fna_163' id='fna_163' href='#f_163'><small>[163]</small></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>This inquiry, set on foot by a British statesman who had made himself
+notorious for &#8216;assimilating Great Britain and Ireland in finance,&#8217;
+proceeded, nevertheless, upon an admission that, financially, the two
+countries were still distinct, and that the resources of each&mdash;their
+&#8216;taxable capacity,&#8217; in other words, a phrase turned into absurd
+ridicule&mdash;afforded the true and the only test, as to the equity of Irish
+compared to British taxation. The Commissioners were engaged in their
+arduous task for months; they explained, with a fulness and clearness
+never before so complete, the history of the financial relations between
+Great Britain and Ireland. They brought distinctly out the fiscal position
+of the two countries before the Union; they set forth at length the
+financial arrangements made in 1800-01; they described the compromise
+effected in 1816; they dwelt on the fiscal policy of Peel to Ireland, and
+placed it in significant contrast with that of Mr. Gladstone; and they
+conclusively proved that, from the Union to the present time, Great
+Britain and Ireland had been treated financially as separate countries,
+despite the &#8216;assimilation&#8217; of 1853-60, and that the right of Ireland,
+under the Treaty of Union, to the &#8216;exemptions and abatements&#8217; secured to
+her, these being interpreted as the case requires, still give her
+immunities from taxation especially her own, which must be recognised if
+she is to obtain justice. Turning, then, to the resources of Great Britain
+and Ireland, regarded as apart, as being the true criterion of the
+taxation which Ireland ought to bear, the Commissioners reviewed a great
+mass of evidence, which, as far<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> as was perhaps possible, made the truth
+manifest, and arrived at conclusions which appear to be decisive.
+Comparing the death duties of Ireland and of Great Britain, the proportion
+is about 1 to 18; comparing the income tax, it is about 1 to 22; taking a
+great variety of other tests, receipts of railways, savings banks
+deposits, money and postal orders, and letters and telegrams, it varies
+from 1 to 24 and 16; and an estimate of the income of the two countries,
+an estimate certainly not fair to Ireland, gives a proportion of about 1
+to 18. There are many reasons that these figures exaggerate the true
+resources of Ireland, but, assuming them to be approximately correct, the
+Commission has reported that Great Britain exceeds Ireland in resources by
+20 to 1; in other words, that the &#8216;taxable capacity of Ireland, as
+contrasted with that of Great Britain, cannot now be more than as 1 to
+20.&#8217;<a name='fna_164' id='fna_164' href='#f_164'><small>[164]</small></a> Applying this inference to the taxation of the two countries,
+the conclusions formed by this tribunal can hardly admit of question. The
+revenue and taxation of Ireland compared with that of Great Britain from
+1889 to 1894 has been &pound;7,300,000 and &pound;7,800,000 against from &pound;85,000,000
+to &pound;89,000,000, that is, Ireland contributed from 8 to 9 per cent. of the
+sum total. But if the resources of Ireland are only one-twentieth of those
+of Great Britain, her taxation ought to be one-twentieth only, that is, it
+ought not to be from &pound;7,300,000 to &pound;7,800,000; it ought to be less than
+&pound;5,000,000; not 8 or 9 per cent., but less than 5 per cent. It follows
+from this that Ireland has been overtaxed at the rate of between two and
+three millions a year, and that for a very considerable space of
+time.<a name='fna_165' id='fna_165' href='#f_165'><small>[165]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>Enormous against Ireland as is this excess of taxation, it may amount to a
+very much larger sum, if the national<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> account be taken on another,
+perhaps a sounder, basis. There is the highest authority to show that
+taxation ought only to fall, in the instance of any given country, on the
+surplus remaining over and above the cost of the necessaries of life; and
+as regards the populations of Great Britain and Ireland, this cost may be
+assumed to be &pound;12 a head. But if we take the income of Great Britain to be
+1400 millions sterling, the cost of the necessaries of life at the above
+rate would for Great Britain be a sum of 324 millions; and the surplus
+available for taxation would be 1076 millions. On the other hand, if we
+turn to Ireland, the poor country, and suppose her income to be 76
+millions sterling, the cost of the necessaries of life for Ireland would
+be a sum of 46 millions; and the surplus available for taxation would be
+30 millions only. On this hypothesis, the resources of Ireland which might
+be fairly taxed&mdash;her taxable capacity, in a word&mdash;would, compared with the
+resources of Great Britain, be, not as 1 to 20, but as 1 to 36 only; and
+her taxation ought to be less than &pound;3,000,000, not, as before mentioned,
+less than &pound;5,000,000. The Childers Commission, no doubt, with the
+exception of one of its members, did not give its sanction to this
+conclusion; but it was that formed by Sir Robert Giffen, a master of the
+subject on all its bearings, and it cannot, in common fairness, be left
+out of sight. Sir Robert Giffen&#8217;s view is expressed in these words; it
+will be observed that his figures do not correspond with those just cited;
+but the only point to consider is the principle on which he takes his
+stand: &#8216;If you deduct a minimum sum, so much per head from each of the
+community, as a sort of minimum sum, though you would not wish to take
+anything from a man who had no more than that, then the taxable income
+would be the whole income in each country above that sum. That was the
+sort of general idea. If you apply that to Ireland, and take a minimum sum
+of, say, &pound;12 a head, you would get upon the basis of an Irish income of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+&pound;76,000,000 a taxable surplus, I think, now of about &pound;22,000,000, and in
+Great Britain your taxable surplus would come to over &pound;900,000,000.&#8217;<a name='fna_166' id='fna_166' href='#f_166'><small>[166]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>Setting, however, these last considerations aside, the Childers Commission
+has conclusively shown that Ireland is very largely overtaxed, and has
+been so for a long series of years; and the figures that represent this
+great overcharge by no means represent the real difference of the burdens
+imposed on the two countries. It does not require the authority of Pitt to
+tell us that even equal taxation, equally applied, is felt much more
+acutely by a poor community than by one that is rich and prosperous; let
+us assume, what is by no means the fact, that this equality exists as
+between Great Britain and Ireland, still Ireland suffers much more than
+Great Britain. As Mill remarked a long time ago, &#8216;It is not the same thing
+to take &pound;2 from a man who has &pound;40 a year, as to take &pound;4 from a man who has
+&pound;80, or &pound;40 from a man who has &pound;800; the sacrifice imposed on the taxpayer
+is greater upon the man from whom you take &pound;2 out of &pound;40 than it is on the
+man from whom you take &pound;40 out of &pound;800, although the proportion is the
+same.&#8217; A few examples, taken from the case of Great Britain and Ireland,
+will make the truth of this proposition perfectly clear. The wages of an
+agricultural labourer in Great Britain are, say, &pound;40 a year; the wages of
+an agricultural labourer in Ireland are, say, &pound;26; the first pays &pound;3 taxes
+on his tea and tobacco; the second pays only &pound;2; but the &pound;2 are obviously
+much the heavier charge. Or suppose that a British artisan has &pound;100 a
+year, and an Irish artisan no more than &pound;80; is not the first more lightly
+taxed than the second, if he contributes &pound;5 to the revenue against &pound;4? And
+the same thing happens if we ascend the social scale; the &pound;150 income tax
+paid by a British landlord of &pound;3000 a year is not felt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> by him to be such
+a charge as the &pound;50 paid by an Irish landlord of &pound;1000 a year; the same
+principle would extend to the profits of trade were there small sums in
+Ireland and large sums in Great Britain. Make taxes, therefore, as equal
+as possible, and make their incidence completely equal, still, in the case
+of a poor compared to a wealthy country, the real burden on the taxpayer
+will be very different; it was for this reason that the late Mr. Nassau
+Senior, an economist of no ordinary parts, pointedly remarked, as regards
+British and Irish taxation, &#8216;England is the most lightly taxed and Ireland
+the most heavily taxed country in Europe, although both are nominally
+liable to equal taxation: I do not believe that Ireland is a poor country
+because she is overtaxed, but I think she is overtaxed because she is
+poor.&#8217;<a name='fna_167' id='fna_167' href='#f_167'><small>[167]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>Ireland, therefore, on a full review of the argument, has been overtaxed
+at least between two and three millions sterling a year for certainly more
+than forty years; and this excess, as she is a very poor country, is, in
+her case especially severe. The trend of taxation, if the phrase may be
+employed, as we follow its course, during a long period, clearly indicates
+that she has suffered from grave financial wrong. In 1819-20, we have
+seen, the taxation of Great Britain was at the rate of &pound;3 13<i>s.</i> a head,
+that of Ireland being 15<i>s.</i> 5<i>d.</i>; the proportion was &pound;2 13<i>s.</i> 1<i>d.</i> and
+&pound;1 6<i>s.</i> 7<i>d.</i> in 1859-60; in 1893 it was &pound;2 4<i>s.</i> and &pound;1 8<i>s.</i>; in other
+words, the imposts of the wealthy country were progressively decreased,
+while the imposts of the poor country were progressively raised. This
+distinction, no doubt, has been partly due to the fact that the population
+of Great Britain has been largely augmented, and the population of Ireland
+has been enormously reduced in numbers; the charge in Great Britain has
+been distributed among ever growing millions, the charge in Ireland has
+been concentrated upon ever lessening thousands; but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> this will not nearly
+account for the difference; &#8216;the wealthier country&#8217; it has been
+caustically said, &#8216;was taxed less and less as it became more wealthy; the
+poorer country was burdened more and more as its poverty increased.&#8217;<a name='fna_168' id='fna_168' href='#f_168'><small>[168]</small></a>
+And the overcharge on Ireland is all the more grievous because it owed its
+origin to the policy of free trade; and this policy has been a
+questionable boon to Ireland, while to Great Britain it has been an
+immense benefit. No doubt the cheapening of the price of the necessaries
+and of some of the conveniences of life, which has been one of the results
+of free trade, has been a great advantage to the Irish labourer, artisan,
+and mere cottar peasant; but free trade has been injurious to the real
+Irish farmer and the Irish landlord, and to most of the classes connected
+with the land; and the land is the main source of the scanty wealth of
+Ireland. Free trade, on the other hand, has been a principal cause of the
+extraordinary development of the material welfare of England which has
+been witnessed during the last fifty years; it has doubled and trebled her
+gigantic manufactures and trade, if her agriculture is by no means
+flourishing. This striking contrast gives pain to right-minded Irishmen;
+they feel, as Grattan predicted would be the case, that their country&#8217;s
+interests have been sacrificed to British commerce; and the following
+observations are essentially true and just: &#8216;The change&#8217; (from protection
+to free trade) &#8216;has not been so advantageous to Ireland, a country in
+which there is but little trade or manufacturing industry, as it has been
+to England; although, as consumers, the Irish population may have gained
+in some cases by the abolition of the duties on foodstuffs, yet, on the
+other hand, as producers, chiefly dependent on agriculture, they have lost
+in a far greater degree by the cheap prices in the British markets,
+produced, in part at least, by the free and untaxed supply of foreign
+corn, live stock, dead meat, butter, cheese, eggs,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> and other articles of
+food.... It may even perhaps be said that just as Ireland suffered in the
+last century from the protective and exclusive commercial policy of Great
+Britain, so she has been at a disadvantage in this century from the
+adoption of an almost unqualified free trade policy for the United
+Kingdom.&#8217;<a name='fna_169' id='fna_169' href='#f_169'><small>[169]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>Many attempts, I have said, have been made to answer the conclusive Report
+of the Childers Commission, to carp at its proceedings, to challenge its
+statements, to deny that Ireland has been largely overtaxed; but, with
+scarcely an exception, they have been grotesque failures. I need hardly
+notice an audacious sally, which has been turned to account in the House
+of Commons, and has split the ears of the groundlings in different parts
+of England. England, the argument runs, has been too kind to Ireland;
+Ireland pays no land tax and sundry other duties; in other respects she is
+equally taxed with Great Britain; she has not even a semblance of a real
+complaint; and&mdash;exactly in the manner of Swift&#8217;s satire&mdash;&#8216;let her hold her
+tongue, or it may be the worse for her.&#8217; Ireland, no doubt, &#8216;assimilated
+as she has been in finance,&#8217; is free from some charges imposed on England;
+she has still &#8216;exemptions and abatements&#8217; which, to some extent, preserve
+her rights under the Treaty of Union, and show that she is still
+financially a distinct country, as has been recognised by every leading
+British statesman, from the day of Pitt to the day of Mr. Gladstone. But
+the English land tax, properly speaking, is not a tax at all; it is a
+rent-charge for centuries payable by the land; at all events, the Irish
+Crown and quit rents may be set off against it; and, as to the other taxes
+referred to, the cost of collection in Ireland would exceed the returns;
+it would be a case of <i>in Thesauro nihil</i>, as in Plantagenet times.
+Another argument, of which the late Mr. Lowe was the author, is more
+plausible, and has done better service; but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> it is not the less shallow
+and false sophistry, when brought to the test. Taxation, it is said, falls
+on populations only; it is sheer nonsense to say that it falls on
+countries; it is not levied from Great Britain and Ireland; it is levied
+from the inhabitants within their borders. But the Englishman, the
+Scotsman, and the Irishman are equally taxed; the Irishman, indeed, has a
+small advantage; equality of taxation is the rule in this matter; and
+obviously equality is the same thing as equity. An English landlord in
+Kent, a Scotch landlord in Perthshire, an Irish landlord in Kildare, pay
+the same income tax on the same rentals; so does a merchant in London, a
+merchant in Edinburgh, a merchant in Belfast, on the same profits; and the
+same principle extends to all other classes. A farmer in Surrey, a crofter
+in Argyleshire, a shopkeeper in Galway, pay exactly the same tax on a
+gallon of rum, a gallon of whiskey, a hogshead of beer; the charge is the
+same for each commodity in the three households. This Irish grievance,
+therefore, is a mere delusion; it is a sickly phantom that vanishes in the
+light of the day.</p>
+
+<p>That taxation falls on populations and not on areas of land is a truism
+really never disputed; the use of the word &#8216;countries,&#8217; in this sense, is
+a mere popular phrase. This argument keeps out of sight the fact that
+equal taxes, however equally imposed, are much heavier in the case of a
+poor than of a rich community; but, waiving this objection, it is a sheer
+fallacy. If two populations had exactly the same tastes, used the same
+commodities in the same proportions, and were in the possession of the
+same resources; equality of taxation, if equally applied, would probably
+be essentially just. But if two populations have different tastes, if they
+differ in the use of even the same commodities, and if their resources are
+very different, and especially if equal taxation be not equally applied,
+this apparent equality, far from being equity, may become plain, nay, very
+grave iniquity. This may be made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> intelligible, at a glance, by the
+consideration of a few instances easily conceived. Impose an equal tax on
+coals in England and Ireland: would the charge fall equally on Englishmen
+in a land of coal and on Irishmen in a land of peat mosses? Tax Londoners
+and Parisians at the same rate on coffee: would the Londoner, who drinks
+comparatively little coffee, be as heavily mulcted as the Parisian, who
+drinks a great deal? Or suppose that light taxes were laid on articles
+that suit Englishmen, and enter into the consumption of the millions of
+England, and that heavy taxes were laid on articles that suit Irishmen,
+and are consumed by the Irish millions: would not this system favour
+Englishmen, and injure Irishmen, though the taxes on all these articles
+were the same in both countries? Examples by the hundred might be brought
+forward; these suffice to prove that equality of taxation, as between
+communities, differing from each other in the conditions and circumstances
+of life, and notably if the incidence of this taxation is not the same,
+may be made to effect the grossest injustice. And this financial wrong has
+been done, to a very great extent, if we compare the taxation of Great
+Britain and Ireland. The consumption of tea and tobacco by the head is
+nearly the same in both countries; the taxes on these commodities are the
+same; admit that this is equitable in a certain sense, though the impost
+is relatively more burdensome on the poor community. The consumption of
+spirits by the head, also, is much the same for the Three Kingdoms; the
+taxation is precisely the same; this, for the sake of argument, I will
+call justice. But the consumption of beer by the head in Great Britain is
+about double what it is in Ireland; probably ten Englishmen drink beer
+compared to one Irishman; whiskey is the ordinary spirituous drink of
+Irishmen. Now, the taxes on beer and on whiskey are the same in Great
+Britain and Ireland; but the tax on beer, measured by the alcoholic
+standard,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> is about six times lower than the tax on whiskey;<a name='fna_170' id='fna_170' href='#f_170'><small>[170]</small></a> beer,
+therefore, compared with whiskey is greatly undertaxed; whiskey compared
+with beer is greatly overtaxed; the ordinary drink of Englishmen is
+treated differently from the ordinary drink of Irishmen, one being
+encouraged, the other discouraged; though the taxes on each commodity may
+be everywhere the same, the equality of taxation manifestly results in
+wrong. The difference amounts to a very large sum; it is one of the causes
+that Ireland is overtaxed.<a name='fna_171' id='fna_171' href='#f_171'><small>[171]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>Equality of taxation may, therefore, be not equity; it may, as I have
+said, be sheer iniquity; and this is emphatically the case with respect to
+Ireland. This system is productive of gross injustice as regards what may
+be deemed the popular Irish drink; but arguments to support it have not
+been wanting; they have been complacently gulped down at several public
+meetings, it is unnecessary to add within the borders of England. The
+&#8216;mere Irish,&#8217; it is said, have shocking bad tastes; let<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> them take beer
+instead of whiskey and they can have no grievance; besides, whiskey is a
+nasty and unwholesome thing; it is in mercy to them that it is excessively
+taxed. Is it possible that people who utter this stuff do not see that
+sumptuary legislation of extreme harshness, nay, persecution of the worst
+kind, may be justified on the same class of premises? Suppose that
+Napoleon, in the plenitude of his power, had declared that the Parisians
+did not know what was good for them, and had heavily taxed their coffee to
+make them drink tea, even Austerlitz would not have saved the Empire.
+Marie Antoinette actually made an attempt to banish from her Court the
+velvets and silks of Lyons, and to make it adopt the cambrics and muslins
+of Belgium; she would have been too glad to see the first taxed and the
+second duty free, for she thought the French taste for heavy and gorgeous
+apparel bad; she only aroused the indignation of Versailles. Or say that
+the priests of the Jove of the Capitol had argued in this way: &#8216;Really
+these detestable Christians are fools for worshipping a crucified Jew;
+they have only to bow down to C&aelig;sar to escape the lions; otherwise they
+have themselves alone to blame.&#8217; Nay, coming nearer home, might not a holy
+prelate of the Irish Established Church in the eighteenth century have
+reconciled the penal code to his conscience, by whispering to himself that
+the deluded Papists had but to give up their vain superstitions, and to
+conform to the pure well of faith that had its source in the Castle, and
+that then they would be no longer outlaws; but let them take the
+consequences if they were blind to their best interests on earth and in
+heaven. In fact, any act of despotism on the part of the State might be
+vindicated on these very laudable principles; but on this matter of the
+taxation of Irish whiskey I shall confine myself to a single remark.
+Reverse the cases of England and Ireland with respect to the imposts on
+beer and on whiskey; tax beer very heavily and whiskey very lightly;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> and
+what would Englishmen say of an argument that has been thought good enough
+for Irishmen; how long would a Government exist that would try to carry
+out such a policy? In truth, this reasoning, if it can be so called, is
+the worst kind of sophistry: the frank brutality of the Roman proconsul,
+who told the population of a subject province that they must endure their
+burdens as they would endure the rain and the tempest, is less censurable,
+to my mind at least, than this compound of absurd and offensive insolence.</p>
+
+<p>Another argument, really of no greater value, has had many supporters in
+the House of Commons. True it is, it is admitted, that, compared with
+Great Britain, Ireland has been hardly treated in finance; but this is
+because she is a poor country, and a poor country must suffer from
+taxation, fair as it may be, more than a wealthy country. But the same
+inequality is seen in England: Dorset and Wiltshire are more heavily
+burdened than Yorkshire and Lancashire, yet Dorset and Wiltshire make no
+complaints as Ireland does. This argument, however, ignores history, and
+sets the Treaty of Union at nought; Dorset and Wiltshire are mere
+fractions of England; Ireland has always been financially a distinct
+country, entitled to separate financial rights; and this has been
+recognised by the ablest British statesmen, notably, of late years, by Mr.
+Goschen, and by Mr. Gladstone. This reasoning, in a word, assumes that
+Ireland is merely an aggregate of British counties; but this has never
+been her true financial position; it is easy to sneer at the phrase
+&#8216;separate entity&#8217; by which she has been called, that is, a land,
+financially, apart from Great Britain, but sneers cannot get the better of
+facts. These statements of distinguished English experts are
+unquestionable in view of the record of history. Lord Farrer has remarked:
+&#8216;It is abundantly clear that of the two conflicting theories&mdash;viz. the one
+which regards Great Britain and Ireland as one country for the purpose of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+taxation and expenditure, and the other which regards Great Britain and
+Ireland as separate partners&mdash;the second is the one upon which our
+instructions are founded; the one which has the greatest support in
+history, and the one upon which all parties in Parliament have recently
+acted.&#8217;<a name='fna_172' id='fna_172' href='#f_172'><small>[172]</small></a> And Mr. Childers completely concurs: &#8216;If apart from the
+reference, it is asked why a distinction should be taken between Great
+Britain and Ireland any more than between Kent and Yorkshire, the answer
+is that Ireland entered into a partnership with Great Britain under a
+formal Treaty of Union, which did, to a certain extent, by the recognition
+of the claim of Ireland to abatements and exemptions, if circumstances
+should require, maintain the position of Ireland as entitled to separate
+treatment as a whole, so far as relates to taxation. It must also be
+recollected that, as a matter of fact, Ireland has, at all times since the
+Union, in various degrees received such separate treatment. Ireland,
+therefore, cannot be regarded as merely a group of counties of the United
+Kingdom.&#8217;<a name='fna_173' id='fna_173' href='#f_173'><small>[173]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>Two other arguments may be ascribed to the ingenuity, if this is the true
+word, of the Treasury; but the first rests on a gross misrepresentation of
+fact, the other upon a false theory; both, with a slight reservation, may
+be dismissed as hopeless. Ireland, it is said, may possibly be
+overtaxed&mdash;admit this for the sake of argument&mdash;but she has had more than
+her fair share of loans from the State; a considerable part of these has
+been freely remitted; this has not been the case in England and Scotland;
+a large counterclaim, therefore, may be made against her. &#8216;Out of a total
+sum of about one hundred and nineteen millions and a half advanced in the
+United Kingdom, a little over fifty-two millions, or 43.7 per cent., has
+been advanced to Ireland, and of this, so large a proportion as one-fifth,
+or over ten millions, had to be remitted, or treated as a free grant,
+whilst only one fifty-eighth part of the advances made to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> Great Britain
+were so treated.&#8217;<a name='fna_174' id='fna_174' href='#f_174'><small>[174]</small></a> So far as these loans have been advances for the
+real good of Ireland, for example, for the promotion of reproductive
+works-these may fairly be taken into account; but millions have been
+misapplied and wasted or spent in the unproductive relief of
+distress;<a name='fna_175' id='fna_175' href='#f_175'><small>[175]</small></a> these sums probably are greater than the excess made out by
+the Treasury. As regards the remission of the &pound;10,000,000, the assertion
+relied on is simply deceptive. Not less than &pound;4,000,000 of this sum
+represent the fund the extinction of which was the consideration of
+putting the income tax on Ireland by Mr. Gladstone; and, as the charge of
+that tax has been since more than &pound;23,000,000, it savours of impudence to
+call this a remission; it was writing off a doubtful debt to justify a new
+and portentous burden. The residue of the &pound;10,000,000 is composed of
+advances that have been misspent or spent on purposes really not Irish;
+these were not remitted in the proper acceptation of the word. &#8216;The
+remaining portion of the ten millions of alleged remissions of loans
+consists mainly of remissions of the repayment of expenditure by the Board
+of Works, where it was shown that such expenditure had been wasteful, and
+of advances to the clergy and laity of the Established Church of Ireland,
+which advances Parliament, by legislation, deprived them of the ability of
+repaying. Altogether it would appear, from Sir Edward Hamilton&#8217;s evidence,
+that in reality only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> about one million out of the ten corresponded in
+their character to the advances made to Great Britain, and that
+consequently the proportion of real remissions of loans to Ireland did not
+differ very materially from that of the proportion of the remission in
+Great Britain.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>The second argument appears to be more plausible; but it is mischievous,
+in a high degree, and dangerous; except to a slight extent, it is
+completely fallacious. Ireland, it is allowed, contributes from &pound;7,300,000
+to &pound;7,800,000 to the exchequer; but of this sum &pound;5,000,000 and upwards are
+expended on her; she really hardly pays &pound;2,000,000 to the State; the
+&pound;5,000,000 therefore, or nearly all this sum, create a just counterclaim
+against her, even admitting she is excessively taxed. This expenditure on
+Ireland, it is contended, is for Irish &#8216;local&#8217; purposes; it is not
+expenditure for &#8216;Imperial&#8217; purposes; the account, as between Great Britain
+and Ireland, is to be taken as if all this expenditure, or nearly so, were
+purely local. But is not the expenditure for keeping up the
+Lord-Lieutenant and his Court, is not the expenditure on the government
+and administration of Ireland, essentially, and in the main, Imperial, and
+not local in a legitimate sense, so long as the United Kingdom exists? Is
+it not as Imperial, at least for the most part, as the expenditure on the
+British army and navy and on the government and administration of England
+and Scotland is Imperial, and not, properly speaking, local? This argument
+could be retorted with decisive effect, if urged in the interest of
+Ireland against Great Britain. If this kind of expenditure in Ireland is
+held to be local, not Imperial, the same rule must apply to England and
+Scotland; this expenditure in their case must be local and not Imperial.
+Why, then, should Ireland contribute to such charges as public works in
+Edinburgh and London, as the maintenance of the great English dockyards
+and harbours, as the cost of the army and navy outside Ireland, and of the
+government and administration<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> of England and Scotland? Clearly on the
+Treasury hypothesis she should not contribute; and if she does, she has an
+immense counterclaim, so far as her contributions are applied to these
+local objects. But, in truth, this whole argument, when examined, is a
+mere sophism. The revenues of the Three Kingdoms are paid into a common
+exchequer; they are distributed according to the uses of the State; this
+expenditure, as a general rule, must be held to be Imperial, not local,
+and cannot give a part of the Three Kingdoms a right to make a claim
+against another. The State spends millions on London which it does not
+spend on Surrey; it spends millions in Hants which it does not spend in
+Berkshire: does this circumstance give Surrey or Berkshire a title to say
+we can make a demand on London and Hants? Precisely in the same way, the
+expenditure of the State on Ireland, as contra-distinguished from that on
+Great Britain, cannot, at least as a general principle, give Great Britain
+a right to make a counterclaim on Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>It is unnecessary to point out how this theory has a tendency to create
+local and even national ill-will; to set parts of one country against
+other parts, and two countries against each other; it distinctly alienates
+Ireland from Great Britain; as I have said, it is full of mischief and
+peril. In truth, however, it is a mere device to excuse the overcharge of
+Irish taxation; it has never entered the minds of statesmen. Nothing can
+be more certain than that every great British financier, from the day of
+Pitt to the day of Peel, and to the day of Mr. Gladstone, has regarded the
+expenditure of the Three Kingdoms, as this is paid into a common
+exchequer, as a general fund to be allocated as the State requires; and
+has not regarded it as a fund, under local heads, to be laid out in
+separate districts, so as to give any one district a counterclaim against
+another. I quote from a report of one of the members of the Childers
+Commissions: &#8216;A division of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> expenditure of the United Kingdom into
+&#8220;charge for Irish purposes&#8221; and &#8220;Imperial expenditure,&#8221; cannot be made
+under the system of finance embodied in the constitution established by
+the Legislative Union. All expenditure under that system is &#8220;expenditure
+of the United Kingdom,&#8221; or, to express it more briefly, &#8220;Imperial
+expenditure;&#8221; and all Imperial expenditure is defrayed from the common
+fund of the Imperial Exchequer. If a part of the Imperial expenditure be
+described as a charge &#8220;for Irish purposes,&#8221; this classification does not
+affect the fact that it is Imperial expenditure, and charged as such upon
+the whole Imperial revenue. To regard this expenditure as non-Imperial, to
+deduct it from the particular revenue contributed by Ireland to Imperial
+expenditure, to treat the fraction of Irish revenue left as if it were the
+whole of the Irish contribution to Imperial expenditure, and to regard
+Imperial expenditure itself as not including &#8220;the charge for Irish
+purposes,&#8221; would be to do what the Constitution does not sanction: it
+would be to deal with the revenue and expenditure of the United Kingdom as
+if the revenues of Great Britain and Ireland were raised and administered
+by separate authorities, each of which, having first, out of its own
+revenue, defrayed its separate charges, then applied the balance to
+payment of common expenses, which, in that case, would be properly
+classified as Imperial.&#8217;<a name='fna_176' id='fna_176' href='#f_176'><small>[176]</small></a> And the evidence of Sir Robert Giffen is to
+the same effect: &#8216;The opinion which I have formed is that, on the whole,
+it is not possible to make the distinction between the different objects
+of Imperial expenditure which is made in some of these discussions; that,
+in fact, all the expenditure by an Imperial Government is to be considered
+expenditure for Imperial purposes, and although part of it may be spent
+locally, you cannot in any way call it expenditure for the special benefit
+of that locality.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> It is expenditure for the general objects of the
+Imperial Government.&#8217;<a name='fna_177' id='fna_177' href='#f_177'><small>[177]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The theory of the Treasury is thus essentially false; but accidentally, it
+contains, I think, a residuum of truth. When, as between two countries,
+one pays a considerable sum, exclusively or mainly from local rates, and
+the same charge in the other country is for the most part defrayed from
+Imperial taxation by the State, it appears to me that a portion of the sum
+so paid by the State may give one country a counterclaim against the other
+to some extent. This is the case as between Great Britain and Ireland; the
+cost of national education and of the police force is largely discharged
+in Great Britain by local rates; in Ireland it amounts to about
+&pound;2,700,000, and is mainly defrayed from Imperial taxes; this may create a
+counterclaim against Ireland within reasonable limits at least. No doubt
+the charge of bringing up the young of the poorer classes and of
+maintaining public order by a suitable force, ought largely to be an
+Imperial charge; but when in one community it is chiefly borne by local
+funds, and in another it is chiefly borne by the common Exchequer of both,
+this seems to give the first community a partial claim against the second.
+This counterclaim, such as it is, has been reckoned, in addition to a sum
+for free grants, at about &pound;500,000 a year by the Childers Commission; but
+it did not thoroughly go into the subject; this estimate is believed to be
+too low by well-informed persons; the counterclaim has been calculated to
+be about &pound;1,000,000 sterling. Lord Salisbury&#8217;s Government, we have seen,
+promised to appoint a second Commission to examine this question at
+length, besides some other financial questions suggested by the Report of
+the Childers Commission; for some unknown reason it has not redeemed its
+pledge; it is very desirable that it should redeem it. Apart from the
+mischief of a delay approaching<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> a breach of public faith, the only
+inference that can be drawn, if this promise is broken, is that the
+Government accepts the view in this matter of the Childers Commission.</p>
+
+<p>The Childers Commission has conclusively proved that Ireland is much too
+highly taxed; whatever counterclaim may be made against this excess, the
+overcharge can be little less than two millions a year. The arguments
+urged against this conclusion are mere leather and prunella that may be
+brushed aside; the Report of the Commission has had the sanction of nearly
+all economists of a high order. By all means let another Commission strike
+a balance after making every fair allowance; but if it shall be struck, as
+it must be in Ireland&#8217;s favour, the only real question for impartial men
+will be how it shall be best discharged. Ireland has practically
+acquiesced for years in fiscal injustice; in any view of the case she has
+no right to call for a change in our whole system of finance for her
+special benefit. Still less has she a right to demand that her customs and
+excise duties should be placed at a lower level than those of Great
+Britain; this would raise a mischievous barrier between the two countries;
+this policy would be, perhaps, impossible; if possible, it would probably
+injure Ireland greatly in the long run. The only remaining alternative is
+to leave our existing fiscal system intact, but to make an annual grant
+from the exchequer for Irish uses, as compensation for excessive taxation;
+this has the support of the Childers Commission. &#8216;The third method, and
+that which most strongly recommends itself to our judgment, is to give
+compensation to Ireland by making an annual allocation of revenue in their
+favour, to be employed in promoting the material prosperity and social
+welfare of the country.&#8217;<a name='fna_178' id='fna_178' href='#f_178'><small>[178]</small></a> It is difficult to suppose, should a large
+yearly sum be found to be due to Ireland, as affairs now stand, that
+Parliament will refuse to pay honourably a just debt; it would be a
+shameful act to repudiate an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> obligation of the kind. Years ago Pitt
+declared in his characteristic style that &#8216;Ireland might safely rely on
+Great Britain for the discharge of any fair claim on her; the liberality,
+the justice, the honour of the people of Great Britain have never been
+found deficient.&#8217; The time has come to test the value of this pledge; it
+has been announced by the highest authority, in which English opinion
+largely prevails, that Ireland has been immensely overtaxed for years:
+will the &#8216;people of Great Britain&#8217; give effect to this judgment, and make
+good a claim which hardly admits of a doubt? The demand of Ireland, no
+doubt, is not sustained by violent agitation and the shouts of multitudes;
+but it is backed by all that is best in Irish opinion; it rests upon the
+simplest financial justice. It is dangerous to treat a demand such as this
+with contempt, and still more so with weak sophistry; not that Ireland can
+make an effective resistance to fiscal wrong, however clearly proved; and
+I for one deprecate rhodomontade about &#8216;the Boston tea-ships.&#8217; But a claim
+may have great moral force, though it be not supported by physical power;
+the disregard of this claim would provoke well-informed Irishmen, and
+weaken the Union perhaps greatly; and, after all, is it a seemly sight, is
+it becoming in the eyes of the world, that the richest country in Europe
+should practically impose an iniquitous burden upon the poorest?</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<p class="center"><span class="large">THE QUESTIONS OF IRISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND EDUCATION&mdash;OTHER QUESTIONS&mdash;CONCLUSION</span></p>
+
+<div class="note"><p class="hang">Irish county government&mdash;The grand jury system in the eighteenth
+century&mdash;Its merits and defects&mdash;The grand jury system in the
+nineteenth century, and especially since 1836&mdash;The Irish poor law
+system&mdash;Elected and <i>ex-officio</i> guardians&mdash;The local government of
+cities and towns in Ireland&mdash;Municipal institutions founded in Ireland
+by the Norman kings&mdash;Why they did not prosper&mdash;Boroughs and
+municipalities founded by James I. and the Stuarts&mdash;Their condition in
+the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries&mdash;The Municipal Reform Act of
+1840&mdash;The Towns Commissioners Acts&mdash;Attempts to reform the municipal
+system of local government in Ireland&mdash;The Local Government of Ireland
+Act, 1898&mdash;Complete change in Irish local government&mdash;The County
+Councils&mdash;The County Borough Councils&mdash;The District, Rural, and the
+Urban District Councils&mdash;Their functions, rights, and duties&mdash;All
+these bodies placed on a democratic basis&mdash;Attitude of the County
+Councils in the southern provinces&mdash;Education in Ireland&mdash;History of
+primary education&mdash;The national system of education&mdash;The principles on
+which it is founded&mdash;How it has worked, and what its results have
+been&mdash;Secondary education in Ireland&mdash;Its history&mdash;Its present
+condition very imperfect&mdash;The Intermediate Education Act&mdash;University
+education in Ireland&mdash;Its history&mdash;Trinity College&mdash;The Queen&#8217;s
+Colleges and the Queen&#8217;s University founded by Peel&mdash;Their comparative
+failure&mdash;Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s Bill to reform University education in
+Ireland&mdash;Its glaring errors and failure&mdash;Trinity College thrown open
+in 1873&mdash;The Royal University founded in 1879&mdash;Present state of
+University education in Ireland&mdash;The true principles of reform&mdash;Other
+Irish questions&mdash;Conclusion.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>That local government in Ireland should still be a &#8216;Present Irish
+Question,&#8217; may appear strange to persons<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> only versed in the mere routine
+of politics. The subject has been before Parliament for nearly thirty
+years; it has engaged the attention of more than one of its Committees;
+Butt endeavoured, to no purpose, to legislate on it. In 1892 Lord
+Salisbury&#8217;s Government brought in a measure which aimed at transforming
+the whole system of administering local affairs in Ireland; but it had
+unquestionable defects and was vehemently opposed; unfortunately, as I
+believe, it was permitted to drop. Six years afterwards, that is, in 1898,
+the greater part of a parliamentary session was employed in dealing with
+the question again; a Bill became law which placed Irish local government,
+in all its departments, upon a new basis, and completely changed the
+characteristics it had had for centuries. The measure was to be a <i>ne plus
+ultra</i>; it was extolled by applauding partisans as a magnificent scheme of
+popular reform; these have since, over and over again, declared that its
+success has been more than manifest. It is too soon to pronounce, with
+anything like confidence, on what its ultimate results may be, or even to
+say, with certainty, how it will practically work; but enough has already
+been made apparent to cause thoughtful and fair-minded Irishmen to regard
+the changes it has effected with grave misgivings; to question the
+principles on which it rests, or at least the wisdom of applying them to
+Ireland as she now is; and to ask whether it must not be amended if the
+social structure of Ireland is not to be still more violently disturbed,
+than it has been by the experiments that have been made on it. Besides,
+the local government and administration of every community, especially if
+formed on a popular type, affect its existence in many ways; strongly
+indicate what its opinions are, what its qualities, what its evident
+tendencies; in a word, largely represent its essential nature. It was not
+for nothing that in his survey of the Revolution in France, Burke did not
+confine himself to the sovereign assembly at Versailles, but turned his
+penetrating glance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> on the petty assemblies which had been set up in the
+new-made departments, for the conduct of their local affairs; these, he
+insisted, formed the truest expression of the mind of the people and of
+the leaders at its head. For these reasons, therefore, if we would
+understand Ireland, her local government is a &#8216;Present Irish Question;&#8217; it
+is a question, moreover, which, whatever may be said, in all probability
+has not been finally settled.</p>
+
+<p>In order to understand the subject, I must glance at the system of Irish
+local government, as this existed until, as it were, yesterday; I turn, in
+the first instance, to Irish county government. The beginnings of this
+scheme have been traced back to the time of Strafford; but it was not
+finally established until the reign of William III., when the subjugation
+of Ireland had been made complete. The Irish grand juries always had
+criminal jurisdiction in their countries like their English fellows; but
+unlike these they were now entrusted with almost absolute control over
+Irish county government. This was partly because they were representatives
+of the conquering race, by this time the owners of nine-tenths of the
+lands of the country; and partly because there was no local organisation
+in Ireland, like the English parish, which could give local influence to
+the conquered race. The grand juries were always composed of the leading
+landed gentry of their respective counties; they were nominated by the
+sheriffs, that is, by officials of the Central Government; they were
+wholly devoid of a popular element; and as no Catholic could have a share
+in their councils, until nearly the end of the eighteenth century, they
+embodied, in the fullest sense, the Protestant ascendency of the day,
+supreme in every sphere of authority in the State. The grand juries had
+almost the exclusive power of administering the local affairs of their
+counties, of managing their roads, public buildings, and police; and they
+levied the charges for these by a local rate, known as the county cess to
+this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> hour, and imposed almost wholly on the occupiers of the soil, that
+is, in five cases out of six on the Catholic peasantry, a striking
+instance of taxation without representation to check it. These assemblies
+of local magnates met twice a year at the assizes which were held in their
+counties. Miss Edgeworth has given us graphic accounts of them: how a seat
+on a grand jury was deemed a prize to be sometimes fought for; how the
+grand juries entertained the judges in state, and vied with these sages in
+their mighty potations; and how, while wretches were hanged and jurymen
+dined, the assize towns were scenes of not fastidious revelry. There was
+much jobbing, corruption, and waste in the administration of the counties
+in those days; much of the &#8216;scratch me, and I will scratch you;&#8217; much
+&#8216;give and take&#8217; at the cost of the ratepayers. But there was another and
+better side to the picture: the Irish gentry of the time had the faculty
+of command; they ruled their districts efficiently with their police; the
+public works for which they were responsible were usually good. Arthur
+Young has especially noticed that the roads they constructed were almost
+always well laid out and kept up.</p>
+
+<p>Catholics were not admitted on grand juries until the great Relief Act of
+1793, the first general relaxation of the execrable penal code. But the
+Catholic members of these bodies have always been few; the large majority
+of the Irish landlords remains still Protestant. The bureaucracy of the
+Castle, after the Union, began to encroach on the domain of the grand
+juries; at the same time the growing needs of the country made the
+expenditure on local affairs much larger. The grand juries lost much of
+their authority by degrees; they were more and more controlled by the
+Central Government, which supplanted them in a variety of ways; and they
+were ere long compelled to vote sums for public works of different kinds
+for the behoof of their counties. This change effectually checked
+corruption and jobbing; but as the requirements<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> of the counties
+increased, and the &#8216;imperative presentments,&#8217; as they were called, were
+augmented, the charge of the local rate or county cess became more
+onerous&mdash;it has advanced enormously in the last sixty years; and this was
+still mainly imposed on the Catholic peasantry. The civil or fiscal
+administration, which the grand juries possessed until 1898, was finally
+arranged by an Act of Parliament passed in 1836,<a name='fna_179' id='fna_179' href='#f_179'><small>[179]</small></a> supplemented, from
+time to time, by subsequent statutes. These bodies were composed of the
+same elements, and nominated by the sheriffs as before; and they had a
+general supervision over all the public works, roads, bridges, and
+buildings for public purposes, comprised within their different counties,
+including within these areas nearly all villages, and the large majority
+of the lesser towns. But they were made strictly dependent on the Central
+Government; this had the appointment of their chief officers; their
+accounts were subjected to a regular audit; and their &#8216;imperative
+presentments&#8217; were largely extended. They acquired, too, an additional
+jurisdiction in some respects, especially as regards inquiries into
+criminal injuries and compensating persons who had been sufferers, and as
+regards voting an extra police force in disturbed districts; but their old
+local police had disappeared, and had been replaced by the great central
+constabulary force. A change, too, was effected in the modes through which
+local rates were voted in the counties for public purposes. These sums
+were &#8216;presented&#8217; in the first instance at &#8216;baronial&#8217; and &#8216;county at large&#8217;
+sessions, held by county justices and ratepayers of substance; but these
+bodies were subordinate to the grand juries, and to a considerable extent
+drawn from the same classes; no popular element was infused in county
+government, and the grand juries were, in the last resort, supreme, within
+the limits which had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> been assigned to them. The local expenditure voted
+and assessed in this way was subject to examination by a judge of assize,
+who &#8216;fiated&#8217; it, as a general rule; and ratepayers had a right to
+challenge it, by a procedure called &#8216;a traverse,&#8217; which, however, was
+seldom turned to account.</p>
+
+<p>The Irish grand juries were thus oligarchic bodies, survivals of the
+Protestant ascendency of a bygone age, and with a tendency, in their later
+history, to become subordinate boards of the Castle. I pass on to the
+Irish poor law system, another considerable department of Irish local
+government. As we have seen, unlike what had been the case in England, no
+poor law existed in Ireland until 1838; the want of such a measure was one
+of the causes of the pressure of a huge mass of indigence on the soil
+before the catastrophe of 1845-47. The Irish poor law, with some marked
+distinctions, was analogous to the new English poor law, as it has long
+been called; it has now been in operation for about sixty years. The
+country was divided into a series of unions, which have varied from 130 to
+163 in number; at present there are 159 of these; these were the principal
+units for carrying the poor law system into effect. The unions were again
+subdivided into lesser districts, electoral divisions for the county,
+wards for the larger towns; the persons chosen to administer the poor law
+were taken from these areas; and the unions and all that pertained to them
+were placed under the control of the Central Government, represented by
+the Local Government Board of Ireland. The persons returned from the
+electoral divisions and the wards were selected by the votes of the
+ratepayers, and were known as the elected guardians; a popular element was
+thus introduced into the administration of the law, which had never been
+introduced into Irish county government. The vote of the ratepayers,
+however, was cumulative, not single; the largest ratepayers had the most<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>
+votes, a safeguard, it has been assumed, for property; and the elected
+guardians, in theory at least, were balanced by an equal number of
+<i>ex-officio</i> guardians, composed of magistrates within the unions. The
+chief duties of the elected and the <i>ex-officio</i> guardians, collectively
+known as Boards of Guardians, were to provide for the wants of the poor,
+and to assess and levy poor rates for that purpose; but many other duties
+were gradually imposed on them, the principal of these being the care of
+the sanitary state of the lesser towns within their districts. There was a
+marked difference between the incidence of the poor rate and of the county
+rate, or cess, of the grand juries. The county cess, we have seen, was
+mainly a charge on the Catholic occupiers of the soil, the poor rate was,
+to a very considerable extent, a charge on the owners, for the most part
+Protestants; for the landlord was bound to pay the whole poor rate in the
+case of the pettiest holdings, and to allow his tenants half the poor rate
+in the case of other holdings; by these means the burden of at least half
+the poor rate, it is believed, was borne by the Irish landed gentry. It
+should be added that the elected guardians have practically had the
+administration of the poor law in their hands; the <i>ex-officio</i> guardians,
+especially of late years, took little part in it.<a name='fna_180' id='fna_180' href='#f_180'><small>[180]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>I turn from the administration of local rural affairs in Ireland to that
+of its chief cities and its towns. The Irish towns, conquered and settled
+by the Danes, had, perhaps, a kind of municipal government; the
+Plantagenet kings conferred municipal rights as freely in Ireland as they
+did in England. Thus Dublin received a charter from John, modelled on that
+of his &#8216;liegemen of Bristol;&#8217; Limerick, Waterford, Kilkenny, and several
+other towns were incorporated and given powers of self-government at
+different periods of the Middle Ages. But the municipal life and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> the
+municipal spirit which grew up and gained strength in the thriving towns
+of England, and secured for them a large measure of local liberty, had
+hardly any existence in a land like Ireland, distracted by feudal and
+tribal anarchy; the corporate cities and towns of Ireland fell into the
+hands of great Anglo-Norman nobles and Celtic chiefs, and seem to have all
+but lost their local franchises. During the long agony of the sixteenth
+century, when Ireland was devastated by a horrible strife of race and
+faith, these privileges were still further effaced; at the death of
+Elizabeth the Irish municipal centres, with the exception of the capital,
+were mere names and shadows. A great change took place when the subjugated
+land passed under the domination of the first Stuarts. English law was now
+extended over the whole of Ireland; a colonial caste of settlers was
+becoming lords of the soil; the Government was conducted by the men at the
+Castle, ruling through a Parliament largely composed of the new settlers.
+James I. created forty-six Irish boroughs with a stroke of the pen, and
+gave them a representation in the Parliament and municipal rights; but
+these, for the most part, were mere villages; they obtained their large
+privileges solely in order to support &#8216;the English interest,&#8217; as it was
+called, in the Irish House of Commons. This system was continued by the
+later Stuarts; besides Dublin and the larger towns of Ireland, there were
+about a hundred of these petty municipalities and parliamentary boroughs
+in the eighteenth century. These places, however, could have no municipal
+freedom, and were wholly devoid of municipal feeling; they became nearly
+all the mere appanages of the neighbouring leading families; and, with
+hardly an exception, they were extreme types of the Protestant ascendency
+which prevailed everywhere. Something of the same kind was witnessed in
+England, under the aristocratic rule of that age, but there was the
+difference between a sorry caricature and a picture; the great cities<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> and
+the better towns of England still retained an ample measure of municipal
+liberty, and, especially, did not lose the municipal spirit; the exact
+contrary was the case in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>A large majority of the little Irish boroughs were deprived of their
+parliamentary representation at the Union, but they retained their nominal
+municipal rights. They still remained under the control of the chief
+landed gentry; and they became, as indeed they had always been, centres of
+maladministration, corruption, and peculation of all kinds. When, after
+the passing of the great Reform Act of 1832, statesmen directed their
+minds to the questions of corporate and municipal reform in England, they
+naturally turned their minds to Ireland also, where this reform was
+notoriously still more imperative. After the publication of a masterly
+report in 1834-35, which thoroughly illustrated the whole subject, the
+abuses in the Irish corporations were shown to be such&mdash;they were enormous
+even in the cities and larger towns&mdash;that Peel, the leader of the
+Opposition, actually gave them up; he proposed to deprive the corporate
+towns of all municipal rights and franchises, and to place them under the
+authority of Commissioners appointed by the Crown. This plan, however, was
+rejected by the Melbourne Government, and was not sanctioned by the House
+of Commons; after a long and angry controversy, which continued for years,
+a measure became law as late as 1840; and by this, with the exception of
+ten, all the corporate towns of Ireland lost their municipal rights, and
+were thus left without any power of self-government. With respect even to
+the ten still enfranchised towns, their old privileges were greatly
+curtailed and were transferred to the Central Government; and their
+municipal liberties were restricted and narrowed. They retained, indeed,
+many rights of self-government; but the municipal franchise was placed at
+a high level; the great body of the townsmen did not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> possess it; and they
+were subject to the supervision of the Local Government Board, that is, of
+the Central Government, to a considerable extent at least. True municipal
+life, and the municipal sentiment, could not, therefore, become well
+developed, in the case of towns under such conditions; they showed but few
+symptoms of the wonderful growth of prosperity and power which has been
+such a marked feature in the history of the great corporate towns of
+England, in what may be called the Victorian age, though, no doubt, the
+cases were widely different&mdash;poor Ireland could not, in this respect,
+compete with wealthy and progressive England. The deficiency of corporate
+towns in Ireland was felt ere long to be such, that, in 1854, and
+subsequent years, municipal rights were, in some measure, extended to
+nearly a hundred of these towns. These places were governed by bodies
+called Town Commissioners elected by a kind of popular vote; but the
+authority of these bodies has never been large; the municipal franchise
+was very high; and these towns were also under the Irish Local Government
+Board.</p>
+
+<p>Municipal institutions, like others of English origin, had thus, from a
+variety of causes, when transferred to Ireland, only a stunted, imperfect,
+and maimed existence. We may briefly glance at the operation of the system
+of rural and urban local government, of which we have endeavoured to
+sketch the outlines. Except, perhaps, in the instance of criminal
+injuries, and of the compensation to be adjudged by them, where they did
+not always give proof of a judicial spirit, the grand juries, for upwards
+of two generations, administered county affairs very well; they were
+economical, prudent, and jealous of expense, if the public buildings they
+sanctioned were, occasionally, too costly; but the system was an
+anachronism, and had had its day. In ordinary times the Irish poor law was
+reasonably well administered by the Boards of Guardians, as well,
+probably, as was the case in England; they were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> rather parsimonious in
+assessing rates, and gave little attention to the sanitary state of their
+towns, but, on the whole, there was not much cause to complain of them;
+and the Irish people, it must be recollected, have never liked the poor
+law. The local administration of the cities and the larger towns of
+Ireland was worse&mdash;a notable exception was seen in Belfast; but these, as
+a rule, gave proof of the restricted system on which their government had
+been formed; the results appeared in a high death rate, in bad supplies of
+water, in crowds of squalid and deserted dwellings&mdash;in a word, in
+stagnation and a want of progress, if other and powerful causes concurred.
+When the movement conducted by Parnell acquired strength, almost a
+revolution passed over the seats of Irish local government, where these,
+except in Ulster, possessed a popular element. Parnell called on the
+Boards of Guardians, the Corporations, and the Town Commissioners, in
+places where the &#8216;people&#8217; had any effective voice, to rally round the Land
+and the National Leagues; he achieved remarkable success in the three
+provinces of the south. This was especially made manifest in the Boards of
+Guardians, composed largely of farmers of substance, and in which the
+<i>ex-officio</i> guardians had little real power; these bodies set a crusade
+against the landed gentry on foot; marked them out for plunder in many
+ways; encouraged &#8216;boycotting&#8217; and defiance of the law; gave a free rein to
+rebellious utterances of many kinds; and denounced Irish &#8216;landlordism&#8217; and
+British rule in Ireland, as fiercely as they had been denounced at Land
+and National League gatherings.<a name='fna_181' id='fna_181' href='#f_181'><small>[181]</small></a> The same phenomena appeared in many
+of the corporate and inferior towns: the Corporation of Dublin indulged in
+anti-British threats and speeches; the Corporation of Limerick refused to
+pay a lawful tax;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> the Corporation of Cork proclaimed itself supreme in a
+&#8216;rebel&#8217; city; the example was generally followed in the lesser towns of
+the south; in short, these bodies became centres of sedition, socialism,
+and resistance to the law, and widely disseminated their pernicious
+teaching. In fact, they made themselves agencies of the Land and the
+National Leagues; at the same time, in numerous instances, they set the
+authority of the Local Government Board at naught.<a name='fna_182' id='fna_182' href='#f_182'><small>[182]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>The system of Irish local government was obviously so defective, so
+antiquated, so contrary to the spirit of the age, that several attempts,
+we have seen, were made, long ago, to reform it. It has now been
+completely transformed on the principles applied to England and Scotland;
+the occasion of this transformation was somewhat singular. In 1896
+considerable relief was given, in England and Scotland, to the landed
+interest by a subvention made by the State, which defrayed half the charge
+of the local county rates, the depression of agriculture being so
+grievous; the justice of this measure was hardly disputed. But the Report
+of the Childers Commission, declaring that Ireland was greatly overtaxed,
+and had been for a long series of years, was published about the same
+time; the Government, probably because it had made up its mind not to
+countenance the report in any way, refused to extend the same relief to
+Ireland, although it was as much required&mdash;a decision that simply nothing
+could warrant.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> The indignation, however, expressed in Ireland, and the
+remonstrances even of the Ministerial Press, angrily as it had challenged
+the findings of the report, before long changed the Government&#8217;s purpose;
+it was formally announced, in 1897, that Ireland would obtain the same
+boon as Great Britain, and, apparently, as a condition of this, that Irish
+local government was to be reformed. The measure of 1898 was the result of
+this compromise; the interdependence of two subjects, which have nothing
+in common, has made it not easy to interpret; but, as we shall see, its
+authors have provided, with skill, against one of the dangers the change
+involved, that is, the probability that it might expose the Irish landed
+gentry to predatory attacks. Before examining the recent law, I venture to
+make a single remark. The question of the alleviation of the charge of
+rates, a concession made to Ireland with bad grace, and made to England
+and Scotland as a matter of course, has nothing to do with the infinitely
+larger question of the excessive taxation imposed on Ireland; relief in
+the one case does not imply relief in the other; the two subjects are
+altogether distinct. It is essential carefully to keep this in mind, for
+attempts are being made to confuse the two questions, and
+characteristically to argue that Ireland ought to rest and be thankful,
+and not to say a word about her overtaxation, because, forsooth, in common
+with England and Scotland, she has received assistance as regards her
+local rates.</p>
+
+<p>The transformation which has been effected in Irish local government has
+completely changed the old order of things, and is of an extremely
+democratic character. County government has been taken from the grand
+juries, and has been extended to bodies known by the name of County
+Councils, recently formed in Great Britain. The County Councils proper are
+thirty-two in number, corresponding to the number of the Irish counties;
+they are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> popular assemblies in the fullest sense of the word. They are
+elected by the ratepayers of their districts, who possess the present
+extravagantly low suffrage; the right of election is also bestowed on
+women; and the protection of the cumulative vote has been removed; a
+cottar has the same voting power as a man of forty thousand a year. Any of
+these voters may have a seat in a County Council; the body, therefore, may
+be crowded with petty ratepayers; and women also may have seats. Three
+members of the grand jury, in each county, are entitled to sit in a County
+Council, but for a short time only&mdash;a provision intended to reconcile the
+old with the new; the County Councils are given a right to &#8216;co-opt&#8217; a few
+members; and the heads of bodies subordinate to them have the privilege of
+taking part in their counsels. The rights and the responsibilities of the
+grand juries have, as a rule, been transferred to the County Councils,
+except in the instance of criminal injuries, and of determining
+compensation for these; this jurisdiction, subject to an appeal to a judge
+of assize, has been properly conferred on the County Court judges, for it
+is essentially of a judicial nature. The powers of the County Councils
+thus extend to the management and the supervision of the roads, bridges,
+and buildings for public purposes comprised within their counties, and
+also to the regulation of villages and petty towns; but, like the grand
+juries, they are subject to the same control of the Central Government;
+they must make &#8216;imperative presentments&#8217; like the grand juries; and, as in
+the instance of the grand juries, subordinate bodies have the initiative
+in part of their duties. Their powers, however, have been made larger and
+wider than those of the grand juries; they have been given the right to
+assess and levy the poor rate in rural districts, the management of the
+asylums of the lunatic poor, an authority, in cases of exceptional
+distress, subject to the permission of the Local Government Board, to
+sanction relief to poor people out-of-doors, and several<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> other powers of
+not much importance. It should be added that the County Councils are not
+restricted in any way by judge&#8217;s &#8216;fiats&#8217; and by &#8216;traverses&#8217; as the grand
+juries were; these securities, such as they were, have disappeared; but
+their conduct may be controlled to a certain extent by the Superior Courts
+of Ireland, as that of most public bodies may be, if only through a
+tedious and costly procedure, and they are more or less under the
+authority of the Local Government Board.</p>
+
+<p>Six of the principal cities and towns of Ireland, Dublin, Belfast, Cork,
+Limerick, Londonderry, and Waterford, have been made distinct counties,
+with the appellation of County Boroughs. The scheme of County Councils has
+been applied to these also; the townsmen and townswomen have the same
+power of voting, and the same democratic suffrage as the counties proper;
+the borough assemblies may have the same kinds of members; but the titles
+of mayors, aldermen, and burgesses have been preserved, in recognition, so
+to speak, of strictly urban government. These bodies, which, it will be
+observed, are popular in the widest sense of the word, have the powers of
+grand juries within their respective spheres; but they retain besides
+their former administrative powers subject to the control of the Local
+Government Board; they have thus been changed from narrow and close
+oligarchies into democracies on the very broadest basis. The County
+Councils have under them two minor bodies, the Rural District Councils and
+the Urban District Councils, the characteristics of which may be briefly
+noticed. The sphere of the authority of the Rural District Council
+corresponds, for the most part, to the Poor Law Union; these councils are
+elected and constituted under the same conditions as the larger councils
+already described; they are, therefore, mere democracies in considerable
+numbers. The Rural District Councils are given the powers of the Baronial
+Presentment Sessions of the Grand Juries, that is, they may initiate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>
+proceedings as their predecessors did; they are made the sole guardians of
+the poor within their districts, the <i>ex-officio</i> guardians having been
+abolished; their chairmen are members of the County Councils; it may be
+added here that rating for the poor has been extended generally over the
+union, not as hitherto confined to the electoral division and the ward, a
+questionable provision which will certainly increase the expenditure for
+the relief of poverty. The sphere of the authority of the Urban District
+Councils has been made that of the larger towns of Ireland, being sanitary
+areas within themselves; but power has been taken to increase the number
+of these towns, and this increase will be probably witnessed. The Urban
+District Councils resemble, in their mode of election and their
+constitution, the other assemblies, that is, they are democracies to the
+fullest extent; but they retain the names of Corporate or Town
+Commissioners towns, and of mayors, aldermen, and burgesses where they
+possessed these before. The powers of the Urban District Councils are
+those of the grand juries within the towns, except as respects the larger
+public buildings, which were formerly charged on &#8216;the county at large;&#8217;
+these councils levy and assess the poor rate within their districts; and
+they retain the powers of urban government they formerly possessed. The
+Local Government Board has authority, also, over the Rural District and
+the Urban District Councils.</p>
+
+<p>The entire system of Irish local government has thus been placed on an
+extremely democratic basis, subject, however, to partial control by the
+Central Government. This revolution, for it has been nothing less, was
+obviously liable to be attended by the many mischiefs inseparable from a
+sudden transfer of enormous powers to local assemblies of the most popular
+type, to maladministration, waste, and extravagance, and, as especially
+would be the case in Ireland, to violent or insidious attacks on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>
+landed gentry. The late measure has provided against these evils, if not
+completely or adequately, with ingenuity and skill. The relief of Irish
+agriculture was its first financial object; to effect this the county cess
+and the poor rate have been consolidated into a single charge; and half of
+this is to be defrayed by the State and appropriated to the relief of
+agricultural lands, towns and lands, within municipal limits, being
+excepted. The subvention is not to extend to sums payable in respect of
+criminal injuries, nor to sums payable in respect of extra police in
+disturbed districts; these charges are properly to be borne by local areas
+as before. The relief afforded is an annual sum of about &pound;700,000; it is
+divided in tolerably equal shares between the owners and the occupiers of
+the soil, that is, between the landlords and tenants of Ireland; it is
+characteristic of Radical clamour, that a boon, the justice of which could
+not be disputed, was denounced as an &#8216;infamous job&#8217; for the behoof of the
+Irish landed gentry. A powerful check has been placed on extravagance and
+waste, and on attempts to injure property in land, exposed, we have seen,
+to undoubted dangers. The relief afforded was calculated on the local
+expenditure for 1897, in the words of the law, &#8216;the standard year;&#8217; it was
+regularly to be one-half of this sum. Should the local expenditure,
+therefore, in subsequent years, be in excess of that of the standard year,
+the proportionate value of the relief would fall; should it be a lesser
+amount, the value would rise. A strong restraint was thus imposed on
+attempts recklessly to job and waste local funds, and notably to plunder
+Irish landlords; but this restriction only applies to agricultural lands;
+it does not extend to property in towns; and it is difficult to say that
+it will always prove effective against democratic sentiment, passion, and
+greed. The extent of the relief afforded to Irish landlords differs widely
+as between landlords of different classes of tenants; landlords of mere
+cottars will get very little; landlords of farmers of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> substance will get
+much more; but it is unnecessary here to enlarge on this special
+subject.<a name='fna_183' id='fna_183' href='#f_183'><small>[183]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>This sweeping measure, in my judgment at least, might have been better
+framed to carry out its policy. Like much of the legislation of the
+Imperial Parliament, it has been fashioned too closely on the English
+model; it gives to a poor and backward country, not trained in
+self-government, local institutions naturally adapted only to an opulent
+and well-ordered country accustomed for centuries to local liberties.
+Having regard to the peculiar state of Ireland, it might have made the
+powers of local government it conferred larger, but it ought not to have
+been as purely democratic as it is; and it ought to have been accompanied
+by safeguards it does not possess. I would have been disposed to give the
+Irish County Councils a right to take evidence for private Bills on the
+spot; this, if transmitted to the Irish Privy Council, and considered by
+it, might be made the basis of reports by that body, which could be turned
+into Acts of Parliament, by a summary process, thus getting rid of great
+and useless expense, and silencing one of the few real arguments in favour
+of Home Rule. I would also have allowed the County Councils of different
+counties, in matters in which they had a common interest, say, in the
+drainage of some of the great Irish rivers, to carry out together public
+works of this kind, and to assess and levy rates for the purpose if, on
+consideration, this was deemed expedient; at present they have no
+authority like this; and such a power would, I think, be for the general
+good of Ireland. The County Councils, too, I believe, might be given a
+deliberative voice, in cases they have not at present; for example, should
+the rate-payers of any county make a demand for sectarian education,
+within its area, and declare themselves ready to pay<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> a rate for it, the
+County Council should have a right to entertain the project, and to report
+on it to the Central Government. And I am convinced that members of the
+County Councils ought to have some seats on the Local Government Board,
+and on other boards now filled by the Castle bureaucracy; this would
+introduce a popular element into these bodies, and, in many ways, would be
+of real advantage. On the other hand, in the election and the constitution
+of the County and other Councils, democracy has simply been let run riot;
+and the resulting evils have already been made manifest. Illiterate
+persons ought not to have been qualified to be electors; the single should
+not have replaced the cumulative vote, property being thus deprived of its
+legitimate weight; above all, as is evident, security should have been
+taken that the landed gentry should have a proper representation on the
+County Councils. The authority, too, of the Superior Courts over all these
+assemblies should have been made more effective and less costly than it is
+at present; and that of the Local Government Board should have been better
+defined and increased. In all this province the checks possessed by the
+Central Government over these local democracies are not, I think,
+sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible, I have remarked, to say with certainty what the end of
+this social revolution will be; but some of the results are, even now,
+apparent. There has, as yet, been little tendency in the local boards to
+waste, or to attempts to despoil the landed gentry; the check in this
+respect is of great force; but no one, I repeat, can predict what may be
+done under the influence of democratic sympathies, especially should the
+existing agitation acquire increased strength in Ireland. Some of the
+councils have been very fairly managed; a few others have been badly
+administered; as a rule, much time has been misspent in irrelevant talk;
+there has been a good deal of squabbling with the Local Government Board;
+but, on the whole, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> local business of the counties and towns has been
+conducted as reasonably well as could be expected in the case of a new and
+immense experiment. But the consequences of giving raw democracies great
+and sudden power have already been made but too manifest, as persons, who
+knew Ireland, foresaw would happen. In parts of Ulster representatives of
+the landed gentry have been elected to the County Councils; property in
+these has still legitimate influence. But in Leinster, Munster, and
+Connaught, this order of men has been all but completely shut out from
+these boards; the land is not represented at all; this is an absolutely
+unnatural position of affairs, pregnant with many ills to the community as
+a whole. It is not only that the landed gentry have been deprived of an
+influence they ought to possess, in a society in any degree well ordered;
+this change has a tendency to make them more and more, what they have
+largely been made already, a privileged class without duties, akin to the
+old seigneurie of France, a state of things of which Tocqueville has
+powerfully described the evils. In the southern provinces, too, the new
+democracies, composed of Catholic &#8216;Nationalists,&#8217; by large majorities,
+have driven loyal, and especially Protestant, men and women from local
+offices they had filled with credit, and this too at a considerable charge
+on the rates, a clear proof how no restraints can be wholly effective. But
+the main feature in the conduct of the County and other Councils is that
+in most parts of Ireland they have followed the advice given by Parnell to
+their weaker forerunners; they have made themselves agencies of the United
+Irish League, as boards before them were agencies of the Land and the
+National Leagues, and they have given but too ample proof of disaffection,
+disloyalty, and hatred of British rule. In some counties, the councils
+seized the court houses, and refused light and fire to the Superior and
+the County Court judges. Throughout the South of Ireland most of the
+boards vied with each other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> in wild expressions of sympathy with the
+Boers, and of hopes that disaster would befall the British army; many gave
+free voice to frankly rebellious language; many denounced Irishmen being
+recruited for the British army. Nor did these sinister exhibitions end
+here; some of these bodies went out of their way to sneer at their aged
+sovereign, when she paid last year her last visit to the Irish shores, to
+question her motives, to speak all kinds of evil; a few even refused to
+say a word of regret for her death, nay, indulged in language of scarcely
+veiled insult. These councils, in a word, in a number of instances, have
+shown a marked resemblance to the Assemblies of the Communes of Jacobin
+France, indignantly held up to execration by Burke; they have been petty
+nests of seditious agitation and clamour. It is at least well that this
+manner of men has not succeeded, in the great statesman&#8217;s language, in
+&#8216;ascending from parochial tyranny to federal anarchy&#8217; and have warned us
+what would be the nature of a Home Rule Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>This scheme of local government must be given a trial; but ultimately it
+will have to be reformed, in a Conservative sense, if things in Ireland
+are not to be left upside down.<a name='fna_184' id='fna_184' href='#f_184'><small>[184]</small></a> I turn to the subject of Irish
+education, which has been lately attracting much public attention.
+University education is the most prominent part of this question; but, in
+order to understand it, we must briefly consider the history of Irish
+education in all its branches. The first scheme of primary education in
+Ireland, of which we have a record&mdash;I pass over the traditions of the
+Middle Ages&mdash;was due to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> the policy of Henry VIII.; he procured an Act
+from the Irish Parliament, to the effect that elementary schools should be
+set up in different Irish parishes; but, true to the ideal of Tudor
+statesmen&mdash;an ideal, however, which he did not always pursue&mdash;he required
+that these should be &#8216;English schools,&#8217; to teach the Irish poor &#8216;the
+English language.&#8217; Many years passed before these schools were found
+beyond the borders of the Pale; but, as the march of conquest advanced,
+they existed in many Irish parishes; there were more than five hundred of
+them in 1810, the largest number probably they ever attained. These
+schools were originally intended to be open without distinction of creed;
+but, under the conditions of Irish history, they necessarily became
+confined to the lower Protestant classes; they were under the control of
+the clergy of the Established Church, and Catholic children were kept away
+from them. Elizabeth founded another class of schools, in part elementary,
+in part of a higher type; these were known as the Diocesan Irish Schools;
+but there seem never to have been more than sixteen of these; and they,
+too, became exclusively Protestant. To these schools should be added &#8216;the
+English Erasmus Smith Schools,&#8217; as they were called, foundations grafted,
+so to speak, on grammar schools established by a wealthy Cromwellian
+settler; at one time they were more than one hundred in number; and if not
+wholly, they were nearly confined to Protestant children. A series of
+Reports of Commissions and other records show that the education afforded
+in all these schools was not what it ought to have been; but this was to
+be expected in the case of a country where Protestant ascendency was
+supreme, where all administration was selfish and corrupt, and where the
+schools were the monopoly of a fraction of the people only. As to the
+education of the Irish Catholic poor in these centuries, it was
+discouraged, and ultimately prohibited by the penal code; the Catholic
+child could not learn the rudiments in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> own land; but in spite of
+this, &#8216;hedge schools,&#8217; a significant name, grew up, in hundreds,
+throughout the country, in which, to adopt the words of Davis, a man of
+genius&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8216;Still crouching &#8217;neath the sheltering hedge, or stretched on mountain fern,<br />
+The teacher and his pupils met feloniously to learn.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>As may, however, be supposed the instruction afforded in these schools was
+usually bad; throughout the eighteenth century and a part of the
+nineteenth, the young of Catholic Ireland were brought up in ignorance. In
+1733 an odious experiment was made, and continued for a long period, to
+cause education to wean the Catholic child from his faith. An institution,
+called the Charter School, was established; the object of its founders was
+to make &#8216;the young of the Papists&#8217; Protestant, by attracting them to
+seminaries where they were kept apart from their parents and priests,
+boarded, lodged, and handed over to Protestant tradesmen; millions were
+spent in furthering a detestable policy, which literally set up Mammon
+against God. The Charter Schools, however, completely failed; they never
+had more than fourteen hundred pupils, and they became wretched Dotheboys
+Halls where cruel and pampered Squeerses, eating up funds set apart for
+education such as it was, starved and ill-treated children victims of
+every kind of disease.</p>
+
+<p>When the partial relaxation of the penal laws allowed the children of the
+Irish Catholics to be taught the rudiments, the &#8216;Christian Brothers&#8217; began
+to found their schools, under the sanction of a Bull of Pius VI.; these
+schools, sectarian, like the genius of the Irish people, have, though
+receiving no endowment from the State, grown from small beginnings into a
+number of excellent Catholic schools. The Quakers in Ireland had
+established a few elementary schools before the Union; and so had the
+Presbyterians of Ulster. The Charter Schools lingered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> down to the year
+1832; they disappeared when their subsidies ceased; but the &#8216;Incorporated
+Irish Society&#8217; is in possession of the lands they once held, and it
+supports a number of good Protestant schools. Primary education, however,
+in Ireland remained very backward; the Protestant schools did not
+flourish; the Catholic &#8216;hedge schools&#8217; continued until the nineteenth
+century had far advanced. Attempts were made to promote Irish primary
+education, in different ways, after the Union; a Board of Commissioners of
+Education was appointed, and made valuable reports; but these efforts were
+of little avail for the benefit at least of the Catholic young; the
+schools thus established were all Protestant; and the evangelical
+movement, which was then powerful, made them proselytising with scarcely a
+single exception, a danger which the example of the Charter Schools had
+especially made the Catholic Irish priesthood dread. An institution,
+however, called the &#8216;Kildare Place Schools&#8217; had, for a time, considerable
+success; these schools were thrown open to children of all creeds, and had
+the high approval of O&#8217;Connell himself; but it was one of the rules that
+the Bible should be read in the schools; they became proselytising in no
+doubtful sense, and ultimately they were tabooed by the Catholic
+priesthood. Primary education in Ireland was in this state, when the
+subject was taken up by Mr. Stanley, the Chief Secretary for Ireland of
+Lord Grey, and, in after years, the &#8216;Rupert of Debate.&#8217; He founded in
+1831-34 what has ever since been known as the &#8216;National System of
+Education&#8217; of an elementary kind in Ireland. The principles on which he
+proceeded were in accord with the somewhat shallow Liberalism of the day,
+but, it must be added, with the ideas of many enlightened Irishmen.
+Primary education was to be endowed by the State, but it was to be divided
+into two parts: secular instruction was to be given in the new schools to
+children assembled together to learn, and that without distinction of
+creed;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> but religious instruction was to be given to children kept apart,
+Protestants and Catholics being completely separate, by the pastors of
+their respective communions. By these means it was hoped that a sound
+system of primary education would be formed; that proselytising would be
+made impossible; and that the youth of the warring races and faiths of
+Ireland, under the influence of a common teaching, would be made gradually
+to forget the animosities of the past. The National Schools were to be the
+Lethe of Irish discords.</p>
+
+<p>I can barely glance at the chequered history of the institution which was
+thus established. The &#8216;National System,&#8217; the name long in common use, was
+angrily condemned by the clergy of the Established Church of Ireland, and
+by a majority, perhaps, of the laity; this opposition was partly due to
+the spirit of an ascendency that would not brook equality; but it was
+largely to be ascribed to a higher motive. The new system, it was argued,
+cut education in two; the separation of what is secular from what is
+religious practically postpones what is divine to the human; and this is
+especially the case under the arrangements in force, for religious
+instruction in the schools may be a mere accident. The Irish Protestant
+clergy, and many other Protestants, have never taken to the National
+Schools; their sincerity is proved by the fact that a &#8216;Church Education
+Society&#8217; exists, which, though depending on voluntary subscriptions alone,
+supports nearly two hundred exclusively Protestant schools. As for the
+Presbyterians of Ireland, the National system of education fell in with
+their views; its &#8216;Liberalism&#8217; was congenial to them; but though schools of
+this type have flourished in Ulster, the Presbyterians have given a great
+deal of trouble to the Commissioners charged to carry out the law, and
+have shown much animosity to the Catholic Irish. The Irish Catholic
+priesthood at first accepted the National system almost with gratitude; it
+gave their flocks<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> a rudimentary instruction they were much in need of; it
+seemed to provide against the proselytising they feared above all things;
+and during some years the heads of their Church in Ireland, for the most
+part not of the Ultramontane faith, were not indisposed to welcome a
+compromise. By degrees, however, opposition grew up in Catholic Ireland
+against the system; and, it must be allowed, not without reason. The
+Catholic element on the Commission was much too weak; the purely secular
+instruction in the schools was made partly religious, for books of a
+Protestant complexion found their way into them; a cry of Protestant
+proselytising was raised; and the National system was solemnly condemned
+in 1850, at the great Catholic Synod of Thurles, a sentence, however,
+which had no effect on the Government. But the real grievances of the
+Irish Catholics, in this matter, have nearly all been removed; the
+Catholic Commissioners have been made equal in number with the
+Presbyterian and Protestant; secular instruction in the schools has again
+been made strictly secular; attempts at proselytising have long been
+rendered impossible; it should be added&mdash;and this is very important&mdash;the
+Catholic priesthood have become the managers of a large majority of the
+schools. The system has certainly struck deep roots in Ireland; there are
+now nearly 9000 National Schools, endowed with about &pound;1,300,000 by the
+State, and teaching nearly 800,000 pupils; they are supported by model and
+training schools, and have a large staff of competent teachers; the
+instruction they afford, if not remarkable, is, on the whole, sufficiently
+good. It may fairly be said that the National system has been a beneficent
+influence of the greatest value; light has shone on a people that once
+sate in darkness. The system, however, has become, insensibly, but
+greatly, changed; the National Schools have long been, for the most part,
+sectarian, that is, composed of Protestant or of Catholic children; the
+&#8216;mixed&#8217; schools,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> as they are called, are comparatively few. But the main
+principle of the system still is in force; the instruction given in the
+schools, when the pupils sit together, is strictly secular; and this is
+secured by a conscience clause; the Bible cannot be read, in school hours,
+even in a Protestant school; no Catholic school can have a Catholic
+emblem. The religious instruction given in the schools is hardly what it
+ought to be, especially in the case of the Protestant schools; it must be
+added that the hope of their founders that they would bridge over the gulf
+of discords in Ireland has not been, in the slightest degree, realised.</p>
+
+<p>The Irish are, naturally, a religious people; their history, a long
+conflict of races and faiths, has, necessarily, made them intensely
+sectarian. The system of education, of which I have traced the outlines,
+was certainly not well designed for them; it would have been severely
+condemned by Burke, the deepest of thinkers on the affairs of Ireland. And
+though the National system has had a real measure of success, it owes
+this, in the main, to the immense subvention it receives from the State;
+it has little or no support from voluntary aid; an attempt to impose an
+education rate on Ireland would be a failure, would not improbably wreck
+the system. Nor is this in harmony with genuine Irish sentiment; one of
+the most conclusive proofs is that National education has become, to a
+great extent, sectarian; the &#8216;Christian Brothers&#8217; and the &#8216;Church
+Education Society&#8217; schools, sustained by voluntary effort alone, and
+overweighted in the race by the endowed schools of the State, show how
+strong is Irish sectarian feeling. The clergy, too, of the late
+Established Church, and a considerable body of their communion, remain
+hostile to the National Schools; and though the Catholic priesthood have
+made them, to a great extent, their own, and avail themselves of the
+advantages they afford, they are hardly in heartfelt sympathy with them.
+Nor can it be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> denied that the conscientious objections to the National
+system have real weight; the system, if not irreligious, is, we may say,
+neutral; it does not make religion an essential part of school life. It
+would, nevertheless, I believe, be exceedingly unwise to disturb a system
+which, on the whole, has for many years had excellent results in Ireland.
+The opposition to it is not strong; the children of the humbler classes
+freely avail themselves of it, and that with the full consent of their
+parents. Nor is the conscientious objection of much force in the case of
+schools which are only day schools, and in which the rudiments alone are
+taught; this is not the case of education of the higher kind, in which
+this objection is perhaps decisive; and it cannot be said that the
+National Schools have, in any sense, impaired the religion of the Irish
+people.<a name='fna_185' id='fna_185' href='#f_185'><small>[185]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>I pass from elementary to schools of a secondary kind in Ireland. The
+Diocesan Schools of Elizabeth were nearly all secondary schools; but they
+were never numerous, and have all but disappeared. The two first Stuarts
+made an attempt to establish secondary education in Ireland on a larger
+scale. They founded the &#8216;Free Royal Schools,&#8217; as they have been called,
+now seen at Armagh, Cavan, Dungannon, Portora, and Raphoe; they endowed
+them with lands perhaps worth in our day, &pound;6000 a year; they looked
+forward to a time when they might rival Eton, Winchester, and the great
+public schools of England.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> Erasmus Smith established three considerable
+&#8216;grammar schools,&#8217; and granted valuable estates for their support; a
+tolerably large number of secondary schools was also founded, from time to
+time, by benefactors of the dominant race in Ireland: of these Kilkenny
+College, a seminary created by the House of Ormond, which reared Swift and
+Berkeley, was the most conspicuous. These schools, though often nominally
+open to different creeds, became, nevertheless, in the eighteenth century,
+under the Protestant ascendency, supreme in the land, restricted to the
+young of the Protestant caste; they felt the effects of monopoly, and of
+the corruption prevailing in the State; the education they afforded was,
+for the most part, bad; their governing bodies and masters were often
+grasping and selfish. After the relaxation of the penal code, the Irish
+Catholics began to found secondary schools; their exertions were, in a
+high degree, praiseworthy; and though these schools received no support
+from the State, some of them have done really excellent work. A number,
+too, of secondary schools were established in Ulster, for the most part
+for Presbyterian uses; some of these are sectarian, some open to all
+faiths; some have, others have not, received assistance from the State; in
+several the education given has been, on the whole, good. A few secondary
+schools&mdash;St. Columba is much the best&mdash;have also been founded within the
+last century, usually for the benefit of the late Established Church of
+Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>The progress made by secondary schools in Ireland, even in the nineteenth
+century, has not been rapid. It is not to be named with the immense
+development of public schools in England, within the same period, caused,
+in some measure, by the genius of Arnold; secondary Irish schools, in
+fact, have been largely a failure, like other institutions of British
+origin. This is mainly to be attributed to three reasons: the higher upper
+classes in Ireland usually send their sons to be educated in the great
+English public<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> schools; the Irish secondary schools are seldom well
+endowed; above all, the upper middle class in Ireland is small and has
+little influence. Two Commissions, appointed in 1854 and in 1878, examined
+secondary education in Ireland as it then existed; their reports give a
+far from favourable account of the system. The secondary Irish schools
+have not been much affected by an Act of Parliament passed in 1885, which
+provided for making better schemes for their management; but certainly
+they have derived very great benefit from the Intermediate Education Act
+of Lord Cairns, which established a system of competition between them,
+and secured prizes for successful competitors. In these honourable trials
+the Catholic schools have done well; but even now the secondary schools
+are decidedly inferior to what they ought to be, and do not exhibit many
+signs of improvement. An impartial inquirer thus described them in
+1871:<a name='fna_186' id='fna_186' href='#f_186'><small>[186]</small></a> &#8216;Upon the whole, secondary instruction, throughout the country,
+was as some one&mdash;I believe Lord Cairns&mdash;said, &#8220;bad in quality and
+deficient in quantity.&#8221; The fact seems incredible, but there can be no
+doubt of its authenticity, viz. that out of a total population of
+5,500,000, there were only 10,814 boys in Ireland learning Latin, Greek,
+or modern languages in 1871. Or, to put the matter in another way, while
+in England about ten or fifteen in every 1000 were instructed in these
+languages, only two in every 1000 were instructed in them in
+Ireland.&#8217;<a name='fna_187' id='fna_187' href='#f_187'><small>[187]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>I pass on to University life in Ireland, the question, I have said, most
+prominent at this time. Ireland had no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> Oxford or Cambridge in the Middle
+Ages; an attempt to establish a University in Dublin failed; science and
+literature could not grow up in a land distracted by feudal and tribal
+strife, and in which two Churches were continually at war with each other.
+Elizabeth founded Trinity College towards the close of her reign, on the
+site of a monastery that had been suppressed; it was the intention of the
+queen, and of her two first successors, that this seminary should expand
+into a University in the true sense, containing a number of colleges
+within its sphere, and probably open to all students whatever their race
+or their faith. This happy consummation, however, was made impossible
+during the long period of civil war and trouble, which only came to an end
+with that of the seventeenth century. Trinity College remained a single
+foundation; and, in the era of Protestant ascendency that ensued, when
+Catholic Ireland lay under the ban of the penal code, it necessarily
+became an exclusively Protestant place of learning, its dignities, its
+honours, nay, admission to it, being reserved to members of the
+Established Church. It had, however, been amply endowed; and, from an
+early period, it possessed many distinguished worthies, the names of
+Ussher, of King, of Browne, and of others, being still remembered. Trinity
+College, strange to say, was very High Church during the reigns of the two
+last Stuarts and of Anne; its leading divines preached the creed of
+passive obedience; and it was remarkable for its aversion to Presbyterian
+Ireland, as was clearly shown in the diatribes of Swift. The college,
+however, became Whiggish and Low Church during the reign of Walpole&mdash;its
+Provost was appointed by the Crown; and until nearly the close of the
+eighteenth century, its professorships, its fellowships, its scholarships,
+its degrees, even entrance to its walls, were strictly confined to the
+dominant communion of the Anglican Church. But a liberal spirit grew up,
+and gained strength within it; this appears in many of the admirable
+writings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> of Berkeley, breathing the ideas that afterwards inspired
+Grattan, and in the histories of Leland and Warner, on the whole just to
+the vanquished Catholic people; and after the almost National movement
+which produced the Revolution of 1782, Trinity College took a remarkable
+step, which proved that it was in advance of the politics of that age. In
+1793, when the Irish Parliament passed a great measure of Catholic relief,
+the college made Catholics eligible for its degrees and its minor prizes;
+and, but that its statutes made this impossible, it would, perhaps, have
+allowed Catholics to become professors, fellows, and scholars&mdash;in short,
+to have a share in its dignities and its government. Nothing like this was
+done at Oxford and Cambridge until the nineteenth century had run far its
+course.</p>
+
+<p>From this time onwards Trinity College, accessible to Presbyterians some
+years before, received Catholics honourably within its precincts. A few
+distinguished Catholic Irishmen have obtained the excellent education it
+has always afforded; and these have been treated with scrupulous fairness;
+no attempt at proselytising has ever been made or thought of. Their
+numbers, however, have never been large; and they were necessarily placed
+in an inferior position, for they could not become professors, fellows, or
+scholars; the college remained an institution essentially Protestant, even
+anti-Catholic, in much of its teaching, for example, in the predilection
+it long showed for Locke. The college continued to thrive and to make
+progress; the reproach cast on it that she was the &#8216;silent sister,&#8217; was
+rather due to the want of publishing enterprise in the Irish capital, than
+to any deficiency in literary power; at all events, it has long ago been
+removed; Trinity College has stood for a century in the foremost rank of
+places of learning famed for scientific eminence. In 1843-44 an attempt
+was made to introduce Catholics on the foundation, as scholars; but this
+was prohibited by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> the statutes; some &#8216;non-foundation&#8217; scholarships were
+then endowed; and Catholics were enabled to compete for them. This was the
+position of the college, when, in 1844-45, after the agitation for Repeal
+had shown how disaffected Catholic Ireland still was, Peel turned his mind
+to Irish remedial measures, and among these to a reform of high education
+in Ireland. His policy was to maintain the Union intact, and all the
+institutions closely connected with it, but to create institutions, so to
+speak, alongside of these, to which Irish Presbyterians, and Catholics
+especially, might freely resort, in complete equality with all Irishmen;
+he therefore left Trinity College exactly as it was, but resolved to
+establish and endow places of learning, which he hoped would be popular
+supplements to it, and would give a University training to students who,
+as affairs stood, were not on the same level as the favoured Protestants
+in it. He founded the Queen&#8217;s Colleges of Belfast, of Cork, and of Galway;
+these were supplied with an ample staff of professors, endowed, and given
+the means to bestow many prizes; and they were affiliated to the Queen&#8217;s
+University, empowered to confer degrees. The principle on which these
+institutions were formed was, following the so-called liberalism of the
+time, almost exactly the same as that on which the Irish National Schools
+had been based. Secular education in them was to be united, religious
+education was to be kept apart; their students were to learn the things
+that belonged to this world together; but as to what belonged to another
+world, this teaching was to be provided by their pastors outside their
+colleges, and they were not to have it in common. The colleges, and the
+University, therefore, were essentially seats of non-religious knowledge;
+religious equality, it was said, could be only thus secured; and residence
+in the colleges was not required.</p>
+
+<p>The principle pervading the Irish National education system was certainly
+open to grave objections; these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> became infinitely stronger, when it was
+applied to a system of high education in Ireland. Secular instruction
+could be really combined, and given to children together, when limited to
+the first rudiments: how could it be combined when it should embrace such
+subjects as moral philosophy, metaphysics, modern history, nay, physical
+science, and when taught to young men of the University age? Besides,
+religious instruction, without a great shock to conscience, could be made
+a subordinate consideration in mere day schools: how could it,
+consistently with Christian duty, be practically excluded from a
+University course, and left to undergraduates to be dealt with as they
+might think fit, and that at the most critical time of their life?
+Indifference to the Divine, masked in specious &#8216;liberal&#8217; phrases, was, in
+truth, the cardinal feature of this scheme; it would have been severely
+reprobated by Burke; it was repugnant to the ideas of five-sixths of
+Irishmen; its tendency was to form minds in superior men, like those of
+Hume and Gibbon, in inferior men, to produce infidel, even atheistic,
+sentiments. It was denounced as &#8216;godless&#8217; in the House of Commons by the
+High Church party; it was condemned by O&#8217;Connell, from the outset, though
+the men of &#8216;Young Ireland&#8217; were not adverse; after some hesitation, it was
+rejected unequivocally by the Irish Catholic bishops,<a name='fna_188' id='fna_188' href='#f_188'><small>[188]</small></a> and finally was
+held up to anathema at the Synod of Thurles. That the bishops were sincere
+is proved by the fact, that they established the Irish Catholic University
+a few years afterwards&mdash;the first head of this creation was Newman; and
+the foundation has been maintained ever since, though it could not give a
+degree, and it received nothing from the State, and its only funds were
+the contributions of a poor communion, a noble example of self-sacrifice
+and of a true sense of duty. Meanwhile, the Queen&#8217;s Colleges and
+University were kept up and endowed, at the rate of about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> &pound;30,000 a year;
+the College of Belfast has done well, for it falls in with Presbyterian
+ideas; but the Colleges of Cork and of Galway, notably the last, have been
+sorry, nay, almost useless, failures; and Peel&#8217;s hope that his project
+would secure a good University training to Irish Catholics of the better
+class has not been, to any real extent, fulfilled. Trinity College
+remained for many years unchanged, that is, it gave an admirable education
+to a very few Catholics; but it continued to be a Protestant institution
+in its essential nature; its governing body and its hierarchy were all
+Protestant; its teaching was Protestant in some of its parts; its higher
+honours were a monopoly of the favoured communion.</p>
+
+<p>The extreme unfairness of this University system, the ascendency secured
+to Trinity College, which, admirable institution as it was, was
+practically nearly confined to Protestants of the upper class; the
+failure, with respect to Catholic Ireland, of the Queen&#8217;s Colleges and the
+Queen&#8217;s University, and the large and useless expenditure this involved;
+above all, the denial to the Catholic University of any share in the
+bounty of the State, though its claim to it could be hardly
+doubtful,&mdash;attracted the attention of several statesmen, from 1850 to
+1870; but nothing was done, or even attempted. The subject was taken up by
+Mr. Gladstone, with characteristic earnestness, during his first Ministry;
+he declared that University education in Ireland was &#8216;a scandal;&#8217; indeed,
+Irish education of the higher kind was the third branch of the upas tree
+which threw its baleful shade over the land. He brought in a measure of
+reform in the session of 1873; it was an ambitious and a comprehensive
+scheme; but it was much the worst of his Irish reforms of this period; and
+it ended in complete and disastrous failure. With the historical instinct
+occasionally seen in his legislation, Mr. Gladstone proposed to revive the
+idea of Elizabeth and the first Stuarts, and to found a great National
+University, which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> was to have the management and control of the higher
+education throughout Ireland. The governing body of this new institution
+was to be composed partly of men chosen by the Lord-Lieutenant, and partly
+of the heads of the colleges to be connected with it; and it was to have
+the sole power of conferring degrees in Ireland. Trinity College was to
+hand over to the National University a sum of &pound;12,000 a year, that is,
+more than a fourth of its endowments from the State; its professorships,
+its fellowships, its scholarships, in a word, all its prizes, were to be
+thrown open to all its students whatever their faith; but in most other
+respects it was not to be essentially changed, except as to the power of
+granting degrees. Trinity College was to be affiliated to the National
+University as a dependent college, and so were a number of minor colleges;
+but this remarkable distinction was made in homage to the &#8216;liberalism&#8217; of
+the day: the Queen&#8217;s Colleges, that of Galway being suppressed as useless,
+were to retain the endowments they received from the State, on the ground
+that they were free to all comers; but the Catholic University was not to
+obtain a shilling, nor yet other colleges of a sectarian type, on the
+ground that they were &#8216;close and exclusive,&#8217; this being the case of all
+the Catholic colleges that could be affiliated to the new foundation. The
+Queen&#8217;s University was to be abolished, for the National University was to
+be sole and supreme; and then came provisions, which, strange as they may
+appear at first sight, were perhaps inevitable under the conditions on
+which the project was formed. Moral philosophy, metaphysics, and modern
+history were shut out from the National University course; they might be
+taught in the colleges, but were to be no part of University learning. And
+the National University, like the Queen&#8217;s Colleges, was to be
+&#8216;non-religious;&#8217; its system of education was to be secular and united,
+that is its students were to be examined together in secular learning, but
+in religious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> matters they were to stand apart; religion, indeed, might be
+a subject of college teaching, but it was not to be heard of within the
+University walls; in fact, it was probably to be left to the students and
+their clergy.</p>
+
+<p>This complicated measure, not easy thoroughly to understand, was
+sustained, for a few days, by the glamour of Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s rhetoric. But
+ere long it arrayed against it an immense preponderance of opinion in
+Ireland, and was assailed with fatal effect in the House of Commons. The
+Heads of Trinity College took the initiative in declaring against it; in
+debates, wise, patriotic, and just alike, they recognised the claims of
+Catholic Ireland; but they protested against the wrong being done to the
+great and ancient foundation they represented, and especially against the
+degradation to which it was subjected by the Bill. Trinity College was to
+be deprived for no reason of a large part of its revenue; it was to be
+placed under a governing body, in which nominees of the Castle would be
+all-powerful&mdash;an influence pernicious to its independence and
+self-government; above all, the National University was to supplant it,
+and was to exclude from its teaching the noblest studies of the intellect
+of man. The Platonism which had inspired Berkeley, the records which had
+animated the genius of Burke, and had been fostered in the Alma mater of
+these great worthies, were to be banished from a foundation which was to
+be made the head of University life in Ireland. These sentiments were
+fully shared by enlightened Irishmen: that moral and metaphysical science
+and modern history should be virtually proscribed in the University about
+to be set up, was, as it were, putting out one of the eyes of the
+intellect, effacing what was best in the map of knowledge. But the most
+decisive condemnation of the scheme was that pronounced by the Irish
+Catholic bishops. Like their predecessors of nearly thirty years before,
+and the Anglican High Church party of that day, they asserted that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span>
+project was really &#8216;godless;&#8217; it was irreligion in the mask of
+non-religion; its liberalism was in the highest degree illiberal, for it
+offered their flocks a system of education it was known they would reject;
+and it was flagrantly, nay, basely, unjust, for while Trinity College, and
+the Queen&#8217;s Colleges, and the Queen&#8217;s University, were to remain endowed,
+the Catholic University and all Catholic colleges were to get nothing from
+the State. These arguments made their way into the House of Commons, and
+were vindicated in speeches of great ability. Disraeli dwelt especially on
+the poverty and the imperfection of a University scheme, in which the
+finest branches of knowledge were not to enter; he frankly denounced the
+Bill as &#8216;atheistic,&#8217; an epithet which Burke assuredly would have fastened
+on it. Other speakers, notably Ball, a very brilliant Irishman, enlarged
+on the wrong done to Trinity College, and earnestly advocated the Catholic
+claims; not only was the minister offering a stone for bread, he was
+virtually trying to bribe the Irish Catholic into accepting institutions
+he disliked, and in the attempt was deeply offending his conscience.
+Notwithstanding the efforts of a powerful Government, the Bill was
+rejected by the House of Commons; nearly all the Irish members voted
+against it, and so did the best men of the Liberal party.</p>
+
+<p>The year that witnessed the collapse of Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s measure,
+witnessed, also, a reform of Trinity College conceived in the spirit of
+the &#8216;liberalism&#8217; of the hour, and hailed as an illustration of what is
+called progress. The government, the dignities, and the prizes of the
+college were thrown open to all without regard to their creed; this was
+welcomed as &#8216;University equality&#8217; in the most perfect sense. It is a
+mistake to suppose that a corresponding change was ever made at Oxford and
+Cambridge; the extension of their privileges to persons whatever their
+faith, has, thanks to the exertions of the late Lord Selborne, been
+strictly confined to lay offices; the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> religious character and teaching of
+the Universities have been carefully preserved.<a name='fna_189' id='fna_189' href='#f_189'><small>[189]</small></a> Though Trinity
+College has been made &#8216;non-religious&#8217; by this measure, and that to such a
+degree that its governing body might conceivably be composed of avowed
+atheists, it has, nevertheless, to this day remained a Protestant
+institution in all essential respects. Its professors, fellows, and
+scholars have, since 1873, been nearly all Protestants; its Catholic
+students are not eight in a hundred of the number as a whole; and the
+chief practical result of the late reform has been to make the heads of
+the Irish Catholic Church more opposed than before to seeing Catholics
+enter its precincts. In 1879, Lord Beaconsfield&#8217;s Ministry made an attempt
+to diminish the injustice done to Irish Catholics by the system of
+University education still in force in Ireland. The Queen&#8217;s University was
+abolished; a Royal University was established, which was enabled to confer
+degrees on, and to give prizes to, the students of the Catholic University
+and other colleges; but the Royal University is a mere Examining Board; it
+is not a University properly so called. One incident connected with this
+institution deserves attention; the success of the students of Catholic
+colleges at the Royal University examinations has been so great, that it
+ought to silence jeers at the &#8216;superstition&#8217; which keeps them back, the
+vulgar cant of ignorant prejudice or worse.<a name='fna_190' id='fna_190' href='#f_190'><small>[190]</small></a> Meanwhile the iniquities
+and anomalies of the Irish University system have continued but very
+little changed.<a name='fna_191' id='fna_191' href='#f_191'><small>[191]</small></a> Trinity College remains a Protestant institution<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>
+well endowed, almost a monopoly of the Protestant upper class in Ireland,
+practically little resorted to by Irish Catholics; the Queen&#8217;s Colleges
+are avoided by the Irish Catholics, as being &#8216;irreligious&#8217; if called
+&#8216;non-religious,&#8217; though the College of Belfast suits Presbyterian views;
+they, too, receive a large bounty from the State; but the Catholic
+University, the true seminary for the upper middle Catholic classes, and
+now divided into different colleges, is still, as such, left out in the
+cold. Its students, no doubt, can obtain Royal University degrees, and
+some of its professors have been placed as examiners on that foundation;
+but it is the veriest mockery to call this justice when we look at Trinity
+College and the Queen&#8217;s Colleges. &#8216;The words of scripture are reversed,&#8217;
+in Macaulay&#8217;s language; &#8216;the rich are filled with good things and the
+hungry are sent empty away.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>I do not envy those who, whatever their reasons, refuse to acknowledge the
+wrong done by these arrangements. It will hardly be denied, in the
+twentieth century, that Protestant ascendency ought not to exist in any
+sphere of Irish affairs, and that in University life, as in all matters,
+Irish Catholics ought to have civil equality, and that without a violation
+of the rights of conscience. It has been triumphantly maintained that, in
+high education, these conditions are actually fulfilled in Ireland;
+Trinity College and the Queen&#8217;s Colleges are accessible to all students,
+without regard to their religion or no religion; these have a perfectly
+equal right to share in the government and the honours of institutions
+thrown completely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> open. But those who argue in this way either shut their
+eyes to facts, or will not perceive that this fine &#8216;liberalism&#8217; in Ireland
+works sheer injustice. Catholics are but a handful of students in Trinity
+College and the Queen&#8217;s Colleges compared to what their natural proportion
+ought to be; Trinity College, if nominally open, is in all essential
+respects Protestant; the Queen&#8217;s Colleges as being &#8216;non-religious,&#8217; that
+is, in the view of their Church &#8216;irreligious,&#8217; are practically avoided by
+Irish Catholics; yet the State endows Trinity College and the Queen&#8217;s
+Colleges; it starves the Catholic University and other Catholic colleges,
+which are thus unfairly handicapped by their rivals. If this is not
+furthering Protestant ascendency in Irish high education, and denying
+civil equality to Irish Catholics who, in this matter, will not forego the
+rights of conscience, I do not know what else it can be; it seems to me to
+be iniquity in no doubtful sense. And are the objections of the Irish
+Catholics, in this province, as &#8216;irrational&#8217; and &#8216;superstitious&#8217; as has
+been scoffingly said? Reverse the case of Trinity College: suppose that
+England was a Catholic Power, and that she kept up a great Catholic
+University in the Irish capital, discountenancing Protestant institutions
+in many ways, how many Protestants would enter its walls, how soon would
+the cry of Catholic ascendency be raised? Or suppose that Oxford and
+Cambridge were made &#8216;non-religious,&#8217; as the Queen&#8217;s Colleges in Ireland
+are, would not an immense majority of English parents declare that these
+seats of learning were &#8216;godless,&#8217; and persistently keep their sons away
+from them? The simple truth is that the Catholic objections to Trinity
+College and the Queen&#8217;s Colleges are really those which, in this matter,
+have been entertained by the deepest thinkers; to my mind, at least, they
+seem perfectly well-founded. As to the statement that these objections are
+those of the Irish Catholic bishops alone, and are mere &#8216;superstitious
+fancies,&#8217; it is enough to reply<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> that, on two occasions, the Irish
+Catholic laity have distinctly pronounced on this subject, and have
+declared that they agree with the heads of their Church. And as to the
+argument that Catholic States do not endow sectarian institutions like the
+Catholic University and other Irish Catholic colleges, it will be quite
+time enough to examine this when anything like such a state of things can
+be found as that which at present exists in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>One argument, however, seldom frankly set forth, but hinted at in a
+variety of ways, has been a real obstacle to a reform of this vicious
+system; it strongly appeals to British national prejudice, of all
+aberrations of opinion the most difficult to overcome. &#8216;Popery,&#8217; it is
+said, is a &#8216;detestable thing;&#8217; a &#8216;Protestant&#8217; State &#8216;must have nothing to
+do with it;&#8217; to endow a Catholic University in Ireland, therefore, or any
+colleges of the same complexion, would be &#8216;sacrificing to Baal,&#8217; or
+something as wicked. Catholic Ireland must put up with Trinity College and
+the Queen&#8217;s Colleges, which have been made open to all sorts and
+conditions of men; its &#8216;conscientious objections&#8217; are mere &#8216;bigotry.&#8217; This
+reasoning, which condemns as impious the religion of the greatest part of
+Christendom, would unfortunately overthrow many arrangements by which
+provision has been made in our &#8216;Protestant&#8217; State for Catholic
+institutions of different kinds; if pushed to its consequences, it would
+revive the penal code in Ireland, and lead to the confiscation of Catholic
+charities. But though it has still indirectly an effect on some
+politicians, it is, in its naked simplicity, only the faith of Mr. Kensit
+and of those who walk in his footsteps; it is worthy of the philosophy of
+Lord George Gordon, of the meekness of Orangeism, of the bray of Exeter
+Hall. For some time a turn in British opinion has happily taken place;
+&#8216;liberalism,&#8217; it has been perceived, in Irish University education has
+failed; Mr. Arthur Balfour has made himself conspicuous in advocating the
+just claims<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> of Catholic Ireland. Even as I write a Commission is being
+appointed to consider the whole subject of University life in Ireland;
+there can be no reasonable doubt that it will fully bring to light the
+anomalies and the unfairness of the existing system, and will recommend
+that the Catholic University, and other Catholic colleges perhaps, shall
+be endowed. In truth, things have already come to such a pass that Trinity
+College, the one institution of which, it is said, &#8216;all Irishmen are
+really proud,&#8217; will, owing to the exceptional favour it receives from the
+State, be placed in grave danger, and the Queen&#8217;s Colleges also, if a
+Catholic University in Ireland be not established and endowed, in order to
+secure to the Irish Catholic civil equality, in high education, through
+the assistance of the State.<a name='fna_192' id='fna_192' href='#f_192'><small>[192]</small></a></p>
+
+<p>On what principles, then, and by what means, is University education in
+Ireland to be so reformed as to do equal justice to all Irishmen, to place
+Protestants, Presbyterians, and Catholics on the same level, and,
+especially, to vindicate the rightful claims of Catholic Ireland? Two
+leading projects have at least been sketched out: the first, the grander
+and the more ambitious, but, in my judgment, scarcely possible to carry
+into effect; the second, more simple, more in harmony with existing facts,
+and, I think, safer and much more easy to realise. The first scheme,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>
+following in some respects the measure of Mr. Gladstone of 1873, but
+making a marked improvement on it, would aim at establishing and endowing
+a National University for all Irishmen, which should have a power to
+confer degrees, in common with the Royal University now existing, and
+should have an ample professional staff; it should have its examinations
+for degrees and for other honours. The governing body of this University
+should be composed of the heads of the colleges affiliated to it&mdash;the
+element of the Castle being excluded, according at least to the best
+authorities&mdash;and Trinity College should not be deprived of any part of its
+revenues, as it was to be under the Bill of 1873. Two of the Queen&#8217;s
+Colleges probably should be suppressed; but the College of Belfast, which
+has been successful, should probably be made a Presbyterian college, at
+least in the main; the endowments it would receive should be, doubtless,
+increased. High Catholic education should be provided for in this way: The
+Catholic University should be established and endowed, and placed
+reasonably on a level with Trinity College, and perhaps other Catholic
+colleges also; but, in consideration of this assistance from the State, a
+lay element should be introduced into the Catholic University governing
+body; this should not be composed wholly of Catholic clergymen; and the
+teaching body should be composed of men, chosen without regard to
+religious distinctions, but so constituted that a majority should be
+Catholics, and that Catholic education should be predominant. Other
+Catholic colleges might be connected with this institution; and Trinity
+College, the Catholic University, and the Belfast and all other colleges,
+should be subordinate to the National University in this sense; their
+students should be obliged to resort to it, or to the Royal University if
+they preferred it, in order to pass examinations, and to obtain degrees or
+other honours, there being thus two Universities of different types in
+Ireland. Education in all the affiliated colleges<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> should be perfectly
+free, that is, left to the arrangements made by their governing bodies;
+but a certain standard of proficiency should exist, which, however, the
+tests of University examinations would probably secure.</p>
+
+<p>An Irish National University, could it be founded on these lines, would
+present many attractive features, would realise, indeed, a noble ideal. It
+would preserve Trinity College as a great place of learning, would give
+Presbyterian Ireland a college practically its own, and ought to satisfy
+the legitimate demands of Catholic Ireland. That its dependent colleges
+should compete with each other for its degrees and honours, and be
+friendly rivals in the splendid race of learning, would also be an immense
+advantage; and the Royal University would, doubtless, suffice for students
+too poor to enter the dependent colleges, and yet aspiring to pass
+examinations and to obtain degrees. But could a National University of
+this type be set up in Ireland with a prospect that it would succeed or
+flourish? Its governing body would be formed of the heads of the colleges
+connected with it; these would be mainly composed of Catholic and
+Protestant divines: could these, in the existing state of Ireland, agree
+as to the University course that ought to be adopted? Suppose that
+Archbishop Walsh and Dr. Salmon, the venerable provost of Trinity College,
+were together members of this supreme board. Would the first approve of
+Locke&#8217;s Essay on the Human Understanding as a subject of examination in
+the University schools? Would the second approve of Bellarmine and even of
+Bossuet? Dissension, I fear, would be the inevitable result; and in that
+case &#8216;the Castle&#8217; would certainly try to gain authority over the governing
+body, and to place on it nominees of its own, in my judgment, an
+exceedingly mischievous thing. Very probably, too, the State, in the long
+run, would deprive Trinity College of some of its revenues, on different
+pleas that could be plausibly urged; to this there would be the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> gravest
+objections. And how could moral philosophy, metaphysics, and modern
+history, nay, even physical science itself, be made parts of University
+studies? How could Protestants and Catholics be examined in them in
+common? Would it not be necessary to exclude them from University
+teaching, as in the case of Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s ill-starred measure&mdash;to close
+the University to the best works of the intellect of man, to deprive it of
+the most fruitful branches of learning? I fear the idea of a National
+University, as affairs now stand in Ireland, is not likely to become a
+reality with results that could be deemed hopeful. No doubt the Royal
+University does, to some extent, have examinations on these debateable
+subjects; but they occupy a very small place in its teaching; and in a
+National University this ought not to be the case.</p>
+
+<p>A National University would not be founded in Ireland under the second
+project. Trinity College would remain completely intact; it would retain
+its present governing body, its privileges, and its power of conferring
+degrees. The Queen&#8217;s Colleges&mdash;that of Galway being probably suppressed,
+and its funds transferred to the College of Belfast&mdash;and the Royal
+University would continue unchanged; the students of the Queen&#8217;s Colleges
+would probably seek degrees from the Royal University as they do at
+present. But the Catholic University should be established and endowed,
+and placed on the same level as Trinity College, as far as this could be
+effected by law; the charge of the endowment would not be great&mdash;it would
+be perhaps &pound;100,000 for buildings, and perhaps &pound;40,000 a year for other
+purposes; but the students, and those of other colleges to be connected
+with it, would not be numerous, at least for years; it should, of course,
+have the power of conferring honours and degrees. In return for these
+advantages, the State should have a right to insist that its governing
+body should be in part laymen&mdash;the Irish Catholic bishops have already
+agreed to this;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> and the State ought, also, to have a right to require
+that the secular education it should afford should be good, a security
+which could fully, if indirectly, be obtained. The advantages of this
+scheme, it is obvious, are that it would get rid of the difficulties
+inseparable from a National University in Ireland; it would preserve
+Trinity College exactly as it is, an enormous gain for that great place of
+learning; it would interfere as little as possible with things as they
+are; and it would do all that Catholic Ireland could reasonably demand. It
+is understood that a scheme of this description has the approval of the
+authorities of Trinity College, and of their distinguished representative,
+Mr. Lecky; their opinions are of the very greatest weight. The only real
+objection made to this plan is one made by characteristic prejudice: the
+education, in the Catholic University, it is said, would be bad, and its
+degrees would be of no value. In the face of the success of Catholic
+University students at the Royal University examinations, the first
+assertion has been proved to be false; and besides, this is the affair of
+the students and their parents alone. As to the inferiority of the
+Catholic University degrees, there is no reason to believe that this would
+exist; these degrees, moreover, would have to compete with those of the
+Royal University and of Trinity College; if they were really inferior,
+this would soon be found out, and the Catholic University would have to
+increase their value. This is the true security the State and the public
+would possess.</p>
+
+<p>A few &#8216;Present Irish Questions&#8217; remain, on which I may offer passing
+remarks. Ireland is essentially a poor country; her middle class is
+comparatively very weak; her trade and manufactures are small; the greater
+part of the community is a Celtic race. It has long been contended by
+well-informed Irishmen that many undertakings, which, in Great Britain,
+have properly been left to private enterprise, ought, in Ireland, to be
+carried out by the State,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> as for centuries has been the case in France, a
+Celtic land, as was largely the case in Ireland under her extinct
+Parliament. This observation especially applies to the Irish railway
+system. As long ago as 1836, Thomas Drummond, the Under Secretary of
+well-known renown, strongly recommended that Irish railways should be laid
+out, managed, and controlled by the Government; but this was inconsistent
+with English ideas; the Irish railways were abandoned to private
+companies. The results have been very far from fortunate; many of the
+lines have been badly designed; the Irish railway fares are a great deal
+too high; too numerous boards of directors are a heavy charge; railway
+communication, in a word, in Ireland is of an inferior kind, and much too
+costly in a backward and poor country. Not indeed that the State has not
+made large advances to Irish railway companies, some of these on terms
+very unjust to ratepayers; but the system is faulty and ill-developed; a
+reform in this direction is greatly wanted.<a name='fna_193' id='fna_193' href='#f_193'><small>[193]</small></a> As Drummond insisted, the
+State, even now, ought to buy up and direct the Irish railways; but this
+is only a part of what it ought to do in this province. The material
+condition of Ireland is not prosperous; her main river basins require
+drainage; her whole arterial drainage is in a bad state, and has suffered
+much from the legislation of 1881, and from the policy of so-called &#8216;land
+purchase,&#8217; for ordinary Irish tenants will not keep it up, and their
+landlords cannot now be expected to do so; these works must be undertaken
+by the State, or assuredly they will not be undertaken at all. Mr. Arthur
+Balfour has done something in this direction by the encouragement of light
+railways in remote parts of Ireland, and by the foundation of the
+&#8216;Congested Districts Board,&#8217; an institution that has had excellent
+results. But this is only the fringe of the subject; an enormous amount of
+work remains to be done; and this,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> in the circumstances of Ireland, can
+only be done by the Government.</p>
+
+<p>In a book which has attracted some attention&mdash;&#8216;Ireland, 1798-1898&#8217;&mdash;I
+wrote these words nearly four years ago: &#8216;An Irishman, Wolseley, an
+Irishman, Roberts, are the foremost of living British soldiers; but there
+are no Irish Guards, and few Irishmen in our artillery; we see here a want
+of tact and of sympathy.&#8217; Time, in this respect, has suddenly brought its
+changes; has again illustrated the genius of the Irishman in war, and, in
+some measure, has removed a reproach from England. It is true that the
+conspiracy, which still exists in Ireland, did all that it could to
+prevent Irishmen from taking part in the contest in South Africa, and that
+even a petty Irish contingent appeared in the ranks of the Boers. But Lord
+Wolseley had at least a great share in fitting out the largest expedition
+which has ever left our shores to fight an enemy at a distance of six
+thousand miles&mdash;no other power could do anything of the kind; and without
+disparaging our other generals, the presence of a superior mind was at
+once seen when Lord Roberts was given the supreme command in our army. And
+the Irish soldiery who fought in the campaigns of 1899-1900 were true to
+the noble traditions of their race; they were in the forefront of many a
+bloody conflict; and now that a regiment of Irish Guards has been at last
+embodied&mdash;a tardy acknowledgment of Irish military worth&mdash;England may rest
+assured that these men will rival the famous Irish Brigade of another age,
+&#8216;ever and everywhere true&#8217; to the Bourbon lilies, and conspicuous in the
+service of France on many a field of renown. I may add a word on another
+subject, in which Ireland perhaps has a just claim on England. The
+descendants of the chiefs, who, in Scotland, clung to the cause of the
+Stuarts, have, for the most part, regained their forfeited lands and
+honours; no such reparation has been made to the descendants of Irish
+nobles and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> princes, who supported the Stuarts in the nobler cause of
+their country. The representative of the last of the Celtic kings of
+Ireland&mdash;a man of large possessions and of unquestionable parts&mdash;has no
+place on the roll of the peerage; the sons of ennobled Cromwellian
+troopers and tradesmen have precedence at Court over the sons of the most
+illustrious Milesian Houses. This is not a mere trifle as may carelessly
+be said; it tends to revive memories that it were better to forget. Can
+nothing be done to make a graceful concession, which would touch many an
+Irish heart, and would go some way to promote a spirit of loyalty and hope
+in Ireland, which it should be a great object of statesmanship to create
+and foster?</p>
+
+<p>If the picture I have drawn of Ireland is correct in outline, there is
+much of evil omen in her present condition. The ancient divisions of race
+and faith, the most distinctive feature in her social structure, are at
+least as deeply marked as they have been for a century; bad legislation
+has made them deeper and wider. Catholic Ireland remains disaffected to
+British rule, despite efforts of conciliation and concessions that cannot
+be justified; no class in the community is completely satisfied;
+discontent rankles in the hearts of the landed gentry. The Union, indeed,
+has been successfully maintained; the frightful agrarian disorder of
+1881-89 no longer exists. But the Union is not permanently assured as long
+as the Liberal party and eighty Irish members demand Home Rule, and the
+over-representation of Ireland continues; the conspiracy of the Land and
+the National Leagues has revived in that of the United Irish League; and
+this seeks to compass the ends of its prototypes by obstruction in
+Parliament and detestable socialistic tyranny. And the frame of Irish
+society has been well-nigh shattered; ruins have been made, nothing solid
+has been put in their place. An aristocracy, long waning, has been
+practically destroyed, and can no longer be a support of the State; the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span>
+bureaucracy of the Castle reigns in its stead; but this is essentially a
+weak Government; it can maintain order, but has no hold on the people; the
+Irish democracy, to which power has been transferred, regards it with a
+dislike and a contempt it does not try to conceal. The country has made
+hardly any progress of late years; if some improvement in the state of the
+middle classes appears, agriculture, its leading industry, has perceptibly
+declined. In by far the most important of Irish social relations, those
+connected with the land, a revolution has taken place; a huge if a veiled
+confiscation has gone on; the landed gentry have been shamefully wronged;
+the occupiers of the soil have been most unduly favoured; yet both classes
+declare they have been ill-treated, notably the last. And the Irish land
+system has been turned upside down, with consequences disastrous and
+far-reaching; the landlord has been cut off from his estate; the tenant
+has been encouraged in thriftlessness and waste by law; the land has been
+bound in a ruinous mortmain, like that which existed under the penal code,
+and subjected to demoralising litigation, breeding a war of class; capital
+and fruitful enterprise turn away from it. And, at the same time, in order
+to lessen these evils, recourse has been had to remedies that are perhaps
+worse; the system of so-called &#8216;land purchase&#8217; has been devised; the
+result has been to create a class of peasant owners reproducing the nearly
+extinct middleman, and, above all, to arouse a cry for the &#8216;compulsory
+purchase&#8217; of the rented lands of Ireland, an act of wholesale spoliation
+unjust and disastrous alike. In the position of affairs we now see in
+Ireland, the stability of society has been rudely shaken; the sense of the
+security of property has well-nigh disappeared; the sanctity of contracts
+has no respect; the pillars on which order and prosperity rest have been
+injured; violent revolution has been arrested, indeed, but revolutionary
+and socialistic ideas spread far and wide. And will any impartial inquirer
+deny that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> these untoward results may be largely ascribed to the faulty
+legislation of late years, and to a system of administration shifty and
+feeble? And what judgment is to be passed on the thoughtless optimism too
+common in opinion with respect to Ireland? Meanwhile, reforms imperatively
+required are not even attempted; they are passed over or postponed to some
+more convenient season. The time surely has come to look things in Ireland
+straight in the face; to see if statesmanship cannot do something really
+effective for her good. This end assuredly will not be attained by
+breaking up the Three Kingdoms under the guise of Home Rule, or by
+promoting a confiscation the worst Ireland has ever seen; still less will
+it be attained by the quackery in legislation and administration too
+apparent of late years; nor can trifling and foolish optimism blind the
+eyes of intelligent thinkers to facts. Ireland can only expect to make
+progress by ruling the community on the just and sound principles to which
+long experience has given its sanction; and this consummation can only be
+the slow result of time.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span></p>
+<h2>APPENDIX</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="large">THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL, 1886.</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">ARRANGEMENT OF CLAUSES.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Part I.</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Legislative Authority.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td><small>CLAUSE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1.&nbsp;</td><td>Establishment of Irish Legislature.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">2.&nbsp;</td><td>Powers of Irish Legislature.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">3.&nbsp;</td><td>Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">4.&nbsp;</td><td>Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">5.&nbsp;</td><td>Prerogatives of Her Majesty as to Irish Legislative Body.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">6.&nbsp;</td><td>Duration of the Irish Legislative Body.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Executive Authority.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">7.&nbsp;</td><td>Constitution of the Executive Authority.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">8.&nbsp;</td><td>Use of Crown Lands by Irish Government.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Constitution of Legislative Body.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">9.&nbsp;</td><td>Constitution of Irish Legislative Body.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">10.&nbsp;</td><td>First order.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">11.&nbsp;</td><td>Second order.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Finance.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">12.&nbsp;</td><td>Taxes and separate Consolidated Fund.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">13.&nbsp;</td><td>Annual contributions from Ireland to Consolidated Fund of United Kingdom.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">14.&nbsp;</td><td>Collection and application of Customs and Excise duties in Ireland.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">15.&nbsp;</td><td>Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span>16.&nbsp;</td><td>Irish Church Fund.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">17.&nbsp;</td><td>Public loans.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">18.&nbsp;</td><td>Additional aid in case of war.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">19.&nbsp;</td><td>Money bills and votes.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">20.&nbsp;</td><td>Exchequer Division and revenue actions.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Police.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">21.&nbsp;</td><td>Police.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><span class="smcap">Part II.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Supplemental Provisions.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center">Powers of Her Majesty.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">22.&nbsp;</td><td>Powers over certain lands reserved to Her Majesty.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center">Legislative Body.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">23.&nbsp;</td><td>Veto by first order of Legislative Body, how overruled.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">24.&nbsp;</td><td>Cesser of power of Ireland to return members of Parliament.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center">Decision of Constitutional Questions.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">25.&nbsp;</td><td>Constitutional questions to be submitted to Judicial Committee.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center">Lord-Lieutenant.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">26.&nbsp;</td><td>Office of Lord-Lieutenant.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center">Judges and Civil Servants.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">27.&nbsp;</td><td>Judges to be removable only on address.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">28.&nbsp;</td><td>Provisions as to Judges and other persons having salaries charged on the Consolidated Fund.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">29.&nbsp;</td><td>As to persons holding Civil Service appointments.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">30.&nbsp;</td><td>Provision for existing pensions and superannuation allowances.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Transitory Provisions.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">31.&nbsp;</td><td>Transitory provisions in Schedule.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Miscellaneous.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">32.&nbsp;</td><td>Post office and savings banks.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">33.&nbsp;</td><td>Audit.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span>34.&nbsp;</td><td>Application of parliamentary law.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">35.&nbsp;</td><td>Regulations for carrying Act into effect.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">36.&nbsp;</td><td>Saving of powers of House of Lords.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">37.&nbsp;</td><td>Saving of rights of Parliament.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">38.&nbsp;</td><td>Continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, etc.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">39.&nbsp;</td><td>Mode of alteration of Act.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">40.&nbsp;</td><td>Definitions.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">41.&nbsp;</td><td>Short title of Act.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Schedules.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>A Bill to amend the provision for the future Government of Ireland.</i>
+[<span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 1886.</p>
+
+<p>Be it enacted by the Queen&#8217;s most excellent Majesty, by and with the
+advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in
+this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as
+follows:</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><br /><span class="smcap">Part I.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Legislative Authority.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Establishment of Irish Legislature.<br /><br />
+Powers of Irish Legislature.<br /><br />
+Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature.</div>
+
+<p><b>1.</b> On and after the appointed day there shall be established in Ireland a
+Legislature consisting of Her Majesty the Queen and the Irish Legislative
+Body.</p>
+
+<p><b>2.</b> With the exceptions and subject to the restrictions in this Act
+mentioned, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty the Queen, by and with the
+advice of the Irish Legislative Body, to make laws for the peace, order,
+and good government of Ireland, and by any such law to alter and repeal
+any law in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p><b>3.</b> The Legislature of Ireland shall not make laws relating to the
+following matters, or any of them:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="hang">(1) The status or dignity of the Crown, or the succession the Crown or a Regency;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(2) The making of peace or war;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(3) The army, navy, militia, volunteers, or other military or naval
+forces, or the defence of the realm;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span></p>
+<p class="hang">(4) Treaties and other relations with foreign States, or the
+relations between the various parts of Her Majesty&#8217;s dominions;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(5) Dignities or titles of honour;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(6) Prize or booty of war;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(7) Offences against the law of nations; or offences committed in
+violation of any treaty made, or hereafter to be made, between Her
+Majesty and any foreign State; or offences committed on the high seas;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(8) Treason, alienage, or naturalisation;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(9) Trade, navigation, or quarantine;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(10) The postal and telegraph service, except as hereafter in this Act
+mentioned with respect to the transmission of letters and telegrams in
+Ireland;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(11) Beacons, lighthouses, or sea-marks;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(12) The coinage; the value of foreign money; legal tender; or weights
+and measures; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(13) Copyright, patent rights, or other exclusive rights to the use or
+profits of any works or inventions.</p></div>
+
+<p>Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature.</div>
+
+<p><b>4.</b> The Irish Legislature shall not make any law&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="hang">(1) Respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, or
+prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(2) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, on account
+of religious belief; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(3) Abrogating or derogating from the right to establish or maintain
+any place of denominational education or any denominational
+institution or charity; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(4) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school
+receiving public money without attending the religious instruction at
+that school; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(5) Impairing, without either the leave of Her Majesty in Council
+first obtained on an address presented by the Legislative Body of
+Ireland, or the consent of the corporation interested, the rights,
+property, or privileges of any existing corporation incorporated by
+royal charter or local and general Act of Parliament; or</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span></p>
+<p class="hang">(6) Imposing or relating to duties of customs and duties of excise, as
+defined by this Act, or either of such duties, or affecting any Act
+relating to such duties or either of them; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(7) Affecting this Act, except in so far as it is declared to be
+alterable by the Irish Legislature.</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Prerogatives of Her Majesty as to Irish Legislative Body.<br /><br />
+Duration of the Irish Legislative Body.<br /><br />
+Constitution of the Executive Authority.</div>
+
+<p><b>5.</b>&mdash;Her Majesty the Queen shall have the same prerogatives with respect to
+summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the Irish Legislative Body as Her
+Majesty has with respect to summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the
+Imperial Parliament.</p>
+
+<p><b>6.</b>&mdash;The Irish Legislative Body whenever summoned may have continuance for
+five years and no longer, to be reckoned from the day on which any such
+Legislative Body is appointed to meet.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Executive Authority.</i></p>
+
+<p><b>7.</b>&mdash;(1) The Executive Government of Ireland shall continue vested in Her
+Majesty, and shall be carried on by the Lord-Lieutenant on behalf of Her
+Majesty with the aid of such officers and such Council as to Her Majesty
+may from time to time seem fit.</p>
+
+<p>(2) Subject to any instructions which may from time to time be given by
+Her Majesty, the Lord-Lieutenant shall give or withhold the assent of Her
+Majesty to Bills passed by the Irish Legislative Body, and shall exercise
+the prerogatives of Her Majesty in respect of the summoning, proroguing,
+and dissolving of the Irish Legislative Body, and any prerogatives the
+exercise of which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Use of Crown lands by Irish Government.</div>
+
+<p><b>8.</b>&mdash;Her Majesty may, by Order in Council, from time to time place under
+the control of the Irish Government, for the purposes of that Government,
+any such lands and buildings in Ireland as may be vested in or held in
+trust for Her Majesty.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Constitution of Legislative Body.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Constitution of Irish Legislative Body.</div>
+
+<p><b>9.</b>&mdash;(1) The Irish Legislative Body shall consist of a first and second order.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span>(2) The two orders shall deliberate together, and shall vote together,
+except that, if any question arises in relation to legislation or to the
+Standing Orders or Rules of Procedure or to any other matter in that
+behalf in this Act specified, and such question is to be determined by
+vote, each order shall, if a majority of the members present of either
+order demand a separate vote, give their votes in like manner as if they
+were separate Legislative Bodies; and if the result of the voting of the
+two orders does not agree the question shall be resolved in the negative.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">First order.</div>
+
+<p><b>10.</b>&mdash;(1) The first order of the Irish Legislative Body shall consist of
+one hundred and three members, of whom seventy-five shall be elective
+members and twenty-eight peerage members.</p>
+
+<p>(2) Each elective member shall at the date of his election and during his
+period of membership be <i>bon&acirc; fide</i> possessed of property which&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) If realty, or partly realty and partly personalty, yields two
+hundred pounds a year or upwards, free of all charges; or&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) If personalty yields the same income, or is of the capital value
+of four thousand pounds or upwards, free of all charges.</p></div>
+
+<p>For the purpose of electing the elective members of the first order of the
+Legislative Body, Ireland shall be divided into the electoral districts
+specified in the First Schedule to this Act, and each such district shall
+return the number of members in that behalf specified in that Schedule.</p>
+
+<p>(3) The elective members shall be elected by the registered electors of
+each electoral district, and for that purpose a register of electors shall
+be made annually.</p>
+
+<p>(4) An elector in each electoral district shall be qualified as follows,
+that is to say, he shall be of full age, and not subject to any legal
+incapacity, and shall have been during the twelve months next preceding
+the <i>twentieth day of July</i> in any year the owner or occupier of some land
+or tenement within the district of a net annual value of twenty-five
+pounds or upwards.</p>
+
+<p>(5) The term of office of an elective member shall be <i>ten years</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>(6) In every fifth year thirty-seven or thirty-eight of the elective
+members, as the case requires, shall retire from office, and their places
+shall be filled by election; the members to retire shall be those who have
+been members for the longest time without re-election.</p>
+
+<p>(7) The offices of the peerage members shall be filled as follows, that is
+to say,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) Each of the Irish peers who on the appointed day is one of the
+twenty-eight Irish representative peers, shall, on giving his written
+assent to the Lord-Lieutenant, become a peerage member of the first
+order of the Irish Legislative Body; and if at any time within <i>thirty
+years</i> after the appointed day any such peer vacates his office by
+death or resignation, the vacancy shall be filled by the election to
+that office by the Irish peers of one of their number in manner
+heretofore in use respecting the election of Irish representative
+peers, subject to adaptation as provided by this Act, and if the
+vacancy is not so filled within the proper time, it shall be filled by
+the election of an elective member.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) If any of the twenty-eight peers aforesaid does not within <i>one
+month</i> after the appointed day give such assent to be a peerage member
+of the first order, the vacancy so created shall be filled up as if he
+had assented and vacated his office by resignation.</p></div>
+
+<p>(8) A peerage member shall be entitled to hold office during his life, or
+until the expiration of <i>thirty years</i> from the appointed day, whichever
+period is the shortest. At the expiration of such <i>thirty years</i> the
+offices of all the peerage members shall be vacated as if they were dead,
+and their places shall be filled by elective members qualified and elected
+in manner provided by this Act with respect to elective members of the
+first order, and such elective members may be distributed by the Irish
+Legislature among the electoral districts, so, however, that care shall be
+taken to give additional members to the most populous place.</p>
+
+<p>(9) The offices of members of the first order shall not be vacated by the
+dissolution of the Legislative Body.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span>(10) The provisions in the Second Schedule to this Act relating to members
+of the first order of the Legislative Body shall be of the same force as
+if they were enacted in the body of this Act.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Second order.</div>
+
+<p><b>11.</b>&mdash;(1) Subject as in this section hereafter mentioned, the second order
+of the Legislative Body shall consist of two hundred and four members.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The members of the second order shall be chosen by the existing
+constituencies of Ireland, two by each constituency, with the exception of
+the City of Cork, which shall be divided into two divisions in manner set
+forth in the Third Schedule to this Act, and two members shall be chosen
+by each of such divisions.</p>
+
+<p>(3) Any person who, on the appointed day, is a member representing an
+existing Irish constituency in the House of Commons shall, on giving his
+written assent to the Lord-Lieutenant, become a member of the second order
+of the Irish Legislative Body as if he had been elected by the
+constituency which he was representing in the House of Commons. Each of
+the members for the City of Cork, on the said day, may elect for which of
+the divisions of that city he wishes to be deemed to have been elected.</p>
+
+<p>(4) If any member does not give such written assent within <i>one month</i>
+after the appointed day, his place shall be filled by election in the same
+manner and at the same time as if he had assented and vacated his office
+by death.</p>
+
+<p>(5) If the same person is elected to both orders, he shall, within <i>seven
+days</i> after the meeting of the Legislative Body, or if the Body is sitting
+at the time of the election, within <i>seven days</i> after the election, elect
+in which order he will serve, and his membership of the other order shall
+be void and be filled by a fresh election.</p>
+
+<p>(6) Notwithstanding anything in this Act, it shall be lawful for the
+Legislature of Ireland at any time to pass an Act enabling the Royal
+University of Ireland to return not more than two members to the second
+order of the Irish Legislative Body in addition to the number of members
+above mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>(7) Notwithstanding anything in this Act, it shall be lawful for the Irish
+Legislature, after the first dissolution of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> the Legislative Body which
+occurs, to alter the constitution or election of the second order of that
+body, due regard being had in the distribution of members to the
+population of the constituencies; provided that no alteration shall be
+made in the number of such order.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Finance.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Taxes and separate Consolidated Fund.</div>
+
+<p><b>12.</b>&mdash;(1) For the purpose of providing for the public service of Ireland,
+the Irish Legislature may impose taxes, other than duties of Customs or
+Excise as defined by this Act, which duties shall continue to be imposed
+and levied by and under the direction of the Imperial Parliament only.</p>
+
+<p>(2) On and after the appointed day there shall be an Irish Consolidated
+Fund separate from the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>(3) All taxes imposed by the Legislature of Ireland and all other public
+revenues under the control of the Government of Ireland shall, subject to
+any provisions touching the disposal thereof contained in any Act passed
+in the present session respecting the sale and purchase of land in
+Ireland, be paid into the Irish Consolidated Fund, and be appropriated to
+the public service of Ireland according to law.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Annual contributions from Ireland to Consolidated Fund of
+United Kingdom.</div>
+
+<p><b>13.</b>&mdash;(1) Subject to the provisions for the reduction or cesser thereof in
+this section mentioned, there shall be made on the part of Ireland to the
+Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom the following annual contributions
+in every financial year; that is to say,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) The sum of <i>one million four hundred and sixty-six thousand
+pounds</i> on account of the interest on and management of the Irish
+share of the National Debt:</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) The sum of <i>one million six hundred and sixty-six thousand
+pounds</i> on account of the expenditure on the army and navy of the
+United Kingdom:</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>c</i>) The sum of <i>one hundred and ten thousand pounds</i> on account of
+the Imperial civil expenditure of the United Kingdom:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span></p>
+<p class="hang">(<i>d</i>) The sum of <i>one million pounds</i> on account of the Royal Irish
+Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police.</p></div>
+
+<p>(2) During the period of <i>thirty years</i> from this section taking effect
+the said annual contributions shall not be increased, but may be reduced
+or cease as hereinafter mentioned. After the expiration of the said
+<i>thirty years</i> the said contributions shall, save as otherwise provided by
+this section, continue until altered in manner provided with respect to
+the alteration of this Act.</p>
+
+<p>(3) The Irish share of the National Debt shall be reckoned at <i>forty-eight
+million pounds</i> Bank annuities, and there shall be paid in every financial
+year on behalf of Ireland to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the
+National Debt an annual sum of <i>three hundred and sixty thousand pounds</i>,
+and the permanent annual charge for the National Debt on the Consolidated
+Fund of the United Kingdom shall be reduced by that amount, and the said
+annual sum shall be applied by the said Commissioners as a sinking fund
+for the redemption of the National Debt, and the Irish share of the
+National Debt shall be reduced by the amount of the National Debt so
+redeemed, and the said annual contribution on account of the interest on
+and management of the Irish share of the National Debt shall from time to
+time be reduced by a sum equal to the interest upon the amount of the
+National Debt from time to time so redeemed, but that last-mentioned sum
+shall be paid annually to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the
+National Debt in addition to the above-mentioned annual sinking fund, and
+shall be so paid and be applied as if it were part of that sinking fund.</p>
+
+<p>(4) As soon as an amount of the National Debt equal to the said Irish
+share thereof has been redeemed under the provisions of this section, the
+said annual contribution on account of the interest on and management of
+the Irish share of the National Debt, and the said annual sum for a
+sinking fund shall cease.</p>
+
+<p>(5) If it appears to Her Majesty that the expenditure in respect of the
+army and navy of the United Kingdom, or in respect of Imperial Civil
+expenditure of the United<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> Kingdom, for any financial year has been less
+than <i>fifteen</i> times the amount of the contributions above named on
+account of the same matter, a sum equal to <i>one-fifteenth</i> part of the
+diminution shall be deducted from the current annual contribution for the
+same matter.</p>
+
+<p>(6) The sum paid from time to time by the Commissioners of Her Majesty&#8217;s
+Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues to the Consolidated Fund of the United
+Kingdom on account of the hereditary revenues of the Crown in Ireland
+shall be credited to the Irish Government, and go in reduction of the said
+annual contribution payable on account of the Imperial Civil expenditure
+of the United Kingdom, but shall not be taken into account in calculating
+whether such diminution as above mentioned has or has not taken place in
+such expenditure.</p>
+
+<p>(7) If it appears to Her Majesty that the expenditure in respect of the
+Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police for any
+financial year has been less than the contribution above-named on account
+of such constabulary and police, the current contribution shall be
+diminished by the amount of such difference.</p>
+
+<p>(8) This section shall take effect from and after the <i>thirty-first day of
+March, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Collection and application of Customs and Excise duties in
+Ireland.</div>
+
+<p><b>14.</b>&mdash;(1) On and after such day as the Treasury may direct all moneys from
+time to time collected in Ireland on account of the duties of Customs or
+the duties of Excise as defined by this Act shall, under such regulations
+as the Treasury from time to time make, be carried to a separate account
+(in this Act referred to as the Customs and Excise account) and applied in
+the payment of the following sums in priority as mentioned in this
+section; that is to say,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">First, of such sum as is from time to time directed by the Treasury in
+respect of the costs, charges, and expenses of and incident to the
+collection and management of the said duties in Ireland not exceeding
+four per cent. of the amount collected there;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Secondly, of the annual contributions required by this Act to be made
+to the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span></p>
+<p class="hang">Thirdly, of the annual sums required by this Act to be paid to the
+Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Fourthly, of all sums by this Act declared to be payable out of the
+moneys carried to the Customs and Excise account;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Fifthly, of all sums due to the Consolidated Fund of the United
+Kingdom for interest or sinking fund, in respect of any loans made by
+the issue of bank annuities or otherwise to the Government of Ireland
+under any Act passed in the present session relating to the purchase
+and sale of land in Ireland, so far as such sums are not defrayed out
+of the moneys received under such Act.</p></div>
+
+<p>(2) So much of the moneys carried to a separate account under this section
+as the Treasury consider are not, and are not likely to be, required to
+meet the above-mentioned payments, shall from time to time be paid over
+and applied as part of the public revenues under the control of the Irish
+Government.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund.</div>
+
+<p><b>15.</b>&mdash;(1) There shall be charged on the Irish Consolidated Fund in priority
+as mentioned in this section:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">First, such portion of the sums directed by this Act to be paid out of
+the moneys carried to the Customs and Excise account in priority to
+any payment for the public revenues of Ireland, as those moneys are
+insufficient to pay;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Secondly, all sums due in respect of any debt incurred by the
+Government of Ireland, whether for interest, management, or sinking
+fund;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Thirdly, all sums which at the passing of this Act are charged on the
+Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom in respect of Irish services
+other than the salary of the Lord-Lieutenant;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Fourthly, the salaries of all judges of the Supreme Court of
+Judicature or other Superior Court in Ireland, or of any County or
+other like Court, who are appointed after the passing of this Act, and
+the pensions of such judges;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Fifthly, any other sums charged by this Act on the Irish Consolidated Fund.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span>(2) It shall be the duty of the Legislature of Ireland to impose all such
+taxes, duties, or imposts as will raise a sufficient revenue to meet all
+sums charged for the time being on the Irish Consolidated Fund.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Irish Church Fund.</div>
+
+<p><b>16.</b>&mdash;(1) Until all charges which are payable out of the Church property in
+Ireland, and are guaranteed by the Treasury, have been fully paid, the
+Irish Land Commission shall continue as heretofore to exist, with such
+Commissioners and officers receiving such salaries as the Treasury may
+from time to time appoint, and to administer the Church property and apply
+the income and other moneys receivable therefrom; and so much of the
+salaries of such Commissioners and officers and expenses of the office as
+is not paid out of the Church property shall be paid out of moneys carried
+to the Customs and Excise account under this Act, and if these moneys are
+insufficient, out of the Consolidated Fund of Ireland, and if not so paid,
+shall be paid out of the moneys provided by Parliament. Provided as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) All charges on the Church property for which a guarantee has
+been given by the Treasury before the passing of this Act shall, so
+far as they are not paid out of such property, be paid out of the
+moneys carried to the Customs and Excise account under this Act, and
+if such moneys are insufficient, the Consolidated Fund of Ireland,
+without prejudice nevertheless to the guarantee of the Treasury;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) All charges on the Church property, for which no guarantee has
+been given by the Treasury before the passing of this Act shall be
+charged on the Consolidated Fund of Ireland, but shall not be
+guaranteed by the Treasury nor charged on the Consolidated Fund of the
+United Kingdom.</p></div>
+
+<p>(2) Subject to any existing charges on the Church property, such property
+shall belong to the Irish Government and any portion of the annual revenue
+thereof which the Treasury, on the application of the Irish Government,
+certify at the end of any financial year not to be required for meeting
+charges, shall be paid over and applied as part<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> of the public revenues
+under the control of the Irish Government.</p>
+
+<p>(3) As soon as all charges on the Church property guaranteed by the
+Treasury have been paid, such property may be managed and administered,
+and subject to existing charges thereon disposed of, and the income or
+proceeds thereof applied, in such manner as the Irish Legislature may from
+time to time direct.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">32 &amp; 33 Vict. c. 42.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">44 &amp; 45 Vict. c. 71.</div>
+
+<p>(4) &#8216;Church property&#8217; in this section means all property accruing under
+the Irish Church Act, 1869, and transferred to the Irish Land Commission
+by the Irish Church Act Amendment Act, 1881.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Public loans.</div>
+
+<p><b>17.</b>&mdash;(1) All sums due for principal or interest to the Public Works Loan
+Commissioners or to the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland in
+respect of existing loans advanced on any security in Ireland shall on and
+after the appointed day be due to the Government of Ireland instead of the
+said Commissioners, and such body of persons as the Government of Ireland
+may appoint for the purpose shall have all the powers of the said
+Commissioners or their secretary for enforcing payment of such sums, and
+all securities for such sums given to such Commissioners or their
+secretary shall have effect as if the said body were therein substituted
+for those Commissioners or their secretary.</p>
+
+<p>(2) For the repayment of the said loans to the Consolidated Fund of the
+United Kingdom, the Irish Government shall pay annually into that Fund by
+half-yearly payments <i>on the first day of January</i> and <i>the first day of
+July</i>, or on such other days as may be agreed on, such instalments of the
+principal of the said loans as will discharge all the loans within <i>thirty
+years</i> from the appointed day, and shall also pay interest half-yearly on
+so much of the said principal as from time to time remains unpaid at the
+rate of <i>three</i> per cent. per annum, and such instalments of principal and
+interest shall be paid out of the moneys carried to the Customs and Excise
+account under this Act, and if those are insufficient, out of the
+Consolidated Fund of Ireland.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Additional aid in case of war.</div>
+
+<p><b>18.</b> If Her Majesty declares that a state of war exists and is pleased to
+signify such declaration to the Irish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> Legislative Body by speech or
+message, it shall be lawful for the Irish Legislature to appropriate a
+further sum out of the Consolidated Fund of Ireland in aid of the army or
+navy, or other measures which Her Majesty may take for the prosecution of
+the war and defence of the realm, and to provide and raise money for that
+purpose; and all moneys so provided and raised, whether by loan, taxation,
+or otherwise, shall be paid into the Consolidated Fund of the United
+Kingdom.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Money bills and votes.</div>
+
+<p><b>19.</b>&mdash;(1) It shall not be lawful for the Irish Legislative Body to adopt or
+pass any vote, resolution, address, or Bill for the raising or
+appropriation for any purpose of any part of the public revenue of
+Ireland, or of any tax, duty, or impost, except in pursuance of a
+recommendation from Her Majesty signified through the Lord-Lieutenant in
+the session in which such vote, resolution, address, or Bill is proposed.</p>
+
+<p>(2) Notwithstanding that the Irish Legislature is prohibited by this Act
+from making laws relating to certain subjects, that Legislature may, with
+the assent of Her Majesty in Council first obtained, appropriate any part
+of the Irish public revenue, or any tax, duty, or impost imposed by such
+Legislature, for the purpose of, or in connection with, such subjects.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Exchequer Division and revenue actions.</div>
+
+<p><b>20.</b>&mdash;(1) On and after the appointed day, the Exchequer Division of the
+High Court of Justice shall continue to be a Court of Exchequer for
+revenue purposes under this Act, and whenever any vacancy occurs in the
+office of any judge of such Exchequer Division, his successor shall be
+appointed by Her Majesty on the joint recommendation of the
+Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The judges of such Exchequer Division appointed after the passing of
+this Act shall be removable only by Her Majesty on address from the two
+Houses of the Imperial Parliament, and shall receive the same salaries and
+pensions as those payable at the passing of this Act to the existing
+judges of such division, unless with the assent of Her Majesty in Council
+first obtained, the Irish Legislature alters such salaries or pensions,
+and such salaries and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> pensions shall be paid out of the moneys carried to
+the Customs and Excise account in pursuance of this Act, and if the same
+are insufficient shall be paid out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and if
+not so paid shall be paid out of the Consolidated Fund of the United
+Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>(3) An alteration of any rules relating to the procedure in such legal
+proceedings as are mentioned in this section shall not be made except with
+the approval of the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, and the
+sittings of the Exchequer Division and the judges thereof shall be
+regulated with the like approval.</p>
+
+<p>(4) All legal proceedings instituted in Ireland by or against the
+Commissioners or any officers of Customs or Excise, or the Treasury,
+shall, if so required by any party in such proceedings, be heard and
+determined before the judges of such Exchequer Division, or some or one of
+them, and any appeal from the decision in any such legal proceeding, if by
+a judge, shall lie to the said division, and if by the Exchequer Division,
+shall lie to the House of Lords, and not to any other tribunal; and if it
+is made to appear to such judges, or any of them, that any decree or
+judgment in any such proceeding as aforesaid, has not been duly enforced
+by the sheriff or other officer whose duty it is to enforce the same, such
+judges or judge shall appoint some officer to enforce such judgment or
+decree; and it shall be the duty of such officer to take proper steps to
+enforce the same, and for that purpose such officer and all persons
+employed by him shall be entitled to the same immunities, powers, and
+privileges as are by law conferred on a sheriff and his officers.</p>
+
+<p>(5) All sums recovered in respect of duties of Customs and Excise, or
+under any Act relating thereto, or by an officer of Customs or Excise,
+shall, notwithstanding anything in any other Act, be paid to the Treasury,
+and carried to the Customs and Excise account under this Act.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Police.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Police.</div>
+
+<p><b>21.</b>&mdash;The following regulations shall be made with respect to police in
+Ireland:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span></p>
+<p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) The Dublin Metropolitan Police shall continue and be subject as
+heretofore to the control of the Lord-Lieutenant as representing Her
+Majesty for a period of <i>two years</i> from the passing of this Act, and
+thereafter until any alteration is made by Act of the Legislature of
+Ireland, but such Act shall provide for the proper saving of all then
+existing interests, whether as regards pay, pensions, superannuation
+allowances, or otherwise.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) The Royal Irish Constabulary shall, while that force subsists,
+continue and be subject as heretofore to the control of the
+Lord-Lieutenant as representing Her Majesty.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>c</i>) The Irish Legislature may provide for the establishment and
+maintenance of a police force in counties and boroughs in Ireland
+under the control of local authorities, and arrangements may be made
+between the Treasury and the Irish Government for the establishment
+and maintenance of police reserves.</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="center"><br /><br /><span class="smcap">Part II.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Supplemental Provisions.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Powers of Her Majesty.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Power over certain lands reserved to Her Majesty.</div>
+
+<p><b>22.</b>&mdash;On and after the appointed day there shall be reserved to Her
+Majesty&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(1) The power of erecting forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and
+other buildings for military or naval purposes;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(2) The power of taking waste land, and, on making due compensation,
+any other land for the purpose of erecting such forts, magazines,
+arsenals, dockyards, or other buildings as aforesaid, and for any
+other military or naval purpose, or the defence of the realm.</p></div>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span>Legislative Body.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Veto by first order of Legislative Body, how overruled.</div>
+
+<p><b>23.</b>&mdash;If a Bill or any provision of a Bill is lost by disagreement between
+the two orders of the Legislative Body, and after a period ending with a
+dissolution of the Legislative Body, or the period of <i>three years</i>,
+whichever period is longest, such Bill, or a Bill containing the said
+provision, is again considered by the Legislative Body, and such Bill or
+provision is adopted by the second order and negatived by the first order,
+the same shall be submitted to the whole Legislative Body, both orders of
+which shall vote together on the Bill or provision, and the same shall be
+adopted or rejected according to the decision of the majority of the
+members so voting together.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Cesser of power of Ireland to return members to Parliament.</div>
+
+<p><b>24.</b>&mdash;On and after the appointed day Ireland shall cease, except in the
+event hereafter in this Act mentioned, to return representative peers to
+the House of Lords or members to the House of Commons, and the persons who
+on the said day are such representative peers and members shall cease as
+such to be members of the House of Lords and House of Commons
+respectively.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br />Decision of Constitutional Questions.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Constitutional questions to be submitted to Judicial Committee.</div>
+
+<p><b>25.</b> Questions arising as to the powers conferred on the Legislature of
+Ireland under this Act shall be determined as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) If any such question arises on any Bill passed by the
+Legislative Body, the Lord-Lieutenant may refer such question to Her
+Majesty in Council;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) If, in the course of any action or other legal proceeding, such
+question arises on any Act of the Irish Legislature, any party to such
+action or other legal proceeding may, subject to the rules in this
+section mentioned, appeal from a decision on such question to Her
+Majesty in Council;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>c</i>) If any such question arises otherwise than as aforesaid in any
+Act of the Irish Legislature, the Lord-Lieutenant or one of Her
+Majesty&#8217;s principal Secretaries of State may refer such question to
+Her Majesty in Council;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span></p>
+<p class="hang">(<i>d</i>) A question referred or appeal brought under this section to Her
+Majesty in Council shall be referred for the consideration of the
+Judicial Committee of the Privy Council;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>e</i>) The decision of Her Majesty in Council on any question referred
+or appeal brought under this section shall be final, and a Bill which
+may be so decided to be, or contain a provision, in excess of the
+powers of the Irish Legislature shall not be assented to by the
+Lord-Lieutenant; and a provision of any Act which is so decided to be
+in excess of the powers of the Irish Legislature shall be void;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>f</i>) There shall be added to the Judicial Committee when sitting for
+the purpose of considering questions under this section, such members
+of Her Majesty&#8217;s Privy Council, being or having been Irish judges, as
+to Her Majesty may seem meet;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>g</i>) Her Majesty may, by Order in Council from time to time, make
+rules as to the cases and mode in which and conditions under which, in
+pursuance of this section, questions may be referred and appeals
+brought to Her Majesty in Council, and as to the consideration thereof
+by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and any rules so made
+shall be of the same force as if they were enacted in this Act;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>h</i>) An appeal shall not lie to the House of Lords in respect of any
+question in respect of which an appeal can be had to Her Majesty in
+Council in pursuance of this section.</p></div>
+
+<p class="center"><br />Lord-Lieutenant.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Office of Lord-Lieutenant.</div>
+
+<p><b>26.</b>&mdash;(1) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any Act of
+Parliament, every subject of Her Majesty shall be eligible to hold and
+enjoy the office of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, without reference to his
+religious belief.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The salary of the Lord-Lieutenant shall continue to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> be charged on the
+Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, and the expenses of his household
+and establishment shall continue to be defrayed out of moneys to be
+provided by Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>(3) All existing powers vested by Act of Parliament or otherwise in the
+Chief Secretary for Ireland may, if no such officer is appointed, be
+exercised by the Lord-Lieutenant until other provision is made by Act of
+the Irish Legislature.</p>
+
+<p>(4) The Legislature of Ireland shall not pass any Act relating to the
+office or functions of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br />Judges and Civil Servants.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Judges to be removable only on address.<br /><br />
+Provisions as to judges and other persons having salaries charged on the Consolidated Fund.</div>
+
+<p><b>27.</b> A judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature or other Superior Court of
+Ireland, or of any County Court or other Court with a like jurisdiction in
+Ireland, appointed after the passing of this Act, shall not be removed
+from his office except in pursuance of an address to Her Majesty from both
+orders of the Legislative Body voting separately, nor shall his salary be
+diminished or right to pension altered during his continuance in office.</p>
+
+<p><b>28.</b>&mdash;(1) All persons who at the passing of this Act are judges of the
+Supreme Court of Judicature or County Court judges, or hold any other
+judicial position in Ireland shall, if they are removable at present on
+address to Her Majesty of both Houses of Parliament, continue to be
+removable only upon such address from both Houses of the Imperial
+Parliament, and if removable in any other manner shall continue to be
+removable in like manner as heretofore; and such persons, and also all
+persons at the passing of this Act in the permanent Civil Service of the
+Crown in Ireland whose salaries are charged on the Consolidated Fund of
+the United Kingdom, shall continue to hold office and to be entitled to
+the same salaries, pensions, and superannuation allowances as heretofore,
+and to be liable to perform the same or analogous duties as heretofore;
+and the salaries of such persons shall be paid out of the moneys carried
+to the Customs and Excise account under<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> this Act, or if these moneys are
+insufficient, out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and if the same are not
+so paid shall continue charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United
+Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>(2) If any of these said persons retires from office with the approbation
+of Her Majesty before he has completed the period of service entitling him
+to a pension, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty, if she thinks fit, to
+grant to that person such pension, not exceeding the pension to which he
+would have been entitled if he had completed the said period of service,
+as to Her Majesty seems meet.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">As to persons holding Civil Service appointments.</div>
+
+<p><b>29.</b>&mdash;(1) All persons not above provided for and at the passing of this Act
+serving in Ireland in the permanent Civil Service of the Crown shall
+continue to hold their offices and receive the same salaries, and to be
+entitled to the same gratuities and superannuation allowances as
+heretofore, and shall be liable to perform the same duties as heretofore
+or duties of similar rank, but any of such persons shall be entitled at
+the expiration of <i>two years</i> after the passing of this Act to retire from
+office, and at any time if required by the Irish Government shall retire
+from office, and on any such retirement shall be entitled to receive such
+payment as the Treasury may award to him in accordance with the provisions
+contained in the Fourth Schedule to this Act.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The amount of such payment shall be paid to him out of the moneys
+carried to the Customs and Excise account under this Act, or, if those
+moneys are insufficient, out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and so far as
+the same are not so paid shall be paid out of moneys provided by
+Parliament.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">34 &amp; 35 Vict. c. 36.</div>
+
+<p>(3) The Pensions Commutation Act, 1871, shall apply to all persons who,
+having retired from office, are entitled to any annual payment under this
+section in like manner as if they had retired in consequence of the
+abolition of their offices.</p>
+
+<p>(4) This section shall not apply to persons who are retained in the
+service of the Imperial Government.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Provision for existing pensions and superannuation allowances.</div>
+
+<p><b>30.</b> Where before the passing of this Act any pension or superannuation
+allowance has been granted to any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> person on account of service as a judge
+of the Supreme Court of Judicature of Ireland, or of any Court
+consolidated into that Court, or as a County Court judge, or in any other
+judicial position, or on account of service in the permanent Civil Service
+of the Crown in Ireland otherwise than in some office, the holder of which
+is, after the passing of this Act, retained in the service of the Imperial
+Government, such pension or allowance, whether payable out of the
+Consolidated Fund or out of moneys provided by Parliament, shall continue
+to be paid to such person, and shall be so paid out of the moneys carried
+to the Customs and Excise account under this Act, or, if such moneys are
+insufficient, out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and so far as the same
+is not so paid, shall be paid as heretofore out of the Consolidated Fund
+of the United Kingdom or moneys provided by Parliament.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Transitory Provisions.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Transitory provisions in Schedule.</div>
+
+<p><b>31.</b> The provisions contained in the Fifth Schedule to this Act relating to
+the mode in which arrangements are to be made for setting in motion the
+Irish Legislative Body and Government, and for the transfer to the Irish
+Government of the powers and duties to be transferred to them under this
+Act, or for otherwise bringing this Act into operation, shall be of the
+same effect as if they were enacted in the body of this Act.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Miscellaneous.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Post office and savings banks.</div>
+
+<p><b>32.</b> Whenever an Act of the Legislature of Ireland has provided for
+carrying on the postal and telegraphic service with respect to the
+transmission of letters and telegrams in Ireland, and the post office and
+other savings banks in Ireland, and for protecting the officers then in
+such service, and the existing depositors in such post-office savings
+banks, the Treasury shall make arrangements for the transfer of the said
+service and banks, in accordance with the said Act, and shall give public
+notice of the transfer, and shall pay all depositors in such post-office
+savings bank who request payment within <i>six months</i> after the date fixed
+for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> such transfer, and after the expiration of such <i>six months</i> the said
+depositors shall cease to have any claim against the Postmaster-General or
+the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, but shall have the like claim
+against the Consolidated Fund of Ireland, and the Treasury shall cause to
+be transferred in accordance with the said Act the securities representing
+the sums due to the said depositors in post-office savings banks, and the
+securities held for other savings banks.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Audit.</div>
+
+<p><b>33.</b> Save as otherwise provided by the Irish Legislature&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) The existing law relating to the Exchequer and the Consolidated
+Fund of the United Kingdom shall apply to the Irish Exchequer and
+Consolidated Fund, and an officer shall from time to time be appointed
+by the Lord-Lieutenant to fill the office of the Comptroller-General
+of the receipt and issue of Her Majesty&#8217;s Exchequer and
+Auditor-General of public accounts so far as respects Ireland; and</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">29 &amp; 30 Vict. c. 39.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) The accounts of the Irish Consolidated Fund shall be audited as
+appropriation accounts in manner provided by the Exchequer and Audit
+Departments Act, 1866, by or under the direction of the holder of such
+office.</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Application of parliamentary law.</div>
+
+<p><b>34.</b>&mdash;(1) The privileges, immunities, and powers to be held, enjoyed, and
+exercised by the Irish Legislative Body, and the members thereof, shall be
+such as are from time to time defined by Act of the Irish Legislature, but
+so that the same shall never exceed those at the passing of this Act,
+held, enjoyed, and exercised by the House of Commons, and by the members
+thereof.</p>
+
+<p>(2) Subject as in this Act mentioned, all existing laws and customs
+relating to the members of the House of Commons and their election,
+including the enactments respecting the questioning of elections, corrupt
+and illegal practices, and registration of electors, shall, so far as
+applicable, extend to elective members of the first order and to members
+of the second order of the Irish Legislative Body. Provided that,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span></p>
+<p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) The law relating to the offices of profit enumerated in Schedule
+H to the Representation of the People Act, 1867, shall apply to such
+offices of profit in the Government of Ireland not exceeding ten, as
+the Legislature of Ireland may from time to time direct;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) After the first dissolution of the Legislative Body, the
+Legislature of Ireland may, subject to the restrictions in this Act
+mentioned, alter the laws and customs in this section mentioned.</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Regulations for carrying Act into effect.</div>
+
+<p><b>35.</b>&mdash;(1) The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland may make regulations for the
+following purposes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) The summoning of the Legislative Body and the election of a
+Speaker, and such adaptation to the proceedings of the Legislative
+Body of the procedure of the House of Commons as appears to him
+expedient for facilitating the conduct of business by that body on
+their first meeting;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) The adaptation of any laws relating to the election of
+representative peers;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>c</i>) The adaptation of any laws and customs relating to the House of
+Commons or the members thereof to the elective members of the first
+order and to members of the second order of the Legislative Body; and</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>d</i>) The mode of signifying their assent or election under this Act
+by representative peers or Irish members of the House of Commons as
+regards becoming members of the Irish Legislative Body in pursuance of
+this Act.</p></div>
+
+<p>(2) Any regulations so made shall, in so far as they concern the procedure
+of the Legislative Body, be subject to alteration by Standing Orders of
+that Body, and so far as they concern other matters, be subject to
+alteration by the Legislature of Ireland, but shall, until alteration,
+have the same effect as if they were inserted in this Act.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Saving of powers of House of Lords.<br /><br />
+Savings of rights of Parliament.<br /><br />
+Continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, etc.</div>
+
+<p><b>36.</b> Save as in this Act provided with respect to matters to be decided by
+Her Majesty in Council, nothing in this Act shall affect the appellate
+jurisdiction of the House of Lords in respect of actions and suits in
+Ireland, or the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span> jurisdiction of the House of Lords to determine the
+claims to Irish peerages.</p>
+
+<p><b>37.</b> Save as herein expressly provided, all matters in relation to which it
+is not competent for the Irish Legislative Body to make or repeal laws
+shall remain and be within the exclusive authority of the Imperial
+Parliament, whose power and authority in relation thereto, save as
+aforesaid, shall in no wise be diminished or restrained by anything herein
+contained.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"></div>
+
+<p><b>38.</b>&mdash;(1) Except as otherwise provided by this Act, all existing laws in
+force in Ireland, and all existing courts of civil and criminal
+jurisdiction, and all existing legal commissions, powers, and authorities,
+and all existing officers, judicial, administrative, and ministerial, and
+all existing taxes, licence, and other duties, fees, and other receipts in
+Ireland shall continue as if this Act had not been passed; subject,
+nevertheless, to be repealed, abolished, or altered in manner and to the
+extent provided by this Act; provided that, subject to the provisions of
+this Act, such taxes, duties, fees, and other receipts, shall, after the
+appointed day, form part of the public revenues of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The Commissioners of Inland Revenue and Commissioners of Customs, and
+the officers of such Commissioners respectively, shall have the same
+powers in relation to any articles subject to any duty of excise or
+customs, manufactured, imported, kept for sale, or sold, and any premises
+where the same may be, and to any machinery, apparatus, vessels, utensils,
+or conveyance used in connection therewith, or the removal thereof, and in
+relation to the person manufacturing, importing, keeping for sale,
+selling, or having the custody or possession of the same as they would
+have had if this Act had not been passed.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Mode of alteration of Act.</div>
+
+<p><b>39.</b>&mdash;(1) On and after the appointed day this Act shall not, except such
+provisions thereof as are declared to be alterable by the Legislature of
+Ireland, be altered except&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) By Act of the Imperial Parliament and with the consent of the
+Irish Legislative Body testified by an address to Her Majesty, or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) By an Act of the Imperial Parliament, for the passing of which
+there shall be summoned to the House<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> of Lords the peerage members of
+the first order of the Irish Legislative Body, and if there are no
+such members then twenty-eight Irish representative peers elected by
+the Irish peers in manner heretofore in use, subject to adaptation as
+provided by this Act; and there shall be summoned to the House of
+Commons such one of the members of each constituency, or in the case
+of a constituency returning four members such two of those members, as
+the Legislative Body of Ireland may select, and such peers and members
+shall respectively be deemed, for the purpose of passing any such Act,
+to be members of the said Houses of Parliament respectively.</p></div>
+
+<p>(2) For the purposes of this section, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty
+by Order in Council to make such provisions for summoning the said peers
+of Ireland to the House of Lords and the said members from Ireland to the
+House of Commons as to Her Majesty may seem necessary or proper, and any
+provisions contained in such Order in Council shall have the same effect
+as if they had been enacted by Parliament.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Definitions.</div>
+
+<p><b>40.</b> In this Act&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">The expression &#8216;the appointed day&#8217; shall mean such day after the
+<i>thirty-first day of March in the year one thousand eight hundred and
+eighty-seven</i> as may be determined by order of Her Majesty in Council.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;Lord-Lieutenant&#8217; includes the lords justices or any
+other chief governor or governors of Ireland for the time being.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;Her Majesty the Queen,&#8217; or &#8216;Her Majesty in Council,&#8217;
+or &#8216;the Queen,&#8217; includes the heirs and successors of Her Majesty the Queen.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;Treasury&#8217; means the Commissioners of Her Majesty&#8217;s Treasury.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;Treaty&#8217; includes any convention or arrangement.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;existing&#8217; means existing at the passing of this Act.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span></p>
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;existing constituency&#8217; means any county or borough,
+or division of a county or borough, or a University returning at the
+passing of this Act a member or members to serve in Parliament.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;duties of excise&#8217; does not include a duty received in
+respect of any licence whether for the sale of intoxicating liquors or
+otherwise.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;financial year&#8217; means the twelve months ending on the
+<i>thirty-first day of March</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Short title of Act.</div>
+
+<p><b>41.</b> This Act may be cited for all purposes as the Irish Government Act,
+1886.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">SCHEDULES.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">First Schedule.</span></p>
+
+<p>First order of the Irish Legislative Body.</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td class="btr" align="center">Electoral Districts.</td>
+    <td class="btr" align="center">Number of Members.</td>
+    <td class="bt" align="center">Rotation.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="btr">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="btr">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="bt">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="bbr">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="bbr">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="bb">&nbsp;</td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p class="center"><br /><span class="smcap">Second Schedule.</span></p>
+
+<p>Provisions relating to the first order of the Irish Legislative Body.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><span class="smcap">Third Schedule.</span></p>
+
+<p>Boundaries of divisions of the City of Cork for the purpose of returning
+members to the second order of the Legislative Body.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><span class="smcap">Fourth Schedule.</span></p>
+
+<p>Provisions as to superannuation allowances of persons in the Permanent
+Civil Service.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><span class="smcap">Fifth Schedule.</span></p>
+
+<p>Transitory provisions.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p class="center"><span class="large">THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL, 1893.</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">ARRANGEMENT OF CLAUSES.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Part I.</span></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Legislative Authority.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td><small>CLAUSE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1.&nbsp;</td><td>Establishment of Irish Legislature.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">2.&nbsp;</td><td>Powers of Irish Legislature.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">3.&nbsp;</td><td>Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">4.&nbsp;</td><td>Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Executive Authority.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">5.&nbsp;</td><td>Executive power in Ireland.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Constitution of Legislature.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">6.&nbsp;</td><td>Composition of Irish Legislative Council.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">7.&nbsp;</td><td>Composition of Irish Legislative Assembly.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">8.&nbsp;</td><td>Disagreement between two Houses, how settled.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Irish Representation in House of Commons.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">9.&nbsp;</td><td>Representation in Parliament of Irish counties and boroughs.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Finance.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">10.&nbsp;</td><td>As to separate Consolidated Fund and taxes.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">11.&nbsp;</td><td>Hereditary revenues and income tax.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">12.&nbsp;</td><td>Financial arrangements as between United Kingdom and Ireland.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">13.&nbsp;</td><td>Treasury Account (Ireland).</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">14.&nbsp;</td><td>Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span>15.&nbsp;</td><td>Irish Church Fund.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">16.&nbsp;</td><td>Local loans.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">17.&nbsp;</td><td>Adaptation of Acts as to Local Taxation Accounts and Probate, etc., duties.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">18.&nbsp;</td><td>Money bills and votes.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">19.&nbsp;</td><td>Exchequer judges for revenue actions, election petitions, etc.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Post Office, Postal Telegraphs, and Savings Banks.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">20.&nbsp;</td><td>Transfer of post office and postal telegraphs.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">21.&nbsp;</td><td>Transfer of savings banks.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Irish Appeals and Decision of Constitutional Questions.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">22.&nbsp;</td><td>Irish appeals.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">23.&nbsp;</td><td>Special provision for decision of constitutional questions.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Lord-Lieutenant and Crown Lands.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">24.&nbsp;</td><td>Office of Lord-Lieutenant.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">25.&nbsp;</td><td>Use of Crown lands by Irish Government.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Judges and Civil Servants.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">26.&nbsp;</td><td>Tenure of future judges.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">27.&nbsp;</td><td>As to existing judges and other persons having salaries charged on the Consolidated Fund.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">28.&nbsp;</td><td>As to persons holding Civil Service appointments.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">29.&nbsp;</td><td>As to existing pensions and superannuation allowances.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Police.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">30.&nbsp;</td><td>As to police.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Miscellaneous.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">31.&nbsp;</td><td>Irish Exchequer Consolidated Fund and Audit.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">32.&nbsp;</td><td>Law applicable to both Houses of Irish Legislature.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">33.&nbsp;</td><td>Supplemental provisions as to powers of Irish Legislature.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">34.&nbsp;</td><td>Limitation on borrowing by local authorities.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><i>Transitory Provisions.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">35.&nbsp;</td><td>Temporary restriction on powers of Irish Legislature and Executive.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span>36.&nbsp;</td><td>Transitory provisions.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">37.&nbsp;</td><td>Continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, etc.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">38.&nbsp;</td><td>Appointed day.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">39.&nbsp;</td><td>Definitions.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">40.&nbsp;</td><td>Short title.</td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Schedules.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>A Bill to amend the provision for the Government of Ireland.</i> [<span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 1893.</p>
+
+<p>Whereas it is expedient that without impairing or restricting the supreme
+authority of Parliament, an Irish Legislature should be created for such
+purposes in Ireland as in this Act mentioned: Be it therefore enacted by
+the Queen&#8217;s most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of
+the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament
+assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Part I.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Legislative Authority.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Establishment of Irish Legislature.</div>
+
+<p><b>1.</b> On and after the appointed day there shall be in Ireland a Legislature
+consisting of Her Majesty the Queen and of two Houses, the Legislative
+Council and the Legislative Assembly.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Powers of Irish Legislature.</div>
+
+<p><b>2.</b> With the exceptions and subject to the restrictions in this Act
+mentioned, there shall be granted to the Irish Legislature power to make
+laws for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland in respect of
+matters exclusively relating to Ireland or some part thereof.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature.</div>
+
+<p><b>3.</b> The Irish Legislature shall not have power to make powers of laws
+respect of the following matters or any of them:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(1) The Crown, or the succession to the Crown, or a Regency; or the
+Lord-Lieutenant as representative of the Crown; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(2) The making of peace or war or matters arising from a state of war; or</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span></p>
+<p class="hang">(3) Naval or military forces, or the defence of the realm; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(4) Treaties and other relations with foreign States, or the relations
+between different parts of Her Majesty&#8217;s dominions, or offences
+connected with such treaties or relations; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(5) Dignities or titles of honour; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(6) Treason, treason-felony, alienage or naturalisation; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(7) Trade with any place out of Ireland; or quarantine, or navigation
+(except as respects inland waters and local health or harbour
+regulations); or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(8) Beacons, lighthouses, or sea-marks (except so far as they can
+consistently with any general Act of Parliament be constructed or
+maintained by a local harbour authority); or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(9) Coinage; legal tender; or the standard of weights and measures; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(10) Trade marks, merchandise marks, copyright, or patent rights.</p></div>
+
+<p>Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature.</div>
+
+<p><b>4.</b> The powers of the Irish Legislature shall not extend to the making of
+any law&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(1) Respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, or
+prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(2) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, on account
+of religious belief; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(3) Abrogating or prejudicially affecting the right to establish or
+maintain any place of denominational education or any denominational
+institution or charity; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(4) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school
+receiving public money, without attending the religious instruction at
+that school; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(5) Whereby any person may be deprived of life, liberty, or property
+without due process of law, or may be denied the equal protection of
+the laws, or whereby private property may be taken without just
+compensation; or</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span></p>
+<p class="hang">(6) Whereby any existing corporation incorporated by Royal Charter or
+by any local or general Act of Parliament (not being a corporation
+raising for public purposes taxes, rates, cess, dues, or tolls, or
+administering funds so raised) may, unless it consents, or the leave
+of Her Majesty is first obtained on address from the two Houses of the
+Irish Legislature, be deprived of its rights, privileges, or property
+without due process of law; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(7) Whereby any inhabitant of the United Kingdom may be deprived of
+equal rights as respects public sea fisheries.</p></div>
+
+<p>Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Executive Authority.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Executive power in Ireland.</div>
+
+<p><b>5.</b>&mdash;(1) The executive power in Ireland shall continue vested in Her
+Majesty the Queen, and the Lord-Lieutenant, on behalf of Her Majesty,
+shall exercise any prerogatives or other executive power of the Queen the
+exercise of which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty, and shall, in
+Her Majesty&#8217;s name, summon, prorogue, and dissolve the Irish Legislature.</p>
+
+<p>(2) There shall be an Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Ireland
+to aid and advise in the government of Ireland, being of such numbers, and
+comprising persons holding such offices, as Her Majesty may think fit, or
+as may be directed by Irish Act.</p>
+
+<p>(3) The Lord-Lieutenant shall, on the advice of the said Executive
+Committee, give or withhold the assent of Her Majesty to Bills passed by
+the two Houses of the Irish Legislature, subject nevertheless to any
+instructions given by Her Majesty in respect of any such Bill.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Constitution of Legislature.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Composition of Irish Legislative Council.<br /><br />
+48 &amp; 49 Vict. c. 3.</div>
+
+<p><b>6.</b>&mdash;(1) The Irish Legislative Council shall consist of <i>forty-eight</i>
+councillors.</p>
+
+<p>(2) Each of the constituencies mentioned in the First<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> Schedule to this
+Act shall return the number of councillors named opposite thereto in that
+schedule.</p>
+
+<p>(3) Every man shall be entitled to be registered as an elector, and when
+registered to vote at an election, of a councillor for a constituency, who
+owns or occupies any land or tenement in the constituency of a rateable
+value of more than <i>twenty</i> pounds, subject to the like conditions as a
+man is entitled at the passing of this Act to be registered and vote as a
+Parliamentary elector in respect of an ownership qualification, or of the
+qualification specified in section five of the Representation of the
+People Act, 1884, as the case may be: Provided that a man shall not be
+entitled to be registered, nor if registered to vote, at an election of a
+councillor in more than one constituency in the same year.</p>
+
+<p>(4) The term of office of every councillor shall be <i>eight</i> years, and
+shall not be affected by a dissolution; and one <i>half</i> of the Councillors
+shall retire in every <i>fourth</i> year, and their seats shall be filled by a
+new election.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Composition of Irish Legislative Assembly.</div>
+
+<p><b>7.</b>&mdash;(1) The Irish Legislative Assembly shall consist of <i>one hundred and
+three</i> members, returned by the existing parliamentary constituencies in
+Ireland, or the existing divisions thereof, and elected by the
+parliamentary electors for the time being in those constituencies or
+divisions.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The Irish Legislative Assembly when summoned may, unless sooner
+dissolved, have continuance for <i>five</i> years from the day on which the
+summons directs it to meet and no longer.</p>
+
+<p>(3) After <i>six</i> years from the passing of this Act, the Irish Legislature
+may alter the qualification of the electors, and the constituencies, and
+the distribution of the members among the constituencies, provided that in
+such distribution due regard is had to the population of the
+constituencies.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Disagreement between two Houses, how settled.</div>
+
+<p><b>8.</b> If a Bill, or any provision of a Bill, adopted by the Legislative
+Assembly is lost by the disagreement of the Legislative Council, and after
+a dissolution, or the period of <i>two years</i> from such disagreement, such
+Bill, or a Bill for enacting the said provision, is again adopted by the
+Legislative Assembly, and fails within three months<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> afterwards to be
+adopted by the Legislative Council, the same shall forthwith be submitted
+to the members of the two Houses deliberating and voting together thereon,
+and shall be adopted or rejected according to the decision of the majority
+of those members present and voting on the question.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Irish Representation in House of Commons.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Representation in Parliament of Irish counties and boroughs.</div>
+
+<p><b>9.</b> Unless and until Parliament otherwise determines, the following
+provisions shall have effect:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(1) After the <i>appointed day</i> each of the constituencies named in the
+Second Schedule to this Act shall return to serve in Parliament the
+number of members named opposite thereto in that Schedule, and no
+more, and Dublin University shall cease to return any member.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(2) The existing divisions of the constituencies shall, save as
+provided in that Schedule, be abolished.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(3) An Irish representative peer in the House of Lords and a member of
+the House of Commons for an Irish constituency shall not be entitled
+to deliberate or vote on&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) Any Bill or motion in relation thereto, the operation of which
+Bill or motion is confined to Great Britain or some part thereof; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) Any motion or resolution relating solely to some tax not raised
+or to be raised in Ireland; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>c</i>) Any vote or appropriation of money made exclusively for some
+service not mentioned in the Third Schedule to this Act; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>d</i>) Any motion or resolution exclusively affecting Great Britain, or
+some part thereof, or some local authority, or some person or thing
+therein; or</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span></p>
+<p class="hang">(<i>e</i>) Any motion or resolution incidental to any such motion or
+resolution, as either is last mentioned, or relates solely to some
+tax not raised or to be raised in Ireland, or incidental to any such
+vote or appropriation of money as aforesaid.</p></div>
+
+<p class="hang">(4) Compliance with the provisions of this section shall not be questioned
+otherwise than in each House in manner provided by the House.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(5) The election laws and the laws relating to the qualification of
+parliamentary electors shall not, so far as they relate to parliamentary
+elections, be altered by the Irish Legislature, but this enactment shall
+not prevent the Irish Legislature from dealing with any officers concerned
+with the issue of writs of election, and if any officers are so dealt
+with, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty by Order in Council to arrange
+for the issue of such writs, and the writs issued in pursuance of such
+Order shall be of the same effect as if issued in manner heretofore
+accustomed.</p></div>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Finance.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">As to separate Consolidated Fund and taxes.</div>
+
+<p><b>10.</b>&mdash;(1) On and after the appointed day there shall be an Irish Exchequer
+and Consolidated Fund separate from those of the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The duties of Customs and Excise and the duties on postage shall be
+imposed by Act of Parliament, but subject to the provisions of this Act
+the Irish Legislature may, in order to provide for the public service of
+Ireland, impose any other taxes.</p>
+
+<p>(3) Save as in this Act mentioned, all matters relating to the taxes in
+Ireland and the collection and management thereof shall be regulated by
+Irish Act, and the same shall be collected and managed by the Irish
+Government, and from part of the public revenues of Ireland: Provided
+that&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) The duties of Customs shall be regulated, collected, managed,
+and paid into the Exchequer of the United Kingdom as heretofore; and</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) All prohibitions in connection with the duties of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span> Excise, and
+so far as regards articles sent out of Ireland, all matters relating
+to those duties, shall be regulated by Act of Parliament; and</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>c</i>) The excise duties on articles consumed in Great Britain shall be
+paid in Great Britain, or to an officer of the Government of the
+United Kingdom.</p></div>
+
+<p>(4) Save as in this Act mentioned, all the public revenues of Ireland
+shall be paid into the Irish Exchequer and form a Consolidated Fund, and
+be appropriated to the public service of Ireland by Irish Act.</p>
+
+<p>(5) If the duties of Excise are increased above the rates in force on the
+<i>first day of March one thousand eight hundred and ninety-three</i> the net
+proceeds in Ireland of the duties in excess of the said rates shall be
+paid from the Irish Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>(6) If the duties of Excise are reduced below the rates in force on the
+said day, and the net proceeds of such duties in Ireland are in
+consequence less than the net proceeds of the duties before the reduction,
+a sum equal to the deficiency shall, unless it is otherwise agreed between
+the Treasury and the Irish Government, be paid from the Exchequer of the
+United Kingdom to the Irish Exchequer.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Hereditary revenues and income tax.</div>
+
+<p><b>11.</b>&mdash;(1) The hereditary revenues of the Crown in Ireland which are managed
+by the Commissioners of Woods shall continue during the life of Her
+present Majesty to be managed and collected by those Commissioners, and
+the net amount payable by them to the Exchequer on account of those
+revenues, after deducting all expenses (but including an allowance for
+interest on such proceeds of the sale of those revenues as have not been
+re-invested in Ireland), shall be paid into the Treasury Account (Ireland)
+hereinafter mentioned, for the benefit of the Irish Exchequer.</p>
+
+<p>(2) A person shall not be required to pay income tax in Great Britain in
+respect of property situate or business carried on in Ireland, and a
+person shall not be required to pay income tax in Ireland in respect of
+property situate or business carried on in Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>(3) For the purpose of giving to Ireland the benefit of the difference
+between the income tax collected in Great Britain from British, Colonial,
+and foreign securities held<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> by residents in Ireland, and the income tax
+collected in Ireland from Irish securities held by residents in Great
+Britain, there shall be made to Ireland out of the income tax collected in
+Great Britain, an allowance of such amount as may be from time to time
+determined by the Treasury, in accordance with a minute of the Treasury,
+laid before Parliament before the appointed day, and such allowance shall
+be paid into the Treasury Account (Ireland) for the benefit of the Irish
+Exchequer.</p>
+
+<p>(4) Provided that the provisions of this section with respect to income
+tax shall not apply to any excess of the rate of income tax in Great
+Britain above the rate in Ireland or of the rate of income tax in Ireland
+above the rate in Great Britain.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Financial arrangements as between United Kingdom and Ireland.</div>
+
+<p><b>12.</b>&mdash;(1) The duties of Customs contributed by Ireland and, save as
+provided by this Act, that portion of any public revenue of the United
+Kingdom to which Ireland may claim to be entitled, whether specified in
+the Third Schedule to this Act or not, shall be carried to the
+Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, as the contribution of Ireland to
+Imperial liabilities and expenditure as defined in that Schedule.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The civil charges of the Government in Ireland shall, subject as in
+this Act mentioned, be borne after the appointed day by Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>(3) After <i>fifteen</i> years from the passing of this Act the arrangements
+made by this Act for the contribution of Ireland to Imperial liabilities
+and expenditure, and otherwise for the financial relations between the
+United Kingdom and Ireland, may be revised in pursuance of an address to
+Her Majesty from the House of Commons, or from the Irish Legislative
+Assembly.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Treasury Account (Ireland)</div>
+
+<p><b>13.</b>&mdash;(1) There shall be established under the direction of the Treasury an
+account (in this Act referred to as the Treasury Account (Ireland)).</p>
+
+<p>(2) There shall be paid into such account all sums payable from the Irish
+Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, or from the latter to
+the former Exchequer, and all sums directed to be paid into the account
+for the benefit of either of the said Exchequers.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span>(3) All sums which are payable from either of the said Exchequers to the
+other of them, or being payable out of one of the said Exchequers are
+repayable by the other Exchequer, shall in the first instance be payable
+out of the said account so far as the money standing on the account is
+sufficient; and for the purpose of meeting such sums the Treasury out of
+the Customs revenue collected in Ireland, and the Irish Government out of
+any of the public revenues in Ireland, may direct money to be paid to the
+Treasury Account (Ireland) instead of into the Exchequer.</p>
+
+<p>(4) Any surplus standing on the account to the credit of either Exchequer,
+and not required for meeting payments, shall at convenient times be paid
+into that Exchequer, and where any sum so payable in to the Exchequer of
+the United Kingdom is required by law to be forthwith paid to the National
+Debt Commissioners, that sum may be paid to those Commissioners without
+being paid into the Exchequer.</p>
+
+<p>(5) All sums payable by virtue of this Act out of the Consolidated Fund of
+the United Kingdom or of Ireland shall be payable from the Exchequer of
+the United Kingdom or of Ireland shall be payable from the Exchequer of
+the United Kingdom or Ireland, as the case may be, within the meaning of
+this Act, and all sums by this Act made payable from the Exchequer of the
+United Kingdom shall, if not otherwise paid, be charged on and paid out of
+the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund.<br /><br />
+54 &amp; 55 Vict. c. 48.</div>
+
+<p><b>14.</b>&mdash;(1) There shall be charged on the Irish Consolidated Fund in favour
+of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom as a first charge on sums which&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) Are payable to that Exchequer from the Irish Exchequer; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) Are required to repay to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom
+sums issued to meet the dividends or sinking fund or guaranteed land
+stock under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891: or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>c</i>) Otherwise have been or are required to be paid out of the
+Exchequer of the United Kingdom in consequence of the non-payment
+thereof out of the Exchequer of Ireland or otherwise by the Irish
+Government.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span>(2) If at any time the Controller and Auditor-General of the United
+Kingdom is satisfied that any such charge is due, he shall certify the
+amount of it, and the Treasury shall send such certificate to the
+Lord-Lieutenant, who shall thereupon by order, without any
+counter-signature, direct the payment of the amount from the Irish
+Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, and such order shall be
+duly obeyed by all persons, and until the amount is wholly paid no other
+payment shall be made out of the Irish Exchequer for any purpose whatever.</p>
+
+<p>(3) There shall be charged on the Irish Consolidated Fund next after the
+foregoing charge&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">54 &amp; 55 Vict. c. 48.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) All sums, for dividends or sinking fund on guaranteed land stock
+under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891, which the Land
+Purchase Account and the Guarantee Fund under that Act are
+insufficient to pay;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) All sums due in respect of any debt incurred by the Government
+of Ireland, whether for interest management, or sinking fund;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>c</i>) An annual sum of <i>five thousand pounds</i> for the expenses of the
+household and establishment of the Lord-Lieutenant;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>d</i>) All existing charges on the Consolidated Fund of the United
+Kingdom in respect of Irish services other than the salary of the
+Lord-Lieutenant; and</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>e</i>) The salaries and pensions of all judges of the Supreme Court or
+other Superior Court in Ireland or of any County or other like Court,
+who are appointed after the passing of this Act, and are not the
+Exchequer judges hereafter mentioned.</p></div>
+
+<p>(4) Until all charges created by this Act upon the Irish Consolidated Fund
+and for the time being due are paid, no money shall be issued from the
+Irish Exchequer for any other purpose whatever.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Irish Church Fund. 32 &amp; 33 Vict. c. 42. 44 &amp; 45 Vict. c. 71.</div>
+
+<p><b>15.</b>&mdash;(1) All existing charges on the Church property in Ireland&mdash;that is
+to say, all property accruing under the Irish Church Act, 1869, and
+transferred to the Irish Land<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> Commission by the Irish Church Amendment
+Act, 1881&mdash;shall so far as not paid out of the said property be charged on
+the Irish Consolidated Fund, and any of those charges guaranteed by the
+Treasury, if and so far as not paid, shall be paid out of the Exchequer of
+the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>(2) Subject to the existing charges thereon, the said Church property
+shall belong to the Irish Government, and be managed, administered, and
+disposed of as directed by Irish Act.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Local loans.</div>
+
+<p><b>16.</b>&mdash;(1) All sums paid or applicable in or towards the discharge of the
+interest or principal of any local loan advanced before the appointed day
+on security in Ireland, or otherwise in respect of such loan, which but
+for this Act would be paid to the National Debt Commissioners, and carried
+to the Local Loans Fund, shall, after the appointed day, be paid, until
+otherwise provided by Irish Act, to the Irish Exchequer.</p>
+
+<p>(2) For the payment of the Local Loans Fund of the principal and interest
+of such loans, the Irish Government shall after the appointed day pay by
+half-yearly payments an annuity for <i>forty-nine</i> years, at the rate of
+<i>four</i> per cent., on the principal of the said loans, exclusive of any
+sums written off before the appointed day from the account of assets of
+the Local Loans Fund, and such annuity shall be paid from the Irish
+Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, and when so paid shall
+be forthwith paid to the National Debt Commissioners for the credit of the
+Local Loans Fund.</p>
+
+<p>(3) After the appointed day, money for loans in Ireland shall cease to be
+advanced either by the Public Works Loan Commissioners or out of the Local
+Loans Fund.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Adaptation of Acts as to Local Taxation Accounts and Probate, etc., duties. See 50 &amp; 51 Vict. c. 41. 54 &amp; 55 Vict. c. 48.<br /><br />
+See 21 &amp; 22 Vict. c. 86, ss. 12-18. 21 &amp; 22 Vict. c. 95, s. 29. 22 &amp; 23 Vict. c. 31, s. 25. 39 &amp; 40 Vict. c. 70, ss. 41-44.<br /><br />
+Money bills and votes.<br /><br />
+Exchequer judges for revenue actions, elections petitions, etc.</div>
+
+<p><b>17.</b>&mdash;(1) So much of any Act as directs payment to the Local Taxation
+(Ireland) Account of any share of Probate, Excise, or Customs duties
+payable to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom shall, together with any
+enactment amending the same, be repealed as from the appointed day without
+prejudice to the adjustment of balances after that day; the like amounts
+shall continue to be paid to the Local Taxation Accounts in England and
+Scotland as would have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> been paid if this Act had not passed, and any
+residue of the said share shall be paid into the Exchequer of the United
+Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The stamp duty chargeable in respect of the personalty of a deceased
+person, shall not in the case of administration granted in Great Britain
+be chargeable in respect of any personalty situate in Ireland; nor in the
+case of administration granted in Ireland be chargeable in respect of any
+personalty situate in Great Britain; and any administration granted in
+Great Britain shall not, if re-sealed in Ireland, be exempt from stamp
+duty on administration granted in Ireland, and any administration granted
+in Ireland shall not, when re-sealed in Great Britain, be exempt from
+stamp duty on administration granted in Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>(3) In this section the expression &#8216;administration&#8217; means probate or
+letters of administration, and as respects Scotland, confirmation
+inclusive of the inventory required under the Acts relating to the said
+stamp duty, and the expression &#8216;personalty&#8217; means personal or movable
+estate and effects.</p>
+
+<p><b>18.</b>&mdash;(1) Bills for appropriating any part of the public revenue or for
+imposing any tax shall originate in the Legislative Assembly.</p>
+
+<p>(2) It shall not be lawful for the Legislative Assembly to adopt or pass
+any vote, resolution, address, or Bill for the appropriation for any
+purpose of any part of the public revenue of Ireland, or of any tax,
+except in pursuance of a recommendation from the Lord-Lieutenant in the
+Session in which such vote, resolution, address, or Bill is proposed.</p>
+
+<p><b>19.</b>&mdash;(1) Two of the judges of the Supreme Court in Ireland shall be
+Exchequer judges, and shall be appointed under the Great Seal of the
+United Kingdom; and their salaries and pensions shall be charged on and
+paid out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The Exchequer judges shall be removable only by Her Majesty on address
+from the two Houses of Parliament, and each such judge shall, save as
+otherwise provided by Parliament, receive the same salary and be entitled
+to the same pension as is at the time of his appointment fixed for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span> the
+puisne judges of the Supreme Court, and during his continuance in office
+his salary shall not be diminished, nor his right to pension altered,
+without his consent.</p>
+
+<p>(3) An alteration of any rules relating to such legal proceedings as are
+mentioned in this section shall not be made except with the approval of
+Her Majesty the Queen in Council; and the sittings of the Exchequer judges
+shall be regulated with the like approval.</p>
+
+<p>(4) All legal proceedings in Ireland, which are instituted at the instance
+of or against the Treasury or Commissioners of Customs, or any of their
+officers, or relate to the election of members to serve in Parliament, or
+touch any matter within the powers of the Irish Legislature, or touch any
+matter affected by a law which the Irish Legislature have not power to
+repeal or alter, shall, if so required by any party to such proceedings,
+be heard and determined before the Exchequer judges or (except where the
+case requires to be determined by two judges) before one of them, and in
+any such legal proceeding an appeal shall, if any party so requires, lie
+from any Court of first instance in Ireland to the Exchequer judges, and
+the decision of the Exchequer judges shall be subject to appeal to Her
+Majesty the Queen in Council and not to any other tribunal.</p>
+
+<p>(5) If it is made to appear to an Exchequer judge that any decree or
+judgment in any such proceeding as aforesaid has not been duly enforced by
+the sheriff or other officer whose duty it is to enforce the same, such
+judge shall appoint some officer whose duty it shall be to enforce the
+judgment or decree; and for that purpose such officer and all persons
+employed by him shall be entitled to the same privileges, immunities, and
+powers as are by law conferred on a sheriff and his officers.</p>
+
+<p>(6) The Exchequer judges, when not engaged in hearing and determining such
+legal proceedings as above in this section mentioned, shall perform such
+of the duties ordinarily performed by other judges of the Supreme Court in
+Ireland as may be assigned by Her Majesty the Queen in Council.</p>
+
+<p>(7) All sums recovered by the Treasury or the Commissioners of Customs or
+any of their officers, or recovered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span> under any Act relating to duties of
+Customs, shall, notwithstanding anything in any other Act, be paid to such
+public account as the Treasury or the Commissioners direct.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Post Office, Postal Telegraphs, and Savings Banks.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Transfer of post office and postal telegraphs.</div>
+
+<p><b>20.</b>&mdash;(1) As from the <i>appointed day</i> the postal and telegraph service in
+Ireland shall be transferred to the Irish Government, and may be regulated
+by Irish Act, except as in this Act mentioned and except as regards
+matters relating&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) To such conditions of the transmission or delivery of postal
+packets and telegrams as are incidental to the duties on postage; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) To foreign mails or submarine telegraphs or through lines in
+connection therewith; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>c</i>) To any other postal or telegraph business in connection with
+places out of the United Kingdom.</p></div>
+
+<p>(2) The administration of or incidental to the said excepted matters
+shall, save as may be otherwise arranged with the Irish Post Office,
+remain with the Postmaster-General.</p>
+
+<p>(3) As regards the revenue and expenses of the postal and telegraph
+service, the Postmaster-General shall retain the revenue collected and
+defray the expenses incurred in Great Britain, and the Irish Post Office
+shall retain the revenue collected and defray the expenses incurred in
+Ireland, subject to the provisions of the Fourth Schedule to this Act;
+which schedule shall have full effect, but may be varied or added to by
+agreement between the Postmaster-General and the Irish Post Office.</p>
+
+<p>(4) The sums payable by the Postmaster-General or Irish Post Office to the
+other of them in pursuance of this Act shall, if not paid out of
+Post-Office moneys, be paid from the Exchequer of the United Kingdom or of
+Ireland, as the case requires, to the other Exchequer.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">26 &amp; 27 Vict. c. 112.</div>
+
+<p>(5) Sections forty-eight to fifty-two of the Telegraph Act, 1863, and any
+enactment amending the same, shall apply to all telegraphic lines of the
+Irish Government in like manner as to the telegraphs of a company within
+the meaning of that Act.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Transfer of savings banks</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span><b>21.</b>&mdash;(1) As from the <i>appointed day</i> there shall be transferred to the
+Irish Government the post-office savings banks in Ireland, and all such
+powers and duties of any department or officer in Great Britain as are
+connected with post-office savings banks, trustee savings banks, or
+friendly societies in Ireland, and the same may be regulated by Irish Act.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The Treasury shall publish not less than six months previous notice of
+the transfer of savings banks.</p>
+
+<p>(3) If before the date of the transfer any depositor in a post-office
+savings bank so requests, his deposit shall, according to his request,
+either be paid to him or transferred to a post-office savings bank in
+Great Britain, and after the said date the depositors in a post-office
+savings bank in Ireland shall cease to have any claim against the
+Postmaster-General or the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, but
+shall have the like claim against the Government and Consolidated Fund of
+Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>(4) If before the date of the transfer the trustees of any trustees
+savings bank so request, then, according to the request, either all sums
+due to them shall be repaid, and the savings bank closed, or those sums
+shall be paid to the Irish Government, and after the said date the
+trustees shall cease to have any claim against the National Debt
+Commissioners or the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, but shall
+have the like claim against the Government and Consolidated Fund of
+Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>(5) Notwithstanding the foregoing provisions of this section, if a sum due
+on account of any annuity or policy of insurance which has before the
+above-mentioned notice been granted through a post-office or trustee
+savings bank, is not paid by the Irish Government, that sum shall be paid
+out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Irish Appeals and Decision of Constitutional Questions.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Irish appeals.</div>
+
+<p><b>22.</b>&mdash;(1) The appeal from Courts in Ireland to the House of Lords shall
+cease; and where any person would, but for this Act, have a right to
+appeal from any Court in Ireland to the House of Lords, such person shall
+have the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> like right to appeal to Her Majesty the Queen in Council; and
+the right so to appeal shall not be affected by any Irish Act; and all
+enactments relating to appeals to Her Majesty the Queen in Council, and to
+the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, shall apply accordingly.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">39 &amp; 40 Vict. c. 59</div>
+
+<p>(2) When the Judicial Committee sit for hearing appeals from a Court in
+Ireland, there shall be present not less than four Lords of Appeal, within
+the meaning of the Appellate Jurisdiction Act, 1876, and at least one
+member who is or has been a judge of the Supreme Court in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>(3) A rota of privy councillors to sit for hearing appeals from Courts in
+Ireland shall be made annually by Her Majesty in Council, and the privy
+councillors, or some of them, on that rota shall sit to hear the said
+appeals. A casual vacancy in such rota during the year may be filled by
+Order in Council.</p>
+
+<p>(4) Nothing in this Act shall affect the jurisdiction of the House of
+Lords to determine the claims to Irish peerages.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Special provision for decision of constitutional questions.</div>
+
+<p><b>23.</b>&mdash;(1) If it appears to the Lord-Lieutenant or a Secretary of State
+expedient in the public interest that steps shall be taken for the speedy
+determination of the question whether any Irish Act, or any provision
+thereof, is beyond the power of the Irish Legislature, he may represent
+the same to Her Majesty in Council, and thereupon the said question shall
+be forthwith referred to and heard and determined by the Judicial
+Committee of the Privy Council, constituted as if hearing an appeal from a
+Court in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>(2) Upon the hearing of the question such persons as seem to the Judicial
+Committee to be interested may be allowed to appear and be heard as
+parties to the case, and the decision of the Judicial Committee shall be
+given in like manner as if it were the decision of an appeal, the nature
+of the report or recommendation to Her Majesty being stated in open Court.</p>
+
+<p>(3) Nothing in this Act shall prejudice any other power of Her Majesty in
+Council to refer any question to the Judicial Committee, or the right of
+any person to petition Her Majesty for such reference.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span><i>Lord-Lieutenant and Crown Lands.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Office of Lord-Lieutenant.</div>
+
+<p><b>24.</b>&mdash;(1) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in any Act, every
+subject of the Queen shall be qualified to hold the office of
+Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, without reference to his religious belief.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The term of office of the Lord-Lieutenant shall be <i>six years</i>,
+without prejudice to the power of Her Majesty the Queen at any time to
+revoke the appointment.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Use of Crown lands by Irish Government.</div>
+
+<p><b>25.</b> Her Majesty the Queen in Council may place under the control of the
+Irish Government, for the purposes of that Government, such of the lands
+and buildings in Ireland vested in or held in trust for Her Majesty, and
+subject to such conditions or restrictions (if any) as may seem expedient.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Judges and Civil Servants.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Tenure of future judges.</div>
+
+<p><b>26.</b> A judge of the Supreme Court or other Superior Court in Ireland, or of
+any County Court or other Court with a like jurisdiction in Ireland,
+appointed after the passing of this Act, shall not be removed from his
+office except in pursuance of an address from the two Houses of
+Legislature of Ireland, nor during his continuance in office shall his
+salary be diminished or right to pension altered without his consent.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">As to existing judges and other persons having salaries charged
+on the Consolidated Fund.</div>
+
+<p><b>27.</b>&mdash;(1) All existing judges of the Supreme Court, County Court judges,
+and Land Commissioners in Ireland, and all existing officers serving in
+Ireland in the permanent Civil Service of the Crown and receiving salaries
+charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, shall, if they are
+removable at present on address from both Houses of Parliament, continue
+to be removable only upon such address, and if removable in any other
+manner shall continue to be removable only in the same manner as
+heretofore; and shall continue to receive the same salaries, gratuities,
+and pensions, and to be liable to perform the same duties as heretofore,
+or such duties as Her Majesty may declare to be analogous, and their
+salaries and pensions, if and so far as not paid out of the Irish
+Consolidated Fund,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span> shall be paid out of the Exchequer of the United
+Kingdom: Provided that this section shall be subject to the provisions of
+this Act with respect to the Exchequer judges.</p>
+
+<p>(2) If any of the said judges, commissioners, or officers retires from
+office with the Queen&#8217;s approbation before completion of the period of
+service entitling him to a pension, Her Majesty may, if she thinks fit,
+grant to him such pension, not exceeding the pension to which he would on
+that completion have been entitled, as to Her Majesty seems meet.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">As to persons holding Civil Service appointments.</div>
+
+<p><b>28.</b>&mdash;(1) All existing officers in the permanent Civil Service of the
+Crown, who are not above provided for, and are at the appointed day
+serving in Ireland, shall, after that day, continue to hold their offices
+by the same tenure, and to receive the same salaries, gratuities, and
+pensions, and to be liable to perform the same duties as heretofore, or
+such duties as the Treasury may declare to be analogous; and the said
+gratuities and pensions, and until three years after the passing of this
+Act, the salaries due to any of the said officers if remaining in his
+existing office, shall be paid to the payees by the Treasury out of the
+Exchequer of the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>(2) Any such officer may, after <i>three years</i> from the passing of this
+Act, retire from office, and shall, at any time during those three years,
+if required by the Irish Government, retire from office, and on any such
+retirement may be awarded by the Treasury a gratuity or pension in
+accordance with the Fifth Schedule to this Act: Provided that&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) Six months&#8217; written notice shall, unless it is otherwise agreed,
+be given either by the said officer or by the Irish Government, as the
+case requires; and</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) Such number of officers only shall retire at one time, and at
+such intervals of time as the Treasury, in communication with the
+Irish Government, sanction.</p></div>
+
+<p>(3) If any such officer does not so retire, the Treasury may award him,
+after the said three years, a pension in accordance with the Fifth
+Schedule to this Act, which shall<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span> become payable to him on his ultimate
+retirement from the service of the Crown.</p>
+
+<p>(4) The gratuities and pensions awarded in accordance with the Fifth
+Schedule to this Act shall be paid by the Treasury to the payees out of
+the Exchequer of the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>(5) All sums paid out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom in pursuance
+of this section shall be repaid to that Exchequer from the Irish
+Exchequer.</p>
+
+<p>(6) This section shall not apply to officers retained in the service of
+the Government of the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">As to existing pensions and superannuation allowances.</div>
+
+<p><b>29.</b> Any existing pension granted on account of service in Ireland as a
+judge of the Supreme Court or of any Court consolidated into that Court,
+or as a County Court judge, or in any other judicial position, or as an
+officer in the permanent Civil Service of the Crown other than in an
+office the holder of which is after the appointed day retained in the
+service of the Government of the United Kingdom, shall be charged on the
+Irish Consolidated Fund, and if and so far as not paid out of that fund,
+shall be paid out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Police.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">As to police.</div>
+
+<p><b>30.</b>&mdash;(1) The forces of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin
+Metropolitan Police shall, when and as local police forces are from time
+to time established in Ireland in accordance with the Sixth Schedule to
+this Act, be gradually reduced and ultimately cease to exist as mentioned
+in that Schedule; and after the passing of this Act, no officer or man
+shall be appointed to either of these forces; Provided that until the
+expiration of <i>six</i> years from the appointed day, nothing in this Act
+shall require the Lord-Lieutenant to cause either of the said forces to
+cease to exist, if as representing Her Majesty the Queen he considers it
+inexpedient.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The said two forces shall, while they continue, be subject to the
+control of the Lord-Lieutenant as representing Her Majesty, and the
+members thereof shall continue to receive the same salaries, gratuities,
+and pensions, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span> hold their appointments on the same tenure as
+heretofore, and these salaries, gratuities, and pensions, and all the
+expenditure incidental to either force, shall be paid out of the Exchequer
+of the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>(3) When any existing member of either force retires under the provisions
+of the Sixth Schedule to this Act, the Treasury may award to him a
+gratuity or pension in accordance with that Schedule.</p>
+
+<p>(4) Those gratuities and pensions and all existing pensions payable in
+respect of service in either force, shall be paid by the Treasury to the
+payees out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>(5) Two-thirds of the net amount payable in pursuance of this section out
+of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom shall be repaid to that Exchequer
+from the Irish Exchequer.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Miscellaneous.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Irish Exchequer Consolidated Fund and Audit.</div>
+
+<p>31. Save as may be otherwise provided by Irish Act&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) The existing law relating to the Exchequer and Consolidated Fund
+of the United Kingdom shall apply with the necessary modifications to
+the Exchequer and Consolidated Fund of Ireland, and an officer shall
+be appointed by the Lord-Lieutenant to be the Irish Comptroller and
+Auditor-General; and</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">29 &amp; 30 Vict. c. 39</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) The accounts of the Irish Consolidated Fund shall be audited as
+appropriation accounts in manner provided by the Exchequer and Audit
+Departments Act, 1866, by or under the direction of such officer.</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Law applicable to both Houses of Irish Legislature.</div>
+
+<p><b>32.</b>&mdash;(1) Subject as in this Act mentioned and particularly to the Seventh
+Schedule to this Act (which Schedule shall have full effect), all existing
+election laws relating to the House of Commons and the members thereof
+shall, so far as applicable, extend to each of the two Houses of the Irish
+Legislature and the members thereof, but such election laws so far as
+hereby extended may be altered by Irish Act.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The privileges, rights, and immunities to be held and enjoyed by each
+House and the members thereof shall be such as may be defined by Irish
+Act, but so that the same<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span> shall never exceed those for the time being
+held and enjoyed by the House of Commons, and the members thereof.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Supplemental provisions as to powers of Irish Legislature.</div>
+
+<p><b>33.</b>&mdash;(1) The Irish Legislature may repeal or alter any provision of this
+Act which is by this Act expressly made alterable by that Legislature, and
+also any enactments in force in Ireland, except such as either relate to
+matters beyond the powers of the Irish Legislature, or being enacted by
+Parliament after the passing of this Act, may be expressly extended to
+Ireland. An Irish Act notwithstanding it is in any respect repugnant to
+any enactment excepted as aforesaid, shall, though read subject to that
+enactment, be, except to the extent of that repugnancy, valid.</p>
+
+<p>(2) An order, rule, or regulation, made in pursuance of, or having the
+force of, an Act of Parliament, shall be deemed to be an enactment within
+the meaning of this section.</p>
+
+<p>(3) Nothing in this Act shall affect Bills relating to the divorce or
+marriage of individuals, and any such Bill shall be introduced and proceed
+in Parliament in like manner as if this Act had not been passed.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Limitation of borrowing by local authorities.</div>
+
+<p><b>34.</b> The local authority for any county or borough or other area shall not
+borrow money without either&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) A special authority from the Irish Legislature, or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) The sanction of the proper department of the Irish Government;</p></div>
+
+<p>and shall not, without such special authority, borrow:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(i.) In the case of municipal borough or town or area less than a
+county, any loan which together with the then outstanding debt of the
+local authority, will exceed twice the annual rateable value of the
+property, in the municipal borough, town, or area; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(ii.) In the case of a county or larger area, any loan which together
+with the then outstanding debt of the local authority, will exceed
+one-tenth of the annual rateable value of the property in the county
+or area; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(iii.) In any case a loan exceeding one-half of the above limits
+without a local inquiry held in the county, borough, or area by a
+person appointed for the purpose by the said department.</p></div>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span><i>Transitory Provisions.</i></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Temporary restriction on powers of Irish Legislature and
+Executive.</div>
+
+<p><b>35.</b>&mdash;(1) During <i>three</i> years from the passing of this Act, and if
+Parliament is then sitting until the end of that session of Parliament,
+the Irish Legislature shall not pass an Act respecting the relations of
+landlord and tenant, or the sale, purchase, or letting of land generally;
+Provided that nothing in this section shall prevent the passing of any
+Irish Act with a view to the purchase of land for railways, harbours,
+water-works, town improvements, or other local undertakings.</p>
+
+<p>(2) During <i>six</i> years from the passing of this Act, the appointment of a
+judge of the Supreme Court or other Superior Courts in Ireland (other than
+one of the Exchequer judges) shall be made in pursuance of a warrant from
+Her Majesty countersigned as heretofore.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Transitory provisions.</div>
+
+<p><b>36.</b>&mdash;(1) Subject to the provisions of this Act Her Majesty the Queen in
+Council may make or direct such arrangements as seem necessary or proper
+for setting in motion the Irish Legislature and Government and for
+otherwise bringing this Act into operation.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The Irish Legislature shall be summoned to meet on the <i>first Tuesday
+in September, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four</i>, and the first
+election of members of the two Houses of the Irish Legislature shall be
+held at such time before that day as may be fixed by Her Majesty in
+Council.</p>
+
+<p>(3) Upon the first meeting of the Irish Legislature the members of the
+House of Commons then sitting for Irish constituencies, including the
+members for Dublin University, shall vacate their seats, and writs shall,
+as soon as conveniently may be, be issued by the Lord Chancellor of
+Ireland for the purpose of holding an election of members to serve in
+Parliament for the constituencies named in the Second Schedule of this
+Act.</p>
+
+<p>(4) The existing Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and the senior of the
+existing puisne judges of the Exchequer Division of the Supreme Court, or
+if they or either of them are or is dead or unable or unwilling to act,
+such other of the judges of the Supreme Court as Her Majesty may appoint,
+shall be the first Exchequer judges.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span>(5) Where it appears to Her Majesty the Queen in Council, before the
+expiration of <i>one year</i> after the appointed day, that any existing
+enactment respecting matters within the powers of the Irish Legislature
+requires adaptation to Ireland, whether&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) By the substitution of the Lord-Lieutenant in Council, or of any
+departments or office of the Executive Government in Ireland, for Her
+Majesty in Council, a Secretary of State, the Treasury, the
+Postmaster-General, the Board of Inland Revenue, or other public
+department or offices in Great Britain; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) By the substitution of the Irish Consolidated Fund or moneys
+provided by the Irish Legislature for the Consolidated Fund of the
+United Kingdom, or moneys provided by Parliament, or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>c</i>) By the substitution or confirmation by, or other act to be done
+by or to, the Irish Legislature for confirmation by or other act to be
+done by or to Parliament; or</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>d</i>) By any other adaptation; Her Majesty, by Order in Council, may
+make that adaptation.</p></div>
+
+<p>(6) Her Majesty the Queen in Council may provide for the transfer of such
+property, rights, and liabilities, and the doing of such other things as
+may appear to Her Majesty necessary or proper for carrying into effect
+this Act or any Order in Council under this Act.</p>
+
+<p>(7) An Order in Council under this section may make an adaptation or
+provide for a transfer either unconditionally or subject to such
+exceptions, conditions, and restrictions as may seem expedient.</p>
+
+<p>(8) The draft of every Order in Council under this section shall be laid
+before both Houses of Parliament for not less than two months before it is
+made, and such order when made shall, subject as respects Ireland to the
+provisions of an Irish Act, have full effect, but shall not interfere with
+the continued application to any place, authority, person, or thing, not
+in Ireland, of the enactment to which the Order relates.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Continuance of existing laws, courts, offices, etc.<br /><br />
+Appointed day.</div>
+
+<p><b>37.</b>&mdash;Except as otherwise provided by this Act, all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span> existing laws,
+institutions, authorities, and officers in Ireland, whether judicial,
+administrative, or ministerial, and all existing taxes in Ireland shall
+continue as if this Act had not passed, but with the modifications
+necessary for adapting the same to this Act, and subject to be repealed,
+abolished, altered, and adapted in the manner and to the extent authorised
+by this Act.</p>
+
+<p><b>38.</b>&mdash;Subject as in this Act mentioned the appointed day for the purposes
+of this Act shall be the day of the first meeting of the Irish
+Legislature, or such other day not more than <i>seven</i> months earlier or
+later as may be fixed by order of Her Majesty in Council either generally
+or with reference to any particular provision of this Act, and different
+days may be appointed for different purposes and different provisions of
+this Act, whether contained in the same section or in different sections.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Definitions.</div>
+
+<p><b>39.</b>&mdash;In this Act unless the context otherwise requires&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">The expression &#8216;existing&#8217; means existing at the passing of this Act.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;constituency&#8217; means a parliamentary constituency or a
+county or borough returning a member or members to serve in either
+House of the Irish Legislature, as the case requires, and the
+expression &#8216;parliamentary constituency&#8217; means any county, borough, or
+university returning a member or members to serve in Parliament.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;parliamentary elector&#8217; means a person entitled to be
+registered as a voter at a parliamentary election.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;parliamentary election&#8217; means the election of a member
+to serve in Parliament.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;tax&#8217; includes duties and fees, and the expression
+&#8216;duties of excise&#8217; does not include licence duties.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;foreign mails&#8217; means all postal packets, whether
+letters, parcels, or other packets, posted in the United Kingdom and
+sent to a place out of the United Kingdom, or posted in a place out of
+the United Kingdom and sent to a place in the United Kingdom, or in
+transit through the United Kingdom to a place out of the United
+Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span></p>
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;telegraphic line&#8217; has the same meaning as in the
+Telegraphs Acts, 1863 to 1892.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;duties on postage&#8217; includes all rates and sums
+chargeable for or in respect of postal packets, money orders, or
+telegrams, or otherwise under the Post-office Acts or the Telegraph
+Act, 1892.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;Irish Act&#8217; means a law made by the Irish Legislature.</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">26 &amp; 27 Vict. c. 112. 41 &amp; 42 Vict. c. 76. 55 &amp; 56 Vict. c. 59.
+7 Will. 4, and 1 Vict. c. 36. 32 &amp; 33 Vict. c. 73. 48 &amp; 49 Vict. c. 58.<br /><br />
+Short title.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">The expression &#8216;election laws&#8217; means the laws relating to the election
+of members to serve in Parliament, other than those relating to the
+qualification of electors, and includes all the laws respecting the
+registration of electors, the issue and execution of writs, the
+creation of polling districts, the taking of the poll, the questioning
+of elections, corrupt and illegal practices, the disqualification of
+members, and the vacating of seats.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;rateable value&#8217; means the annual rateable value under
+the Irish Valuation Acts.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;salary&#8217; includes remuneration, allowances, and
+emoluments.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">The expression &#8216;pension&#8217; includes superannuation allowance.</p></div>
+
+<p><b>40.</b>&mdash;This Act may be cited as the Irish Government Act, 1893.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">SCHEDULES.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">First Schedule: Legislative Council&mdash;Constituencies and Number of Councillors.</span></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td class="btr" align="center">Constituencies.</td>
+    <td class="bt" align="center">Councillors.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="btr">Antrim County</td>
+    <td class="bt" align="center">Three</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Armagh County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Belfast Borough</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Carlow County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Cavan County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Clare County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span>Cork County&mdash;</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">East Riding</span></td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Three</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">West Riding</span></td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Cork Borough</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Donegal County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Down County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Three</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Dublin County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Three</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br"><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">Borough</span></td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Fermanagh County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Galway County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Kerry County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Kildare County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Kilkenny County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">King&#8217;s County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Leitrim and Sligo Counties</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Limerick County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Londonderry County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Longford County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Louth County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Mayo County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Meath County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Monaghan County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Queen&#8217;s County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Roscommon County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Tipperary County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Tyrone County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Waterford County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Westmeath County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Wexford County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="bbr">Wicklow County</td>
+    <td class="bb" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="bbr">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="bb" align="center">Forty-eight</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>The expression &#8216;borough&#8217; in this schedule means an existing parliamentary
+borough. Counties of cities and towns not named in this Schedule shall be
+combined with the county at large in which they are included for
+Parliamentary elections, and if not so included, then with the county at
+large bearing the same name.</p>
+
+<p>A borough named in this Schedule shall not for the purposes of this
+Schedule form part of any other constituency.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span><span class="smcap">
+Second Schedule: Irish Members in the House of Commons.</span></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td class="btr" align="center">Constituency.</td>
+    <td class="bt" align="center">Number of Members<br />for House<br />of Commons.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="btr">Antrim County</td>
+    <td class="bt" align="center">Three</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Armagh County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Belfast Borough (in divisions as mentioned below)</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Four</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Carlow County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Cavan County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Clare County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Cork County (in divisions as mentioned below)</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Five</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Cork Borough</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Donegal County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Three</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Down County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Three</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Dublin County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br"><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">Borough (in divisions as mentioned below)</span></td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Four</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Fermanagh County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Galway County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Three</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br"><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 1.65em;">Borough</span></td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Kerry County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Three</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Kildare County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Kilkenny County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 1.8em;">Borough</span></td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">King&#8217;s County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Leitrim County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Limerick County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 1.75em;">Borough</span></td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Londonderry County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Borough</span></td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Longford County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Louth County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Mayo County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Three</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Meath County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Monaghan County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Newry Borough</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Queen&#8217;s County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Roscommon County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Sligo County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Tipperary County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Three</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Tyrone County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Three</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Waterford County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Borough</span></td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Westmeath County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Wexford County</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">Two</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="bbr">Wicklow County</td>
+    <td class="bb" align="center">One</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="bbr">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="bb" align="center">Eighty</td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span>(1) In this Schedule the expression &#8216;borough&#8217; means an existing
+parliamentary borough.</p>
+
+<p>(2) In the parliamentary boroughs of Belfast and Dublin, one member shall
+be returned by each of the existing parliamentary divisions of those
+boroughs, and the law relating to the divisions of boroughs shall apply
+accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>(3) The county of Cork shall be divided into two divisions, consisting of
+the East Riding and the West Riding, and three members shall be elected by
+the East Riding, and two members shall be elected by the West Riding; and
+the law relating to divisions of counties shall apply to these divisions.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><span class="smcap">Third Schedule: Finance-Imperial Liabilities, Expenditure, and
+Miscellaneous Revenue.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Liabilities.</i></p>
+
+<p>For the purposes of this Act, &#8216;Imperial liabilities&#8217; consist of:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(1) The funded and unfunded debt of the United Kingdom, inclusive of
+terminable annuities paid out of the permanent annual charge for the
+National Debt, and inclusive of the cost of the management of the said
+funded and unfunded debt, but exclusive of the Local Loans Stock and
+Guaranteed Land Stock, and the cost of the management thereof; and</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(2) All other charges on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom for
+the repayment of borrowed money, or to fulfil a guarantee.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Expenditure.</i></p>
+
+<p>For the purpose of this Act Imperial expenditure consists of expenditure
+for the following services:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1. Naval and military expenditure (including Greenwich Hospital).</p>
+
+<p>2. Civil expenditure, that is to say&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) Civil list and Royal family.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) Salaries, pensions, allowances, and incidental expenses of&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="hang">(i.) Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(ii.) Exchequer judges in Ireland.</p></div>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>c</i>) Buildings, works, salaries, pensions, printing, stationery, allowances, and incidental expenses of&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">(i.) Parliament;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="hang">(ii.) National Debt Commissioners;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(iii.) Foreign Office and diplomatic and consular service, including
+secret service, special services, and telegraph subsidies;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(iv.) Colonial Office, including special services and telegraph subsidies;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(v.) Privy Council;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(vi.) Board of Trade, including the Mercantile Marine Fund, Patent
+Office, Railway Commission, and Wreck Commission, but excluding Bankruptcy;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(vii.) Mint;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(viii.) Meteorological Society;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(ix.) Slave trade service.</p></div>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>d</i>) Foreign mails and telegraphic communication with places outside the
+United Kingdom.</p></div>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Revenue.</i></p>
+
+<p>For the purposes of this Act the public revenue to a portion of which
+Ireland may claim to be entitled consists of revenue from the following
+sources:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1. Suez Canal shares or payments on account thereof.</p>
+
+<p>2. Loans and advances to foreign countries.</p>
+
+<p>3. Annual payments by British possessions.</p>
+
+<p>4. Fees, stamps, and extra receipts received by departments, the expenses
+of which are part of the Imperial expenditure.</p>
+
+<p>5. Small branches of the hereditary revenues of the Crown.</p>
+
+<p>6. Foreshores.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span><span class="smcap">Fourth Schedule: Provisions as to Post Office.</span></p>
+
+<p>(1) The Postmaster-General shall pay to the Irish Post Office in respect
+of any foreign mails sent through Ireland and the Irish Post Office shall
+pay to the Postmaster-General in respect of any foreign mails sent through
+Great Britain, such sum as may be agreed upon for the carriage of those
+mails in Ireland or Great Britain, as the case may be.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The Irish Post Office shall pay to the Postmaster-General;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(i.) One-half of the expense of the packet service and submarine
+telegraph lines between Great Britain and Ireland after deducting from
+that expense of the sum fixed by the Postmaster-General as incurred on
+account of foreign mails or telegraphic communication with a place out
+of the United Kingdom, as the case may be; and</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(ii.) Five per cent. of the expenses of the conveyance outside the
+United Kingdom of foreign mails, and of the transmission of telegrams
+to places outside the United Kingdom; and</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(iii.) Such proportion of the receipts for telegrams to places out of
+the United Kingdom as is due in respect of the transmission outside
+the United Kingdom of such telegrams.</p></div>
+
+<p>(3) The Postmaster-General and the Irish Post Office respectively shall
+pay to the other of them on account of foreign money orders, of
+compensation in respect of postal packets, and of any matters not
+specifically provided for in this Schedule, such sums as may be agreed
+upon.</p>
+
+<p>(4) Of the existing debt incurred in respect of telegraphs, a sum of five
+hundred and fifty thousand pounds, two and three quarters per cent.
+Consolidated Stock shall be treated as debt of the Irish Post Office, and
+for paying the dividends on and redeeming such stock there shall be paid
+half-yearly by the Irish Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom
+an annuity of <i>eighteen</i> thousand pounds for <i>sixty</i> years, and such
+annuity when paid into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span> the Exchequer shall be forthwith paid to the
+National Debt Commissioners and applied for the reduction of the National
+Debt.</p>
+
+<p>(5) The Postmaster-General and the Irish Post Office may agree on the
+facilities to be afforded by the Irish Post Office in Ireland in relation
+to any matters the administration of which by virtue of this Act remains
+with the Postmaster-General, and with respect to the use of the Irish
+telegraphic lines for through lines in connection with submarine
+telegraphs, or with telegraphic communication with any place out of the
+United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><span class="smcap">Fifth Schedule: Regulations as to Gratuities and Pensions for Civil
+Servants.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><span class="smcap">Sixth Schedule</span>:</p>
+
+<div class="note"><p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Part I.&mdash;Regulations as to Establishment of Police Forces and as to
+the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police ceasing to exist.</span></p></div>
+
+<p>(1) Such local police forces shall be established under such local
+authorities and for such counties, municipal boroughs, or other larger
+areas, as may be provided by Irish Act.</p>
+
+<p>(2) Whenever the Executive Committee of the Privy Council in Ireland
+certify to the Lord-Lieutenant that a police force, adequate for local
+purposes, has been established in any area, then, subject to the
+provisions of this Act, he shall within six months thereafter direct the
+Royal Irish Constabulary to be withdrawn from the performance of regular
+police duties in such area, and such order shall be forthwith carried into
+effect.</p>
+
+<p>(3) Upon any such withdrawal the Lord-Lieutenant shall order measures to
+be taken for a proportionate reduction of the numbers of the Royal Irish
+Constabulary, and such order shall be duly executed.</p>
+
+<p>(4) Upon the Executive Committee of the Privy Council<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> in Ireland
+certifying to the Lord-Lieutenant that adequate local police forces have
+been established in every part of Ireland, then subject to the provisions
+of this Act, the Lord-Lieutenant shall within six months after such
+certificate, order measures to be taken for causing the whole of the Royal
+Irish Constabulary to cease to exist as a police force, and such order
+shall be duly executed.</p>
+
+<p>(5) Where the area in which a local police force is established is part of
+the Dublin Metropolitan Police District, the foregoing regulations shall
+apply to the Dublin Metropolitan Police in like manner as if that force
+were the Royal Irish Constabulary.</p>
+
+<div class="note"><p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Part II.&mdash;Regulations as to Gratuities and Pensions for the Royal Irish
+Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police.</span></p></div>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><span class="smcap">Seventh Schedule: Regulations as to Houses of the Legislature and the Members thereof.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Legislative Council.</i></p>
+
+<p>(1) There shall be a separate register of electors of councillors of the
+Legislative Council which shall be made, until otherwise provided by Irish
+Act, in like manner as the Parliamentary register of electors.</p>
+
+<p>(2) Where, for the election of Councillors, any counties are combined so
+as to form one constituency, then until otherwise provided by Irish Act,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) The returning officer for the whole constituency shall be that
+one of the returning officers for Parliamentary elections for those
+counties to whom the writ is addressed, and the writ shall be
+addressed to the returning officer for the constituency with the
+largest population, according to the census of 1891.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) The returning officer shall have the same authority throughout
+the whole constituency as a returning officer to a Parliamentary
+election for a county has in the county.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span></p>
+<p class="hang">(<i>c</i>) The registers of electors of each county shall jointly be the
+register of electors for the constituency.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>d</i>) For the purposes of this Schedule &#8216;county&#8217; includes a county of
+a city or town, and this Schedule, and the law relating to the
+qualification of electors, shall apply, as if the county of a city or
+town formed part of the county at large with which it is combined, and
+the qualification in the county of a city or town shall be the same as
+in such county at large.</p></div>
+
+<p>(3) Writs shall be issued for the election of councillors at such time not
+less than one or more than three months before the day for the periodical
+retirement of councillors as the Lord-Lieutenant in Council may fix.</p>
+
+<p>(4) The day for the periodical retirement of councillors shall, until
+otherwise provided by Irish Act, be the last day of August in every fourth
+year.</p>
+
+<p>(5) For the purposes of such retirement, the constituencies shall be
+divided into two equal divisions, and the constituencies in each province
+shall be divided as nearly as may be equally between those divisions, and
+constituencies returning two or more members shall be treated as two or
+more constituencies, and placed in both divisions.</p>
+
+<p>(6) Subject as aforesaid, the particular constituencies which are to be in
+each division shall be determined by lot.</p>
+
+<p>(7) The said division and lot shall be made and conducted before the
+appointed day in manner directed by the Lord-Lieutenant in Council.</p>
+
+<p>(8) The first councillors elected for the constituencies in the first
+division shall retire on the first day of retirement which occurs after
+the first meeting of the Irish Legislature, and the first councillors for
+the constituencies in the second division shall retire on the second day
+of retirement after that meeting.</p>
+
+<p>(9) Any casual vacancy among the councillors shall be filled by a new
+election, but the councillor filling the vacancy shall retire at the time
+at which the vacating councillor would have retired.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span><i>Legislative Assembly.</i></p>
+
+<p>(10) The Parliamentary register of electors for the time being shall,
+until otherwise provided by Irish Act, be the register of electors of the
+Legislative Assembly.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Both Houses.</i></p>
+
+<p>(11) Until otherwise provided by Irish Act, the Lord-Lieutenant in Council
+may make regulations for adapting the existing election laws to the
+election of members of the two Houses of the Legislature.</p>
+
+<p>(12) Annual sessions of the Legislature shall be held.</p>
+
+<p>(13) Any peer, whether of the United Kingdom, Great Britain, England,
+Scotland, or Ireland, shall be qualified to be a member of either House.</p>
+
+<p>(14) A member of either House may by writing under his hand resign his
+seat, and the same shall thereupon be vacant.</p>
+
+<p>(15) The same person shall not be a member of both Houses.</p>
+
+<p>(16) Until otherwise provided by Irish Act, if the same person is elected
+to a seat in each House, he shall, before the eighth day after the next
+sitting of either House, by written notice, elect in which House he will
+serve, and upon such election his seat in the other House shall be vacant,
+and if he does not so elect, his seat in both Houses shall be vacant.</p>
+
+<p>(17) Until otherwise provided by Irish Act, any such notice electing in
+which House a person will sit, or any notice of resignation, shall be
+given in manner directed by the Standing Orders of the Houses, and if
+there is no such direction, shall be given to the Lord-Lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>(18) The powers of either House shall not be affected by any vacancy
+therein, or any defect in the election or qualification of any member
+thereof.</p>
+
+<p>(19) Until otherwise provided by Irish Act, the holders of such Irish
+offices as may be named by Order of the Queen in Council before the
+appointed day, shall be entitled to be elected to and sit in either House,
+notwithstanding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span> that they hold offices under the Crown, but on acceptance
+of any such office the seat of any such person in either House shall be
+vacated unless he has accepted the office in succession to some other of
+the said offices.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><i>Transitory.</i></p>
+
+<p>(20) The Lord-Lieutenant in Council may, before the appointed day, make
+regulations for the following purposes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">(<i>a</i>) The making of a register of electors of councillors in time for
+the election of the first councillors, and with that object for the
+variation of the days relating to registration in the existing
+election laws, and for prescribing the duties of officers, and for
+making such adaptations of those laws as appear necessary or proper
+for duly making a register;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>b</i>) The summoning of the two Houses of the Legislature of Ireland,
+the issue of writs and any other things appearing to be necessary or
+proper for the election of members of the two Houses;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>c</i>) The election of a chairman (whether called Speaker, President,
+or by any other name) of each House, the quorum of each House, the
+communications between the two Houses, and such adaptation to the
+proceedings of the two Houses of the procedure of Parliament, as
+appears expedient for facilitating the conduct of business by those
+Houses on their first meeting;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>d</i>) The adaptation to the two Houses and the members thereof of any
+laws and customs relating to the House of Commons or the members
+thereof;</p>
+
+<p class="hang">(<i>e</i>) The deliberation and voting together of the two Houses in cases
+provided by this Act.</p></div>
+
+<p>(21) The regulations maybe altered by Irish Act, and also in so far as
+they concern the procedure of either House alone, by Standing Orders of
+that House, but shall, until altered, have effect as if enacted in this Act.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span></p>
+<h2>NOTE I</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">From the &#8216;Memoirs of the late Lord Selborne&#8217;</span></p>
+<p class="center">(Part ii. pp. 261-263).</p>
+
+<p>... Each new step Gladstone takes is, as it seems to me, more and more on
+the side of <i>moral</i> as well as political evil. Much as I disapproved of
+his surrender of last year to Parnell, I disapprove very much more of his
+present endeavour to prevent the restoration in the present stage of the
+Home Rule question, of the reign of law in Ireland, and of the <i>means</i> he
+is attempting to use for <i>that</i> purpose. Deliberate and organised
+obstruction in the House of Commons, and an attempt to overrule a majority
+against him there, of more than one hundred, by violent appeals to popular
+passions outside,&mdash;those appeals being supported by representing the cause
+of anarchy and conspiring against law as the cause of liberty,&mdash;by denying
+the existence of any case for strengthening the law, in the face of a
+complete and manifest paralysis of law by the power of a seditious
+organisation, into whose scale he has now thrown his whole influence,&mdash;and
+by denouncing, in the most violent terms, the principle of measures for
+the protection of the loyal, and for securing the due administration of
+justice, which are the same (in their general character, for it is not
+necessary here to go into questions of detail) with those by means of
+which he himself governed Ireland for the last years of his power, and far
+more consistent with all real ideas of liberty than the suspension of the
+Habeas Corpus Act, which he introduced in 1881. It was quite open to him
+(of course) to contend that, by the acceptance of his Home Rule scheme,
+the necessity for any such measures might be prevented, and that he
+prefers and insists upon that alternative,&mdash;so much as <i>that</i> was involved
+in his measures of last year; but it is quite a different<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span> thing to
+denounce the principle of maintaining law and government, and defending
+those who respect and obey law from the tyranny of conspirators against
+it, and making the ordinary criminal law of the country a reality and not
+a mere idle name,&mdash;&#8216;as coercion,&#8217; in the sense of an undue invasion of
+liberty. To do this, and to appeal <i>ad populum</i> against it from an
+overwhelming majority in Parliament is <i>Acheronta movere</i>, with a
+vengeance.... For a man who, with his attainments, his experience, his
+professions, his fifty years&#8217; public service, his political education
+under some of the greatest and best men of the time, has three times
+filled the highest office in the State, and is now on the verge of the
+grave, so to end his career, seems to me more shocking and disheartening
+than anything else recorded in our history. It is only the old respect,
+and old attachment, which makes one search about for the possible
+explanations, in the workings of a very complex and intricate mind. If (as
+I trust) the Government and the House of Commons stand firm, all his
+efforts in the cause of anarchy will be in vain. The clause as to removing
+trials to England may have to be given up; but the <i>permanence</i> of the
+Bill (its best feature of all) must remain, if any good is to be done.</p>
+
+<p>... I will spare you a long yarn about politics this time. The G.O.M.
+seems to be determined to pull the whole Irish house down, parliamentary
+government and all, unless he can have his own way. But I have no fear
+that he <i>will</i> have his way, just at present, whatever harm he may do in
+the endeavour. But the struggle is very disagreeable, as well as sharp.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>NOTE II</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Report of Special Commission</span> (Vol. iv. pp. 544, 545).</p>
+<p class="center"><i>Conclusions of the Report of the Judges.</i></p>
+
+<p>We have now pursued our inquiry over a sufficiently extended period to
+enable us to report upon the several charges and allegations which have
+been made against the respondents, and we have indicated in the course of
+this statement our findings upon these charges and allegations, but it
+will be convenient to repeat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span> <i>seriatim</i> the conclusions we have arrived
+at upon the issues which have been raised for our consideration.</p>
+
+<p>I. We find that the respondent members of Parliament collectively were not
+members of a conspiracy having for its object to establish the absolute
+independence of Ireland, but we find that some of them, together with Mr.
+Davitt, established and joined in the Land League organisation with the
+intention by its means to bring about the absolute independence of Ireland
+as a separate nation. The names of these respondents are set out on a
+previous page.</p>
+
+<p>II. We find that the respondents did enter into a conspiracy by a system
+of coercion and intimidation to promote an agrarian agitation against the
+payment of agricultural rents, for the purpose of impoverishing and
+expelling from the country the Irish landlords who were styled the
+&#8216;English Garrison.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>III. We find that the charge that &#8216;when on certain occasions they thought
+it politic to denounce, and did denounce, certain crimes in public they
+afterwards led their supporters to believe such denunciations were not
+sincere&#8217; is not established. We entirely acquit Mr. Parnell and the other
+respondents of the charge of insincerity in their denunciation of the
+Ph&oelig;nix Park murders, and find that the &#8216;facsimile&#8217; letters on which
+this charge was chiefly based as against Mr. Parnell is a forgery.</p>
+
+<p>IV. We find that the respondents did disseminate the <i>Irish World</i> and
+other newspapers tending to incite to sedition and the commission of other
+crime.</p>
+
+<p>V. We find that the respondents did not directly incite persons to the
+commission of crime other than intimidation, but that they did incite to
+intimidation, and that the consequence of that incitement was that crime
+and outrage were committed by the persons incited. We find that it has not
+been proved that the respondents made payments for the purpose of inciting
+persons to commit crime.</p>
+
+<p>VI. We find as to the allegation that the respondents did nothing to
+prevent crime and expressed no <i>bon&acirc; fide</i> disapproval, that some of the
+respondents, and in particular Mr. Davitt, did express <i>bon&acirc; fide</i>
+disapproval of crime and outrage, but that the respondents did not
+denounce the system of intimidation which led to crime and outrage, but
+persisted in it with knowledge of its effect.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span>VII. We find that the respondents did defend persons charged with agrarian
+crime, and supported their families, but that it has not been proved that
+they subscribed to testimonials for, or were intimately associated with,
+notorious criminals, or that they made payments to procure the escape of
+criminals from justice.</p>
+
+<p>VIII. We find, as to the allegation that the respondents made payments to
+compensate persons who had been injured in the commission of crime, that
+they did make such payments.</p>
+
+<p>IX. As to the allegation that the respondents invited the assistance and
+co-operation of and accepted subscriptions of money from known advocates
+of crime and the use of dynamite, we find that the respondents did invite
+the assistance and co-operation of and accepted subscriptions of money
+from Patrick Ford, a known advocate of crime and the use of dynamite, but
+that it has not been proved that the respondents, or any of them, knew
+that the Clan-na-Gael controlled the League or was collecting money for
+the Parliamentary Fund. It has been proved that the respondents invited
+and obtained the assistance and co-operation of the Physical Force Party
+in America, including the Clan-na-Gael, and in order to obtain that
+assistance, abstained from repudiating or condemning the action of that party.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Index</h2>
+
+<p>
+A<br />
+<br />
+Administration of the affairs of Ireland: its nature and defects, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br />
+<br />
+Agrarian crime in Ireland, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>. <i>See</i> Whiteboyism<br />
+<br />
+Agriculture, state of, in Ireland, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+B<br />
+<br />
+Balfour, Mr. Arthur: his successful policy when Chief Secretary for Ireland, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he establishes light railways in Ireland, and the Congested Districts Board, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Belfast, improvement in, within the last sixty years, <a href="#Page_2">2</a><br />
+<br />
+Bewley, Mr. Justice, the head of the Second Land Commission: his theory of occupation right in the Irish land, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br />
+<br />
+Bureaucracy, the, of the Castle, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br />
+<br />
+Butt, Isaac: the true author of the conception of Home Rule, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his work on Irish Federalism, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+C<br />
+<br />
+Chicago, the Convention at, in 1886: speeches of two of Parnell&#8217;s envoys, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
+<br />
+Code, the Irish Penal: its effects on the Irish land, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>. <i>See</i> the Question of the Irish Land, Chap. III., in several places<br />
+<br />
+Commissions appointed for considering and administering Irish affairs: (1) the Devon Commission and its Report&mdash;the mistake it made as to Irish land tenure, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(2) the Childers Commission and its Report on Irish finance, <a href="#Page_288">288-291</a> (<i>see</i> chapter on the Present Question of Irish Finance, <i>passim</i>);</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(3) the Land Commission appointed to carry out the Land Act of 1881 and its supplements, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>. <i>See</i> Chaps. IV., V., VI., on the Question of the Irish Land, in many places</span><br />
+<br />
+Confiscations of the Irish Land, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>. <i>See</i> Chap. III., on the Question of the Irish Land, in several places<br />
+<br />
+Cork has not prospered within the last sixty years, <a href="#Page_2">2</a><br />
+<br />
+Cromwell, Irish policy of, especially as to the land, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+D<br />
+<br />
+Davitt, Michael, inaugurates the Irish Land League, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br />
+<br />
+Derby, the Administration of Lord, brings in Irish Land Bills in 1852, which do not become law, <a href="#Page_123">123</a><br />
+<br />
+Dublin, improvements in, within sixty years, <a href="#Page_2">2</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+E<br />
+<br />
+Emancipation, Catholic: its effects on Irish landed relations, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a><br />
+<br />
+Encumbered Estates Act: an iniquitous measure of confiscation, and its results, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span><br />
+Exodus, the, of the Irish race after the Famine, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>. <i>See</i> Chap. III., the Question of the Irish Land, in several places<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+F<br />
+<br />
+Famine, the Great Irish, of 1845-47, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">and <i>see</i> Chap. III., on the Irish land, in several places</span><br />
+<br />
+Fenian outbreaks in Ireland, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the consequences, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the influence of Fenianism in Ireland after 1870, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Finance, the question of Irish: the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland a subject of long controversy, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">what they were before 1782, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and under Grattan&#8217;s Parliament, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">increase of the debt and the taxation of Ireland by the close of the eighteenth century, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the financial arrangements made at the Union, the work of Pitt, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his object was to &#8216;assimilate Great Britain and Ireland in finance,&#8217; but this was impossible, and why, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the financial settlement effected at the Union&mdash;Ireland to pay a contribution, but not to be taxed beyond her means, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the seventh article of the Treaty of Union and its constitutional meaning, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the settlement denounced in the Irish Parliament, especially by Foster and Grattan, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">protest of the twenty peers, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Union left Ireland financially a distinct country, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the settlement made at the Union reduced her to bankruptcy, and how, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the compromise of 1816, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the real objects of this measure, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">though theoretically to &#8216;be assimilated&#8217; in finance, Ireland remained for many years financially a completely distinct country, and the reasons, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">this fully recognised by Peel in 1842, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he refused to extend the income tax to Ireland, and permanently to increase her spirit duties, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mr. Gladstone in 1853 suddenly disregards this policy, and imposes the income tax on Ireland, and raises her spirit duties, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">gross injustice of this increase of taxation, especially under the circumstances of Ireland, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ireland to a considerable extent &#8216;assimilated in finance&#8217; to Great Britain, but not completely, even to the present day, a fact that should be kept in mind, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Committee of 1863-64 on Irish finance, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">it fails to get Ireland justice, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mr. Goschen appoints a Committee to investigate the subject, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">this followed by the Childers Commission, appointed by Mr. Gladstone in 1893, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">scope of the inquiry, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the work of the Childers Commission, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">it reports that Ireland has been overtaxed at the rate of between two and three millions a year, and that for a very considerable space of time, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">view of Sir R. Giffen that even this estimate falls short of the real truth, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">this overtaxation especially severe in the case of Ireland, a poor country, <a href="#Page_292">292-295</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the attempts that have been made to answer and refute the Report of the Childers Commission have been grotesque failures, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">examination of these arguments and reply to them&mdash;they are either fallacious, or mischievous and dangerous, <a href="#Page_295">295-305</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">question of a counterclaim against Ireland in finance, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">financial redress which Ireland has a right to demand, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the question should be settled, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Foster, Mr., Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, opposes the financial arrangements of the Union, <a href="#Page_272">272</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+G<br />
+<br />
+Galway in decay, <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
+<br />
+Gladstone, Mr.: he ridicules Butt&#8217;s scheme of Home Rule, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">fall of his Administration in 1885, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his attitude at the General Election of that year, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he becomes a convert to Home Rule and the probable reasons, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">the best members of the Liberal Party break away from him, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he introduces his first Home Rule Bill, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he dissolves Parliament after the rejection of that measure by the House of Commons, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he allies himself with the party of disorder in Ireland, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he negotiates with Parnell about Home Rule, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he returns to office in 1892 with a small majority, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he introduces his second Home Rule Bill in 1893, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his Irish policy in 1868, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he disestablishes and disendows the Protestant church in Ireland, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he makes no provision for the Irish Catholic clergy, a capital mistake, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he introduces the Land Act of 1870 for Ireland, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he declares against the Three F&#8217;s, and announces that this measure is to be final, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he becomes Minister for the second time in 1880, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he introduces the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he surrenders to the Land League and introduces the Land Act of 1881, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he makes the Kilmainham treaty with Parnell, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the fiscal wrong he does to Ireland in 1853-60, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he appoints the Childers Commission in 1893 to investigate the subject of Irish finance, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his scheme of Irish University Reform, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And <i>see</i> Chap. VIII., on Other Irish Questions</span><br />
+<br />
+Goschen, Mr., refers the question of the financial relations of Great Britain and Ireland to a Committee, <a href="#Page_288">288</a><br />
+<br />
+Grattan: he denounces the financial settlement made at the Union for Ireland, <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+H<br />
+<br />
+Henry VII.: his Irish policy, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
+<br />
+Henry VIII.: his wise policy for Ireland unhappily prevented, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
+<br />
+Home Rule, the question of: Home Rule not dead, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the present attitude of the Liberal and the &#8216;Nationalist&#8217; parties towards Home Rule, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">it is a &#8216;Present Irish Question,&#8217; <a href="#Page_41">41</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Isaac Butt inaugurated this policy, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his plan of Home Rule, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Irish Home Rule party, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Butt&#8217;s proposals powerfully attacked in Parliament, notably by Mr. Gladstone, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Butt is gradually supplanted by Parnell, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Michael Davitt and the &#8216;New Departure,&#8217; ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Parnell the head of the Land League, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mr. Gladstone succumbs to it, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Home Rule condemned by statesmen of all parties in 1880-84, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mr. Gladstone accepts Home Rule, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the first Home Rule Bill of 1886, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its characteristics and the objections to it, <a href="#Page_48">48-50</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">what its results would have been, <a href="#Page_51">51-54</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Bill is rejected in the House of Commons, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">attitude of the Fenians in America, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">causes that promoted the Home Rule policy in Great Britain, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">results of the General Election of 1892, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Home Rule Bill of 1893, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its characteristics and vices, <a href="#Page_62">62-64</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">it is a much more objectionable measure than that of 1886, and why, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">strong opposition to it in the country, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the in-and-out plan given up, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Bill passes the House of Commons by a small majority through the expedient of &#8216;closure by compartments&#8217; <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">it is rejected in the House of Lords by an overwhelming majority, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Home Rule is scattered to the winds at the General Election of 1895, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">it is not a prominent question at that of 1900, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the subject cannot be dismissed, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">different forms of Home Rule, <a href="#Page_71">71-73</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">separation a better policy than Home Rule, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8216;Home Rule all round,&#8217; <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">conclusive objections to this scheme, <a href="#Page_74">74-77</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Union must be maintained, and Home Rule rejected by the nation, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the rule of the Imperial Parliament has had some bad effects in Irish affairs, and why, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">proposal that the Imperial Parliament should occasionally sit in Dublin, and the advantages of this, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">royalty should sometimes visit Ireland, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>;</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">necessity, in order to guard against Home Rule, and for other reasons, to reduce the over-representation of Ireland in the House of Commons, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+I<br />
+<br />
+Ireland in 1901: a revolution has passed over Ireland, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">she has made some material progress, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dublin and Belfast, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">improvement in the habitations of the community and in Catholic places of worship, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">material progress of the community, <a href="#Page_3">3-5</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the dark side of the picture, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">decline of several towns in Ireland, of manufactures, of fishing industry, and of agriculture, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ireland a poor country, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">excessive emigration, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">great increase of local and general taxation, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the progress of Ireland as nothing compared to that of England and Scotland, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Irish land system at the beginning of the reign of Victoria, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sketch of it from that to the present time, <a href="#Page_11">11-17</a> (and <i>see</i> the Question of the Irish Land, Chap. III., in many places);</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ireland and her three peoples, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Catholic Ireland remains for the most part disaffected, despite the great reforms effected in its interest, <a href="#Page_19">19-21</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Catholic democracy of Ireland, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">failure of the policy of conciliation, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Presbyterian Ireland&mdash;its sentiments and demands, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Protestant Ireland&mdash;its position in the community, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">discontent of the landed gentry, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character of the Irish legislation of the Imperial Parliament, <a href="#Page_23">23-25</a>,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">and of its administration of Irish affairs, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Anglican Church of Ireland, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Presbyterian Church, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Catholic Church, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the administration of justice in Ireland, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Irish literature and education, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>resum&eacute;</i> of the general condition of Ireland, <a href="#Page_33">33-35</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Irish policy of Lord Salisbury&#8217;s Government during the last six years, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ireland still &#8216;the vulnerable part near the heart of the Empire,&#8217; <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+L<br />
+<br />
+Lalor, John Finton, a rebel of 1848: his teaching with respect to the Irish land, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br />
+<br />
+Land, the question of the Irish: importance of the subject, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Celtic tribal land system in Ireland, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the tribes, clans, and septs, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the partial feudalisation of the land system, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">collective ownership of which traces still exist, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland and the Colony of the Pale, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the land falls into the hands of great families, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">miserable state of Ireland at the close of the fifteenth century, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Henry VII. and Poynings, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sagacious policy of Henry VIII., especially as regards the land, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">this, unfortunately, was not carried out, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the era of conquest begins, and of the confiscation of the Irish land, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">confiscation of the territories of the O&#8217;Connors of Offaly, of Shane O&#8217;Neill, and of the Earl of Desmond, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">rebellion of Tyrone, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">all Ireland made shireland, and the old Celtic land system is effaced by law, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">English modes of land tenure imposed on the people, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">confiscation of the territories of Tyrone and of O&#8217;Donnell, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Plantation of Ulster, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">further confiscation in times of peace, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Strafford marks out Connaught for confiscation, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">beginning of Protestant ascendency in the land, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">vast confiscations effected by Cromwell, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his scheme of a general colonisation of Ireland fails, <a href="#Page_93">93-95</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">results of the Cromwellian conquest in the land, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">policy of Charles II. as regards the land, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">confiscations after the Boyne and the fall of Limerick, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">state of the Irish land system when the period of violent confiscation ends, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the era of Protestant ascendency and of Catholic subjection in Ireland, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Penal Code and its effects on the land, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mournful period in Irish history, <a href="#Page_100">100-102</a>;</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">gradual improvement in Irish landed relations, <a href="#Page_102">102-104</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">evil traces of the past: Whiteboyism, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">traditions of the ancient land system survive, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Edmund Burke on Irish land tenures&mdash;he indicates a grave economic vice in the land system, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">progress of Ireland after 1782, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its effects on the land, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">evil results of the Rebellion of 1798, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Union Speech of Lord Clare on Irish landed relations, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">revolution in the land system in the first years of the nineteenth century, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the important social and economic results, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">want of a poor-law, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the concurrent rights of tenants in the land not protected by the law, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">period of distress after the Peace of 1815, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">evictions and clearances of estates, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">agrarian disorder, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Catholic Emancipation, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its results as regards Irish landed relations, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Peel and the Irish land, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Devon Commission and its Report, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its recommendations as to land tenure ill conceived and condemned in Ireland, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Famine of 1845-47, and its effects on the Irish land, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the exodus, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Encumbered Estates Act, and the effects of this scheme of confiscation, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">agrarian agitation of 1852 in Ireland fails, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">false ideas of British statesmen as regards the land, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">partial prosperity in Ireland for some years, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">this largely deceptive, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">growth of Fenianism, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Fenian outbreak, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">change of opinion in England as regards Ireland, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mr. Gladstone Prime Minister, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">state of the Irish land system before the Land Act of 1870, <a href="#Page_132">132-138</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Land Act of 1870 and its provisions, <a href="#Page_141">141-143</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">merits and defects of this measure, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">state of Irish landed relations after the Act, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">origin of the Land League, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">distress in Ireland, and the Land League, <a href="#Page_152">152-154</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Compensation for Disturbance Bill rejected by the House of Lords, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">frightful state of Ireland and of landed relations in 1880-81, <a href="#Page_155">155-161</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Land Act of 1881, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the provisions of the measure, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Act is directly opposed to that of 1870, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the no-rent movement, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the National League replaces the Land League, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">state of Irish landed relations in 1886 and 1887, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Land Act of 1887, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Land Act of 1891, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the land purchase section in the Irish Land Act, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the principle of this system false and dangerous, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Land Purchase Act of 1891, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">recent legislation on the Irish land unjust and tending to confiscation, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The administration of the Irish Land Acts, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of the Act of 1870, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of the Act of 1881, and its supplements, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the first Land Commission&mdash;allowances to be made for it, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">principles it should have followed and course it should have pursued in fixing &#8216;fair rents,&#8217; <a href="#Page_192">192-197</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Sub-Commission&mdash;nature of these tribunals, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">how they ought to have fixed &#8216;fair rents,&#8217; <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">criticism of Mr. Lecky, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">examples of injustice, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">faulty methods of fixing &#8216;fair rents,&#8217; <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">appeals to the Land Commission rendered almost nugatory, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the second Land Commission: Mr. Justice Bewley and his theory of occupation right, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">instance of a gross mistake, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Fry Commission&mdash;its Report a masked censure on the proceedings of the Land Commission, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mr. Justice Meredith head of the present Land Commission, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">conduct of the Government as regards the Report of the Fry Commission, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">results of the labours of the Land Commission and the Sub-Commission in fixing &#8216;fair rents,&#8217; <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">confiscation of the property of landlords, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">excuses made for this false, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">results of the system of land purchase so far, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mischievous and dangerous consequences of all this legislation on the Irish land;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">a retrospect of it on the side of occupation, <a href="#Page_230">230-237</a>;</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">judgment of Mr. Lecky, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">retrospect of it on the side of ownership, especially with regard to the subject of &#8216;compulsive purchase,&#8217; which the system of &#8216;voluntary purchase&#8217; has necessarily made a grave question, <a href="#Page_238">238-256</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">judgment of Mr. Lecky, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Irish land system in a deplorable state, <a href="#Page_257">257-259</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">plan of the author for the reform of this system approved by Mr. Gladstone and by Parnell, <a href="#Page_259">259-266</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the compensation of the Irish landlords must be accomplished if public faith is to be kept and common justice done, <a href="#Page_266">266-270</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Land League, the: Reign of Terror caused by, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its teaching and that of the National League, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ascendency of the Land League in ten or eleven Irish counties, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">frightful state of Ireland due to it, <a href="#Page_158">158-162</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Law, Mr., the Irish Attorney-General of Mr. Gladstone in 1881: his definition of &#8216;fair rent,&#8217; <a href="#Page_192">192</a><br />
+<br />
+Limerick in decay, <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
+<br />
+Litton, Mr. E. F., a member of the first Land Commission, <a href="#Page_192">192</a><br />
+<br />
+Local Government, sketch of, in Ireland, <a href="#Page_309">309-329</a>. <i>See</i> Chap. VIII., Other Irish Questions, in several places<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+M<br />
+<br />
+Macaulay, Lord: speech on the state of Ireland in 1844, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+Meredith, Mr. Justice, head of the present Land Commission: a capable lawyer, but bound by the precedents of his forerunners, <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+N<br />
+<br />
+National League, the: it replaces the Land League, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its leaders set on foot &#8216;The Plan of Campaign,&#8217; <a href="#Page_57">57</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">it was founded by Parnell, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its character, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">agrarian side of the National League movement, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">decline of the power of the National League in 1889, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">it is at its lowest ebb in 1895, ibid.</span><br />
+<br />
+National system of education, <a href="#Page_332">332-336</a>. <i>See</i> Chap. VIII., on Other Present Irish Questions<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+O<br />
+<br />
+O&#8217;Connell: his evidence on the state of Ireland in 1825, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he wrings Catholic Emancipation from a reluctant Government, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">leader of the Repeal movement of 1843-44, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></span><br />
+<br />
+O&#8217;Hagan, Mr. Justice, head of the first Land Commission, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br />
+<br />
+&#8216;Other Present Irish Questions,&#8217; Chap. VIII.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I. Local Government in Ireland, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the grand juries, their composition and functions, <a href="#Page_311">311-314</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the administration of the poor law and the Boards of Guardians, <a href="#Page_314">314-315</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the administration of cities and towns&mdash;its history, <a href="#Page_315">315-318</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character of, in recent times, <a href="#Page_318">318-320</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">how the reform of 1898 was brought about, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sketch of the Local Government Act of 1898, <a href="#Page_321">321-326</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and of its working up to the present time, <a href="#Page_326">326-329</a>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">II. Education in Ireland, history of, <a href="#Page_330">330</a> <i>seqq.</i>:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">primary education, <a href="#Page_330">330-332</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the National system founded by Mr. Stanley&mdash;its principles and history, <a href="#Page_332">332-336</a>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Secondary education, diocesan schools, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Royal schools, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Erasmus Smith schools, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">other schools; the system has not been successful, and why, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">University education, Trinity College, its history and the character of the institution, <a href="#Page_338">338-341</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Peel founds the Queen&#8217;s Colleges and University, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character of these institutions, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Catholic University, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s scheme of Irish University reform, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">grave objections to it, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">it is rejected by the House of Commons, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Trinity College &#8220;opened,&#8221; ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Royal University, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">injustice of the present system of University education in Ireland, <a href="#Page_347">347-351</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">two plans of reform suggested, the second to be preferred, <a href="#Page_351">351-360</a></span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+P<br />
+<br />
+Palmerston, Lord: he condemns Irish tenant right, <a href="#Page_124">124</a><br />
+<br />
+Parnell: supplants Butt, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">leader of the Land League, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he denounces the Conservative party in 1885, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he pretends to accept the Home Rule Bill of 1886, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the special commission and Parnell, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he negotiates with Mr. Gladstone on Home Rule, ibid.;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his fall, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Peel: his remarks on the Constitution in Ireland, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he appoints the Devon Commission, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his policy during the famine, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he refuses in 1842 to extend the income tax to Ireland, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">he founds the Queen&#8217;s Colleges and the Queen&#8217;s University in Ireland, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Pitt: the author of the financial arrangements made at the Union, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br />
+<br />
+Primary education in Ireland, <a href="#Page_330">330-336</a>. <i>See</i> Chap. VIII., on Other Present Irish Questions<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Q<br />
+<br />
+Queen&#8217;s Colleges and Queen&#8217;s University: founded by Peel, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>. <i>See</i> Chap. VIII., on Other Present Irish Questions<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+R<br />
+<br />
+Rebellion of 1798: its effects on the Irish Land, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+S<br />
+<br />
+Salisbury, Lord: character of the Irish policy of his ministry, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+Stanley, Mr., founds the system of National Education in Ireland, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Strafford: his Irish policy, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+T<br />
+<br />
+Trinity College, <a href="#Page_338">338-341</a>. <i>See</i> Chap. VIII., on Present Irish Questions<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+U<br />
+<br />
+Ulster Custom, the, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a><br />
+<br />
+Union, The, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br />
+<br />
+United Irish League, the: fills the place of the Land and the National Leagues, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">speeches and conduct of its leaders, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+V<br />
+<br />
+Vernon, Mr. I. E., one of the members of the first Land Commission, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+W<br />
+<br />
+Whiteboyism in Ireland, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Y<br />
+<br />
+Young, Arthur: his tour in Ireland, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Appendices</span><br />
+<br />
+I. The Irish Government Bill, 1886, <a href="#Page_361">361-387</a><br />
+<br />
+II. The Irish Government Bill, 1893, <a href="#Page_388">388-424</a><br />
+<br />
+III. Note I. From the &#8216;Memoirs of the late Lord Selborne,&#8217; <a href="#Page_425">425</a>, <a href="#Page_426">426</a><br />
+<br />
+IV. Report of the Special Commission, vol. iv. pp. 544, 545. Conclusion of the Report of the Judges, <a href="#Page_426">426-428</a><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">THE END</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">LONDON:<br />
+<br />
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,<br />
+STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><strong>Footnotes:</strong></p>
+
+<p><a name='f_1' id='f_1' href='#fna_1'>[1]</a> It considerably exceeds 300,000 by the figures of the census of 1901.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_2' id='f_2' href='#fna_2'>[2]</a></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
+    <td align="center">1841</td><td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
+    <td align="center">1891</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Houses of the first class</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">40,080</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">70,740</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 3em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">second class</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center">264,184</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center">466,632</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 3em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">third class</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center">533,297</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center">312,589</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 3em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">fourth class</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center">491,278</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">20,617</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<p>These figures are taken from that most valuable publication, &#8216;Thom&#8217;s Irish
+Directory for 1901,&#8217; p. 631. It contains the statistics of Ireland
+carefully compiled from official sources.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_3' id='f_3' href='#fna_3'>[3]</a> There has been a small decrease since 1895.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_4' id='f_4' href='#fna_4'>[4]</a> Evidence taken before a Select Committee of the House of Commons,
+1824-25, vol. i. p. 49. The whole of O&#8217;Connell&#8217;s evidence should be
+studied.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_5' id='f_5' href='#fna_5'>[5]</a></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
+    <td align="center">1894</td><td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
+    <td align="center">1900</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Funded Debt held in Ireland</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center">&pound;22,917,530</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center">&pound;18,303,627</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: -1em;">Government Funds and other securities:</span><br />
+India Stock, Land Stock, War<br />Stock, Joint Stock Banks,<br />Trustee Savings Banks, and<br />Post Office Savings Banks</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center" valign="bottom">&pound;67,432,000</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center" valign="bottom">&pound;77,494,000</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&#8216;Thom&#8217;s Directory, 1901,&#8217; p. 718.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_6' id='f_6' href='#fna_6'>[6]</a> See the remarkable evidence of Mr. Booth, a high authority, taken by
+the Childers Commission, &#8216;Minutes of Evidence,&#8217; vol. ii. pp. 212, 213.
+This should all be studied.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_7' id='f_7' href='#fna_7'>[7]</a> &#8216;Thom&#8217;s Directory, 1901,&#8217; p. 699.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_8' id='f_8' href='#fna_8'>[8]</a> Report of Childers Commission, p. 43&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
+    <td align="center">1851-55</td><td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
+    <td align="center">1889-93</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Crops</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center">&pound;58,537,000</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center">&pound;34,643,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Stock</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center">&pound;39,348,000</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center">&pound;53,312,000</td></tr></table>
+
+<p><a name='f_9' id='f_9' href='#fna_9'>[9]</a> &#8216;Thom&#8217;s Directory, 1901,&#8217; p. 684.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_10' id='f_10' href='#fna_10'>[10]</a> &#8216;Thom&#8217;s Directory, 1901,&#8217; p. 629.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_11' id='f_11' href='#fna_11'>[11]</a> See the striking observations of Mr. Childers, well worth serious
+attention: &#8216;Report of the Childers Commission,&#8217; pp. 186, 187.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_12' id='f_12' href='#fna_12'>[12]</a> &#8216;Thom&#8217;s Directory, 1901,&#8217; p. 662. Number of paupers relieved in 1890,
+454,178; in 1898, 525,104. Charge in 1890, &pound;856,008; in 1898, &pound;981,333.
+These are the latest returns.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_13' id='f_13' href='#fna_13'>[13]</a> &#8216;Thom&#8217;s Directory, 1901,&#8217; p. 674. Assessment of lands, in 1890, under
+Schedule A, &pound;12,736,967; in 1899, &pound;11,664,453. Funded property at the same
+periods, &pound;803,300 and &pound;615,630. These, too, are the latest returns.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_14' id='f_14' href='#fna_14'>[14]</a> &#8216;Report of the Childers Commission,&#8217; p. 72. I cite also the following
+from the Report, p. 43: &#8216;The income-tax figures are, perhaps, the best and
+most complete test of the comparative growth of the wealth of the two
+countries. Taking the two years, 1854 and 1892, we find that the net
+assessment for Great Britain was, in 1854, &pound;245,389,931; and in 1892,
+&pound;570,971,740. The net assessment for Ireland was, in 1854, &pound;21,334,448;
+and in 1892, &pound;26,851,585. In these thirty-eight years the net assessment
+for Great Britain is more than two and a third times as great as it was in
+1854, whilst that for Ireland has only increased by one quarter. Put in
+percentage form, the figures are still more striking: In 1854 Great
+Britain was assessed at 92 per cent. of the whole; Ireland 8 per cent. In
+1892 Great Britain was assessed at 95.50 per cent, of the whole; Ireland
+4.50 per cent. In other words, Ireland&#8217;s assessment was to that of Great
+Britain as 1 to 11 in 1854, and as 1 to 21 in 1892.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_15' id='f_15' href='#fna_15'>[15]</a> See on this subject the true and indignant remarks of Mr. Lecky,
+&#8216;Democracy and Liberty,&#8217; vol. i. pp. 27, 28.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_16' id='f_16' href='#fna_16'>[16]</a> The tone of disaffected opinion in Ireland can only be thoroughly
+understood by a careful study of the conduct and the language of
+&#8216;Nationalist&#8217; leaders. I select a few specimens out of hundreds of
+instances. Mr. William O&#8217;Brien, the Corypheus of the United Irish League,
+spake thus at Letterkenny in January, 1900: &#8216;If ten thousand Frenchmen, or
+Russians, or Germans were to land in Bantry Bay, with a supply of arms for
+the people, they would walk over the country and drive the English
+garrison into the sea.&#8217; The same worthy exclaimed at a monster meeting in
+Dublin in September, &#8216;English rule in Ireland was so bad that they would
+be justified in chasing the English out of Ireland bag and baggage. What
+was wanting to them, unfortunately, were the guns and artillery to do it.&#8217;
+Mr. Michael Davitt, of Land League renown, speaking in the Queen&#8217;s County
+about the same time, said, &#8216;England is unquestionably the greatest empire
+of liars (loud cheers and laughter), of hypocrites, and of poltroons,
+judged by its achievements in South Africa, that has ever postured before
+mankind with a civilising mission.&#8217; Because the Corporation of Dublin
+voted, by a small majority, an address to Queen Victoria when she paid her
+last visit to Ireland, Mr. John Redmond, the chairman of the &#8216;Irish
+Parliamentary Party,&#8217; said, in January, 1901, &#8216;It rests with the people
+themselves to say whether they will redeem the reputation of Dublin from
+the stain that has been cast on it.&#8217; So Mr. John Dillon, M.P., spoke in
+the same sense, a few months ago, &#8216;The voice of the capital will be the
+voice of the rest of Ireland (applause), that we will not tolerate in this
+old city that new type of politics which thinks it consistent with Irish
+nationality to cringe and crouch before a foreign queen.&#8217; At least two
+County Councils in Ireland, and more than one Local Board, refused to vote
+an expression of condolence when the Queen died. It is painful to contrast
+these sentiments with the loyalty of O&#8217;Connell when the Queen ascended the
+throne.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_17' id='f_17' href='#fna_17'>[17]</a> Since the above lines were written, there has been a serious outbreak
+of agrarian crime in Ireland in the form of incendiary fires, which may be
+distinctly traced to the operations of the United Irish League.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_18' id='f_18' href='#fna_18'>[18]</a> Speech in the House of Commons, February 19, 1844.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_19' id='f_19' href='#fna_19'>[19]</a> The figures were 1,238,342 against 1,316,327: Dicey, &#8216;England&#8217;s Case
+against Home Rule,&#8217; p. 35.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_20' id='f_20' href='#fna_20'>[20]</a> Butt maintained, in his place in Parliament (Hansard, March 20, 1874),
+that this was the true import of his project.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_21' id='f_21' href='#fna_21'>[21]</a> Speech on receiving the freedom of Aberdeen, September 26, 1871.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_22' id='f_22' href='#fna_22'>[22]</a> See Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s &#8216;History of an Idea,&#8217; an apology for his attitude
+towards Home Rule at this time, which seems to me to be his condemnation.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_23' id='f_23' href='#fna_23'>[23]</a> For an admirable analysis of the Bill, see Dicey&#8217;s &#8216;England&#8217;s Case
+against Home Rule,&#8217; pp. 223-273. The text of the Bill will be found in the
+Appendix to this volume.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_24' id='f_24' href='#fna_24'>[24]</a> For a full statement of Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s &#8216;conditions,&#8217; see his speech
+in the House of Commons, April 8, 1886.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_25' id='f_25' href='#fna_25'>[25]</a> &#8216;Reflections on the Revolution in France,&#8217; vol. i. p. 384, ed. 1834.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_26' id='f_26' href='#fna_26'>[26]</a> Report of the Special Commission, vol. iv. p. 542.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_27' id='f_27' href='#fna_27'>[27]</a> &#8216;The Queen&#8217;s Enemies in America,&#8217; p. 24.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_28' id='f_28' href='#fna_28'>[28]</a> For a scathing condemnation of Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s public conduct in
+these years, see several great speeches of Lord Hartington and Mr.
+Goschen. See also &#8216;The Memoirs of Lord Selborne,&#8217; Part II. vol. ii. pp.
+261, <i>et seq.</i>, and note in Appendix to this volume. See, too, Dicey&#8217;s
+&#8216;Leap in the Dark,&#8217; p. 190. Lord Selborne&#8217;s sketch of Mr. Gladstone&#8217;s
+character as a statesman, &#8216;Memoirs,&#8217; Part II. vol. ii. pp. 339-359,
+deserves careful study. Mr. Lecky&#8217;s admirable account, &#8216;Democracy and
+Liberty,&#8217; introduction to vol. i., second edition, is well known.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_29' id='f_29' href='#fna_29'>[29]</a> Report of the Judges, vol. iv. pp. 544, 545. See the note at the end
+of this volume in the Appendix.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_30' id='f_30' href='#fna_30'>[30]</a> For a very able analysis of and commentary on the Bill of 1893, see
+Professor Dicey&#8217;s &#8216;Leap in the Dark.&#8217; For the text of the Bill, see the
+Appendix to this volume.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_31' id='f_31' href='#fna_31'>[31]</a> Dicey&#8217;s &#8216;Leap in the Dark,&#8217; p. 57.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_32' id='f_32' href='#fna_32'>[32]</a> &#8216;England&#8217;s Case against Home Rule,&#8217; p. 168.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_33' id='f_33' href='#fna_33'>[33]</a> The German Empire, in which Prussia is the leading State, may seem an
+example to the contrary; but the German Empire is hardly a Federation
+properly so called; it is a great military monarchy ruling subject
+kingdoms.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_34' id='f_34' href='#fna_34'>[34]</a> I feel obliged to refer to these authorities; not in order to stir up
+resentment against England in Ireland, but to point out a most important,
+if unfortunate, fact in the relations between the two countries. Swift, in
+his &#8216;View of the State of Ireland,&#8217; Works, vol. ii. 8vo ed. 1890, says,
+&#8216;We are in the condition of patients, who have physic sent them by doctors
+at a distance, strangers to their constitution and the nature of the
+disease.&#8217; Burke, &#8216;Correspondence,&#8217; vol. iii. p. 438, has remarked, &#8216;I have
+never known any of the successive Governments of my time influenced by any
+other feeling relative to Ireland than the wish that they should hear of
+it and of its concerns as little as possible.&#8217; So Grattan, cited by Mr.
+Lecky, vol. vii. p. 108, exclaimed, &#8216;It is a matter of melancholy
+reflection to consider how little the Cabinet knows of anything relating
+to Ireland. Ireland is a subject it considers with a lazy contumely, and
+picks up here and there, by accident or design, interested and erroneous
+intelligence.&#8217; I quote this passage from one of the speeches of Lord
+Clare: &#8216;The people of England know less of this country than of any other
+nation in Europe;&#8217; and this passage from one of the speeches of O&#8217;Connell:
+&#8216;We are governed by foreigners; foreigners make our laws.... As to
+Ireland, the Imperial Parliament has the additional disadvantage springing
+from want of interest and total ignorance. I do not exaggerate; the
+ministers are in total ignorance of this country.&#8217; This want of knowledge
+of Ireland, too often associated with indifference, has, I repeat, been
+distinctly made manifest of late years.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_35' id='f_35' href='#fna_35'>[35]</a> These figures are taken from the Irish census of 1891. By the census
+of 1901, the population of Antrim and Down has increased, and that of
+every other county in Ireland, except Dublin, has declined. The
+over-representation of Ireland has thus become more than ever an unjust
+anomaly.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_36' id='f_36' href='#fna_36'>[36]</a> For an admirable account of the ancient land system of Celtic
+Ireland, see Maine&#8217;s &#8216;Early History of Institutions.&#8217; I may be allowed to
+refer to an article on this work, from my pen, in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>
+of July, 1875, and to the first chapter of my &#8216;History of Ireland,&#8217; in the
+Cambridge &#8216;Historical Series.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_37' id='f_37' href='#fna_37'>[37]</a> In the case of this, as of all the chapters, a list of the principal
+authorities and sources of information will be found in the preface to
+this book. For the conquest and confiscations of the Irish land, from the
+Norman Conquest to the end of the reign of William III., see &#8216;The Statute
+of Kilkenny,&#8217; edited by James Hardiman; &#8216;The Discoverie of Sir John
+Davies;&#8217; &#8216;The Carew Papers,&#8217; edited by J. S. Brewer and William Bullen;
+Spenser&#8217;s &#8216;View of the State of Ireland;&#8217; Holingshead&#8217;s &#8216;Chronicles of
+Ireland;&#8217; Carte&#8217;s &#8216;Life of Ormond;&#8217; Lord Clanricarde&#8217;s &#8216;Memoirs;&#8217; Sir
+William Petty&#8217;s &#8216;Political Anatomy of Ireland;&#8217; &#8216;Macari&aelig; Excidium;&#8217; and
+King&#8217;s &#8216;State of the Protestants of Ireland.&#8217; As regards modern
+authorities, numerous, and some very valuable, the reader may be referred
+to Froude&#8217;s &#8216;History of England,&#8217; vol. ii. ch. viii.; vol. v. ch. xxviii.;
+vol. viii. chs. vii., xi.; vol. x. ch. xxiv.; vol. xi. ch. xxvii.; to Mr.
+Lecky&#8217;s &#8216;History of England in the Eighteenth Century,&#8217; vol. ii. ch. vi.;
+and to the Irish chapters in Mr. Gardiner&#8217;s &#8216;History of England,&#8217; from the
+Accession of James I. to the outbreak of the Civil War; to his &#8216;History of
+the Great Civil War,&#8217; vol. i. chs. vi., xi.; vol. ii. chs. xxvii.,
+xxxvii., xliv.; and to the Irish chapters of his &#8216;History of the
+Commonwealth and Protectorate.&#8217; Other modern works on the subject are
+Sigerson&#8217;s &#8216;History of Land Tenure in Ireland;&#8217; &#8216;An Historical Account of
+the Plantation of Ulster,&#8217; by the Rev. George Hill; &#8216;The Cromwellian
+Settlement of Ireland,&#8217; by John P. Prendergast; and the &#8216;Life of Sir
+William Petty,&#8217; by Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice. See a review by me of this
+last work in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> of July, 1895; and also chs. iii.,
+iv., and v. of my &#8216;History of Ireland, 1494-1868,&#8217; referred to before.
+There are innumerable minor authorities; and Hallam&#8217;s &#8216;Chapter on
+Ireland,&#8217; vol. iii., may be studied.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_38' id='f_38' href='#fna_38'>[38]</a> &#8216;Letter to Sir Hercules Langriche:&#8217; &#8216;Works,&#8217; vol. i. p. 560, ed.
+1834.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_39' id='f_39' href='#fna_39'>[39]</a> For an account of the penal laws of Ireland, see Vincent Scully on
+&#8216;The Irish Penal Laws;&#8217; Howard&#8217;s &#8216;Popery Laws;&#8217; and Burke&#8217;s &#8216;Tracts on the
+Popery Laws,&#8217; a short but masterly work.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_40' id='f_40' href='#fna_40'>[40]</a> For the state of Ireland and of the Irish land at this period, see
+the Irish Statute Book from 1700 to about 1750, and especially the
+writings of Swift and Berkeley on Irish affairs. Swift, however, is not
+just to the Irish landed gentry, many as were their faults. See also the
+&#8216;Letters&#8217; of Archbishop Boulter, the virtual ruler of Ireland during a
+series of years, and of Archbishop Synge. Reference, too, may be made to
+Molyneux&#8217;s &#8216;Case of Ireland,&#8217; and to Hutchinson&#8217;s and Caldwell&#8217;s
+&#8216;Restraints on the Trade of Ireland.&#8217; For modern authorities, consult
+Lecky&#8217;s &#8216;History of England in the Eighteenth Century,&#8217; vol. ii. ch. vii.;
+vol. iv. chs. xvi., xvii. Froude&#8217;s &#8216;English in Ireland&#8217; is very inaccurate
+and one-sided for this period; but his fine romance, the &#8216;Two Chiefs of
+Dunboy,&#8217; contains a brilliant, and, in the main, a true account of the
+state of Irish social life in those days.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_41' id='f_41' href='#fna_41'>[41]</a> By far the best account of the state of Ireland, at this period, is
+to be found in the celebrated &#8216;Tour&#8217; of Arthur Young, who wrote in
+1776-78. See also Mr. Lecky&#8217;s &#8216;History of England in the Eighteenth
+Century,&#8217; vol. vi. chs. xxiv., xxv.; vol. vii. ch. xxvii. The &#8216;Irlande,
+Sociale, Politique, et Religieuse&#8217; of Gustave de Beaumont may also be
+consulted; but though a very able work, it is that of a democratic
+doctrinaire. For the Whiteboy movements, see the Irish Statute Book, and
+Sir George Lewis on &#8216;Irish Disturbances.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_42' id='f_42' href='#fna_42'>[42]</a> See Burke&#8217;s &#8216;Tracts on the Popery Laws,&#8217; vol. ii. pp. 445, 446.
+Arthur Young, too, often dwells on this subject.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_43' id='f_43' href='#fna_43'>[43]</a> For an account of this period nothing can be compared to Mr. Lecky&#8217;s
+&#8216;History of England in the Eighteenth Century,&#8217; vols. vii., viii. These
+contain all the information that can be obtained, collected from every
+available source. I may refer to my &#8216;Ireland, 1798-1898,&#8217; chs. i., ii.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_44' id='f_44' href='#fna_44'>[44]</a> There is no complete history of Ireland from the Union to the present
+time, though the materials for such a work are abundant. I may refer to my
+&#8216;Ireland, 1798-1898,&#8217; from the second chapter to the end. An excellent and
+elaborate description of Ireland from 1800 to 1812 will be found in the
+volumes of Edward Wakefield.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_45' id='f_45' href='#fna_45'>[45]</a> The best account of this period&mdash;the forerunner of one even more
+calamitous&mdash;will be found in the proceedings of a Parliamentary Committee
+on the state of Ireland in 1824-25, and in the mass of evidence collected
+by it. The evidence of O&#8217;Connell is full of interest.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_46' id='f_46' href='#fna_46'>[46]</a> I perfectly recollect, though quite a boy, this strong and widespread
+expression of sentiment.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_47' id='f_47' href='#fna_47'>[47]</a> Mitchel&#8217;s &#8216;History of Ireland,&#8217; vol. ii. p. 213. Mitchel was a rebel,
+but an honourable man, superior to the falsehoods disseminated by later
+agitators against Irish landlords.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_48' id='f_48' href='#fna_48'>[48]</a> Every one acquainted with the history of Irish titles, from about
+1790 to 1820, knows that this was the case.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_49' id='f_49' href='#fna_49'>[49]</a> &#8216;Clarendon,&#8217; wrote Greville, &#8216;told me he expected the Encumbered
+Estates Act would prove the regeneration of Ireland.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_50' id='f_50' href='#fna_50'>[50]</a> That great lawyer, Lord St. Leonards, protested. He had been Lord
+Chancellor of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_51' id='f_51' href='#fna_51'>[51]</a> For the state of Ireland during the Famine and the years that
+followed, see &#8216;The Irish Crisis,&#8217; by Sir Charles Trevelyan, reprinted from
+the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>; and the &#8216;Letters&#8217; of Mr. Campbell Foster, the
+Commissioner of the <i>Times</i>. Valuable information will also be found in
+the Greville &#8216;Memoirs,&#8217; vols. v., vi. I may refer to my &#8216;Ireland,
+1798-1898,&#8217; chs. v. and part of vi.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_52' id='f_52' href='#fna_52'>[52]</a> For an account of these machinations of party, see Greville,
+&#8216;Memoirs,&#8217; vol. vii. p. 33.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_53' id='f_53' href='#fna_53'>[53]</a> I heard several of these most injudicious and ill-informed
+expressions of a false opinion.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_54' id='f_54' href='#fna_54'>[54]</a> For the state of Ireland from the end of the Famine to 1868,
+reference may be made to &#8216;Two Centuries of Irish History,&#8217; edited by Mr.
+Bryce; to the Greville &#8216;Memoirs,&#8217; vols. vii. and viii.; to Greville&#8217;s
+&#8216;Policy of England towards Ireland;&#8217; to the &#8216;Recollections and Suggestions
+of Earl Russell;&#8217; to parts of the &#8216;Life of Lord Palmerston;&#8217; to &#8216;Journals,
+Conversations, and Essays relating to Ireland,&#8217; by Nassau Senior; to the
+&#8216;Young Ireland,&#8217; the &#8216;Four Years of Irish History,&#8217; and &#8216;The League of the
+North and South,&#8217; by Sir C. G. Duffy; to the &#8216;New Ireland&#8217; of Mr. A. M.
+Sullivan; and to the &#8216;Parnell Movement&#8217; of Mr. T. P. O&#8217;Connor. Valuable
+information as to this period will also be found in Mr. Barry O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s
+works, &#8216;Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland&#8217; and &#8216;Irish Wrongs and
+English Remedies;&#8217; and there are many other authorities. This period is
+dealt with in my &#8216;Ireland, 1798-1898.&#8217; ch. vi.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_55' id='f_55' href='#fna_55'>[55]</a> From the mass of literature on this subject reference may especially
+be made to &#8216;The Irish Land,&#8217; by the late Sir George Campbell; Judge
+Longfield&#8217;s essay in &#8216;Systems of Land Tenure;&#8217; the &#8216;Irish Land and the
+Irish People,&#8217; by Butt; and the &#8216;Ireland, Industrial, Political, and
+Social,&#8217; of the late Mr. J. N. Murphy. As Special Commissioner of the
+<i>Times</i>, I went into the Irish land question at length on the spot; and it
+would be affectation to deny that my letters, since republished,
+powerfully contributed to the legislation which ere long followed. See,
+for further information, &#8216;The Irish Land Question&#8217; of John Stuart Mill;
+&#8216;Emigration and the Tenure of Irish Land,&#8217; by Lord Dufferin; &#8216;The New
+Ireland&#8217; of the late Mr. A. M. Sullivan; parts of Mr. Barry O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s
+&#8216;Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland&#8217;; &#8216;Ireland in 1868,&#8217; by the late Mr.
+G. Fitzgibbon, a Master of the Court of Chancery in Ireland; and Mr.
+Lecky&#8217;s &#8216;Democracy and Liberty,&#8217; vol. i. ch. ii.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_56' id='f_56' href='#fna_56'>[56]</a> This fact has been established by conclusive and impartial evidence,
+which hardly admits of question. It should be steadily kept in the
+reader&#8217;s mind; for an idea, largely countenanced by iniquitous legislation
+badly administered, has prevailed of late years, that rack-renting in
+Ireland was common, nay, general. Exactly the contrary has been the case
+during the last half century. Butt, in his &#8216;The Irish People and the Irish
+Land,&#8217; published in 1867, hardly alludes to over-renting; he properly
+dwells on the insecurity of Irish land tenure. Master Fitzgibbon, a great
+authority on the subject, in his &#8216;Ireland in 1868,&#8217; p. 268, pointedly
+remarked, &#8216;452 estates are under my jurisdiction, in the Court of
+Chancery, the rents of which amount to &pound;330,809, paid by 18,287 tenants. I
+have been now nearly eight years in office, during which time the rents
+have been paid without murmuring or complaint worth noticing.... It is
+well known that my ears are open to any just complaint from any tenant.&#8217;
+The testimony of Judge Longfield, another great authority, is nearly to
+the same effect. In &#8216;Systems of Land Tenure,&#8217; published in 1870, he wrote
+thus (p. 21): &#8216;This complaint of high rents has been made without ceasing
+for more than three hundred years. There was never less ground for it than
+at the present day, although in some instances the rent demanded is still
+too high; but this chiefly occurs where the landlords are middlemen, or
+where the property is very small.&#8217; These views are fully confirmed by
+evidence of a later period, to which I shall refer. I may add that, in
+1869, I examined the rentals of many scores of Irish estates, and was
+convinced that over-renting was very rare. See my &#8216;Letters on the Land
+Question of Ireland,&#8217; republished from the <i>Times</i>, <i>passim</i>. I quote a
+single instance, from many to the same purpose (p. 221): &#8216;It may be
+asserted, too, without fear of contradiction, that if in some districts
+rents are too high, they are not so as a general rule.&#8217; I have managed an
+Irish estate for upwards of fifty years, and have some claim to be an
+agricultural expert.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_57' id='f_57' href='#fna_57'>[57]</a> For the characteristics of the Ulster tenant right, see Butt&#8217;s
+&#8216;Landlord and Tenant Act, 1870,&#8217; ch. xv. pp. 296-310. As to the legal
+authorities on the subject, reference may be made to the learned treatise
+of Messrs. Cherry and Wakley, &#8216;The Irish Land Law and Land Purchase Acts,&#8217;
+pp. 150-152. A popular account of the Ulster custom will be found in my
+&#8216;Letters on the Land Question of Ireland,&#8217; pp. 242-247, and a more
+technical account in a legal treatise from my pen on the Land Act of 1870,
+pp. 30-56. The best definition I have seen of the right is one made by the
+late P. J. Blake, Q.C., C.C.J. of a northern county, &#8216;Cherry and Wakley,&#8217;
+p. 150: &#8216;The right or custom in general of yearly tenants, or those
+deriving through them, to continue in undisturbed possession so long as
+they act properly as tenants and pay their rents. The correlative right of
+the landlord periodically to raise the rent, so as to give him a just,
+fair, and full participation in the increased value of the land, but not
+so as to extinguish the tenant&#8217;s interest by paying a rack rent. The usage
+or custom of the yearly tenants to sell their interest, if they do not
+wish to continue in possession, or if they become unable to pay the rent.
+The correlative right of the landlord to be consulted, and to exercise a
+potential voice in the approval or disapproval of the proposed assignee.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_58' id='f_58' href='#fna_58'>[58]</a> I quote a few passages from the speeches of Mr. Gladstone, and
+others, on this subject. Mr. Gladstone said, March 11, 1870, &#8216;If you value
+rents you may as well, for every available purpose, adopt perpetuity of
+tenure at once. It is perpetuity of tenure only in a certain disguise....
+The man who becomes a mere annuitant loses all general interest in the
+prosperity of the land.&#8217; And again, February 15, 1870: &#8216;Perpetuity of
+tenure on the part of the occupier is virtually expropriation of the
+landlord.... The mere readjustment of rent can by no means dispose of all
+contingencies the future may produce in his favour.&#8217; Sir Roundell Palmer,
+afterwards Lord Selborne, said, March 10, 1870, &#8216;Fixity of tenure, in
+plain English, means taking away the property of one man and giving it to
+another.&#8217; So Lord Granville, June 14, 1870, said in the House of Lords,
+&#8216;They might have introduced a Bill&mdash;which they were determined not to
+do&mdash;adopting fixity of tenure, taking away his property from the landlord,
+and establishing a valuation rent.&#8217; Passages of this kind, at least as
+strong, might be multiplied a hundred-fold.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_59' id='f_59' href='#fna_59'>[59]</a> It is impossible, in a sketch like this, to describe in detail the
+agrarian legislation for Ireland, which Parliament has enacted from 1870
+to this time. The work of Butt referred to before is an admirable
+commentary on the Bill of 1870, which soon became law. A brief account of
+all this legislation will be found in Mr. Lecky&#8217;s &#8216;Democracy and Liberty,&#8217;
+vol. i. ch. ii. The legal treatises of Messrs. Cherry and Wakley, pp.
+149-448, and of Mr. Justice Barton, are elaborate and complete.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_60' id='f_60' href='#fna_60'>[60]</a> Judge Longfield and Mr. Lecky are much the most distinguished of
+these numerous censors.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_61' id='f_61' href='#fna_61'>[61]</a> By this time I was an Irish County Court Judge; and I had some
+experience of reprehensible acts of this kind, extremely few as they were.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_62' id='f_62' href='#fna_62'>[62]</a> It is very remarkable that the stringent provisions of the Act
+against exorbitant rents seem to have been almost unknown to the
+peasantry, though exorbitant rents were, no doubt, existing here and
+there.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_63' id='f_63' href='#fna_63'>[63]</a> Report of the Judges of the Special Commission, vol. iv. pp. 478-480.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_64' id='f_64' href='#fna_64'>[64]</a> By many degrees the best account of the Land League movement will be
+found in the &#8216;Report of the Proceedings of the Special Commission of
+1888-89,&#8217; republished by the <i>Times</i> in four volumes. Reference may also
+be made to &#8216;Parnellism and Crime,&#8217; a series of essays in the <i>Times</i>; to
+the &#8216;Truth about the Land League,&#8217; by Mr. Arnold Foster; to &#8216;The
+Continuity of the Irish Revolutionary Movement,&#8217; by Professor Brougham
+Leech; and to a pamphlet called &#8216;The Queen&#8217;s Enemies in America.&#8217; A kind
+of apology for the conspiracy will be found in &#8216;The Parnell Movement,&#8217; by
+Mr. T. P. O&#8217;Connor, M.P.; but the Irish &#8216;Nationalists&#8217; have judiciously
+been reticent on the subject. I may refer to my &#8216;Ireland, 1798-1898,&#8217; ch.
+viii.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_65' id='f_65' href='#fna_65'>[65]</a> These infamous speeches, worthy of Marat and H&eacute;bert, were continued
+for years, and fill a large part of the evidence in the proceedings of the
+Special Commission. I select a sample or two taken at random. Mr. M.
+Harris said, &#8216;If the tenant farmers of Ireland shoot down landlords as
+partridges are shot in September, Mat Harris would never say a word
+against them&#8217; (vol. ii. p. 38). The same worthy, afterwards an M.P.,
+exclaimed on another occasion (vol. i. p. 26), &#8216;Mrs. Blake of Keenoyle is
+no better than a she-devil.... Mr. Robinson called the people of Connemara
+vermin; the people of Connemara ought to treat him as vermin. Leonard of
+Tuam I will say nothing about. I will denounce him at his own door.&#8217; So,
+too, a Mr. Boyton said (vol. iv. p. 277), &#8216;We have seen plenty of them,
+landlords and agents, that deserve to be shot at any man&#8217;s hand. I have
+always denounced the commission of outrages by night, but meet him in the
+broad daylight, and if you must blow his brains out, blow them out in the
+daytime.&#8217; Multiply such speeches addressed to an excitable peasantry, and
+the results which followed can easily be understood.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_66' id='f_66' href='#fna_66'>[66]</a> This has been established by conclusive evidence, and should be
+carefully borne in mind. Mr. Egan, one of the treasurers of the League,
+said, &#8216;On my own behalf, and on behalf of my friends of the League, both
+in prison and outside, I can say that we regard the land question only in
+the light of a step towards national independence, which is, and shall
+continue to be, the goal of all our efforts.&#8217; Mr. Healy, M.P., said, &#8216;This
+is a movement to win back from England the land of Ireland, which was
+robbed from the people by the confiscating armies of Elizabeth and
+Cromwell.... But I would remind you that Mr. Parnell ... explained the
+basis of the movement when he told the Galway farmers that he would never
+have taken off his coat in this movement were it not with Irish
+nationality as its object.&#8217; Parnell occasionally let out the truth; he
+said, &#8216;Let every farmer, while he keeps a firm grip of his holding,
+recognise also the great truth that he is serving his country and the
+people at large, and helping to break down English misrule in Ireland&#8217;
+(Report of the Proceedings of the Special Commission, vol. iv. pp. 203,
+204). These speeches were, in hundreds, imitated and followed by other
+speakers.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_67' id='f_67' href='#fna_67'>[67]</a> Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 486.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_68' id='f_68' href='#fna_68'>[68]</a> I was at this time judge of the County Kerry; these demands increased
+more than twofold at a single Quarter Sessions.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_69' id='f_69' href='#fna_69'>[69]</a> Report of the Judges, vol. iv. pp. 522-525.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_70' id='f_70' href='#fna_70'>[70]</a> Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_71' id='f_71' href='#fna_71'>[71]</a> Some of the cynical and wicked utterances of Parnell in proclaiming
+and expounding the new policy of &#8216;boycotting&#8217; must be quoted. These, it is
+needless to say, were exaggerated in scores of speeches by orators of the
+League. In view almost of the corpse of a land agent who had been foully
+murdered, the arch-conspirator coolly remarked (Proceedings of the Special
+Commission, vol. iv. p. 257): &#8216;I had wished in referring to a sad
+occurrence which took place lately, the shooting or attempted shooting of
+a land agent in the neighbourhood (uproar)&mdash;I had wished to point out that
+recourse to such measures of procedure is entirely unnecessary and
+absolutely prejudicial where there is a suitable organisation amongst the
+tenants themselves.&#8217; The methods to be adopted in &#8216;boycotting&#8217;&mdash;the word
+was so named from a Captain Boycott, who was one of the first
+sufferers&mdash;were those set forth by Parnell (Report of the Judges, vol. iv.
+p. 498): &#8216;Now, what are you to do to a tenant who bids for a farm from
+which his neighbour has been evicted? (Various shouts, among which, &#8220;Kill
+him!&#8221; &#8220;Shoot him!&#8221;) Now, I think I heard somebody say &#8220;Shoot him&#8221; (&#8220;Shoot
+him!&#8221;); but I wish to point out to you a very much better way, a more
+Christian and charitable way, which will give the lost sinner an
+opportunity of repenting. (Hear, hear.) When a man takes a farm from which
+another has been evicted, you must show<small><a name="fa.1" id="fa.1" href="#fa">[A]</a></small> him on the roadside when you
+meet him, you must show him in the streets of the town, you must show him
+at the shop counter, you must show him in the fair and in the
+market-place, and even in the house of worship, by leaving him severely
+alone, by putting him into a moral Coventry, by isolating him from the
+rest of his kind as if he was a leper of old. You must show him your
+detestation of the crime he has committed, and you may depend upon it, if
+the population of a county in Ireland carry out this doctrine, that there
+will be no man so full of avarice, so lost to shame, as to dare the public
+opinion of all right-thinking men within the county, and to transgress
+your unwritten code of laws.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot"><a name="fa" id="fa" href="#fa.1">[A]</a> In other, possibly more correct, reports, the word is &#8216;shun,&#8217; not &#8216;show.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_72' id='f_72' href='#fna_72'>[72]</a> Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_73' id='f_73' href='#fna_73'>[73]</a> It is very important to bear this in mind, regard being had to the
+circumstances of the time, which have been shamefully misrepresented, and
+to subsequent legislation and its administration. I quote a few words from
+the Report, p. 3: &#8216;It was unusual in Ireland to exact what in England
+would have been considered as a full or fair commercial rent. Such a rent
+over many of the larger estates, the owners of which were resident, and
+took an interest in the welfare of their tenants, it has never been the
+custom to demand. The example has been largely followed, and is, to the
+present day, rather the rule than the exception in Ireland.&#8217; M. de
+Molinari, a very competent foreign observer, wrote to the same effect in
+1881: &#8216;Le taux g&eacute;n&eacute;ral des rentes est mod&eacute;r&eacute;; autant que j&#8217;ai pu en juger,
+il est &agrave; qualit&eacute; &eacute;gale de terrain de moiti&eacute; plus bas que celui des terres
+des Flandres&#8217; (&#8216;L&#8217;Irlande, le Canada, Jersey,&#8217; p. 138). See for further
+authorities, Mr. Lecky&#8217;s &#8216;Democracy and Liberty,&#8217; vol. i. p. 179.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_74' id='f_74' href='#fna_74'>[74]</a> Mr. Gladstone, speeches in the House of Commons, July 22, 1881, and
+May 10, 1881. Lord Carlingford, and notably Lord Selborne, said nearly the
+same.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_75' id='f_75' href='#fna_75'>[75]</a> This I know to be the fact on the very best authority.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_76' id='f_76' href='#fna_76'>[76]</a> A good popular account of the law of 1881 will be found in Mr.
+Lecky&#8217;s &#8216;Democracy and Liberty,&#8217; vol. i. pp. 182-197. See for an elaborate
+and technical description, &#8216;Cherry and Wakley,&#8217; pp. 217-343.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_77' id='f_77' href='#fna_77'>[77]</a> &#8216;Systems of Land Tenure,&#8217; p. 59.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_78' id='f_78' href='#fna_78'>[78]</a> Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_79' id='f_79' href='#fna_79'>[79]</a> Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 532: &#8216;We consider that the National
+League, like the Ladies&#8217; Land League, was substantially the old Land
+League under another name.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_80' id='f_80' href='#fna_80'>[80]</a> I quote a few words from hundreds of these detestable writings, which
+should be studied. Mr. William O&#8217;Brien, the editor of one of Parnell&#8217;s
+newspapers, and now the leader of the &#8216;United Irish League,&#8217; published
+this in <i>United Ireland</i>, April 18, 1885: &#8216;It would be still more
+gratifying if the Irish millions, scattered over the globe, should wake up
+one of these mornings to hear the war chimes joyfully ringing the
+declaration that would drive England on to downfall and destruction.&#8217; And
+again, September 19, 1885: &#8216;We cannot fight England in the open. We can
+keep her in hot water. We cannot evict our rulers neck and crop. We can
+make their rule more insupportable for them than for us.... It is no fault
+of ours if we cannot organise Waterloos to decide our quarrels.&#8217; As to
+personalities, I quote two passages. December 15, 1883: &#8216;Monstrous and
+incredible, surely, six hundred Irish gentlemen could not eat their dinner
+without pouring out libations to the adoration of an old lady who is only
+known in Ireland by her scarcely decently disguised hatred of this
+country, and by the inordinate amount of her salary.&#8217; Again, June 13,
+1885: &#8216;With all the stubborn force of a cruel, narrow, dogged nature, Lord
+Spencer struck murderous blow after blow at the people under his rod. He
+stopped at nothing; not at subsidising red-handed murderers, not at
+knighting jury-packers, not at sheltering black official villainy with a
+coat of darkness, not at police quarterings, blood taxes, the bludgeoning
+of peaceful meetings, the clapping of handcuffs and convict jackets on
+M.P.&#8217;s, mayors, and editors, not at wholesale battues of hangings and
+transportations by hook or crook.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_81' id='f_81' href='#fna_81'>[81]</a> Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522. Mr. Gladstone in the House of
+Commons, April 8, 1886.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_82' id='f_82' href='#fna_82'>[82]</a> For an elaborate account of the Act of 1887, see &#8216;Cherry and Wakley,&#8217;
+pp. 367-420. Reference, too, may be made to Mr. Lecky&#8217;s &#8216;Democracy and
+Liberty,&#8217; vol. i. pp. 198-200.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_83' id='f_83' href='#fna_83'>[83]</a> For an account of this legislation, which has not received the
+attention it deserves, as it is limited in its scope, see &#8216;Cherry and
+Wakley,&#8217; pp. 468-472, and &#8216;Barton,&#8217; pp. 104-106.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_84' id='f_84' href='#fna_84'>[84]</a> Upwards of thirty years ago, when the question of compensating Irish
+tenants for their improvements was coming fully to the front, a wealthy
+middleman, who held a large demesne in perpetuity, at a rather high rent,
+and had built a valuable mansion on it, in addition to planting hundreds
+of acres of woodland, asked me &#8216;if I thought Parliament would compensate
+him, for, in that case, he could make his landlord pay him &pound;30,000.&#8217; My
+reply was that &#8216;Parliament would not be so insane.&#8217; I should be sorry to
+make such a reply now, having regard to recent legislation.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_85' id='f_85' href='#fna_85'>[85]</a> I believe I may claim some credit for having contributed to this
+provision. I had had large experience of the injustice of keeping tenants
+subject to long-standing arrears; and, as a judge, had taken strong
+measures to prevent and defeat the practice.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_86' id='f_86' href='#fna_86'>[86]</a> For an elaborate account of the Act which was the result of this
+Bill, see the work of Mr. Justice Barton, &#8216;The Land Law (Ireland) Act,
+1896.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_87' id='f_87' href='#fna_87'>[87]</a> &#8216;Letter to a Member of the National Assembly,&#8217; vol. i. p. 478.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_88' id='f_88' href='#fna_88'>[88]</a> A Committee of the House of Lords sate, in 1872, to consider the
+administration of the Land Act of 1870. The report and the evidence were,
+in the main, in favour of the judges.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_89' id='f_89' href='#fna_89'>[89]</a> Rushe <i>v.</i> Whitney, Roscommon Quarter Sessions, October, 1895.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_90' id='f_90' href='#fna_90'>[90]</a> Lord Salisbury in the House of Lords, August 1, 1881: &#8216;They are all
+three strong Liberals, with strong views of tenant right.... There is no
+doubt that all three are appointed with a strong prepossession in favour
+of views which are advocated by the representatives of the tenantry in
+Ireland, and which are deprecated by the landlords.... It is not the
+relegation of landlord and tenant to an impartial tribunal.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_91' id='f_91' href='#fna_91'>[91]</a> Mr. Gladstone, July 22, 1881: &#8216;I shall be bitterly disappointed with
+the operation of the Act if the property of the landlords of Ireland does
+not come to be worth more than twenty years&#8217; purchase on the judicial
+rent.&#8217; Mr. W. E. Forster, same date: &#8216;I think the final result of the
+measure will be, within a few years, that the landowners of Ireland, small
+and large, will be better off than they are at this moment.&#8217; Lord
+Carlingford, August 1, 1881: &#8216;My Lords, I maintain that the provisions of
+this Bill will cause the landlords no money loss whatever. I believe that
+it will inflict upon them no loss of income, except in those cases in
+which a certain number of landlords may have imposed upon their tenants
+excessive and inequitable rents.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_92' id='f_92' href='#fna_92'>[92]</a> Hansard, vol. 260, p. 1399.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_93' id='f_93' href='#fna_93'>[93]</a> The nature and character of these two classes of evidence has been
+thus well described in the Report of the Edward Fry&#8217;s Commission, p. 18:
+&#8216;If the matter were perfectly open, it appears to us that two independent
+lines of evidence might be pursued by a person inquiring what is the fair
+rent to be fixed for a holding. One class of evidence may for shortness be
+called the popular evidence; the other the technical. The popular evidence
+would comprise the prices obtained by the tenant for a sale of his
+interest or <i>bon&acirc; fide</i> offers which he had received for it, evidence of
+the letting value or judicial rents of similar holdings, evidence of the
+sums paid for conacre or agistment, evidence of the long and punctual
+payment of a real rent, or of the long arrears of a nominal rent, and
+evidence of the prosperity or poverty of the persons who had successively
+lived off the produce of the holding. The technical evidence would be that
+more familiar to professional valuators. They would inspect the land,
+ascertain the acreages of the different classes of land on the farm, and
+what they would produce or carry; they would consider the quantity and
+value of the produce and the cost of production, and the shares of the
+surplus remaining after the cost of production divisible between landlord
+and tenant respectively. The popular evidence would be affected by all the
+motives which make men in Ireland desirous to occupy land; the technical
+evidence would assume the desire of making a money profit out of the
+occupation of land as the sole motive of such occupation. The eighth
+section of the Act of 1881 seems to admit of both lines of evidence with a
+single exception. It provided that in fixing the fair rent consideration
+should be given not to some but to all the circumstances of the case, the
+holding and the district, with the single exception that (sub-sec. 10) the
+price paid for the tenancy otherwise than to the landlord or his
+predecessors was not of itself, apart from other considerations, to be
+taken into account; though, conjoined with other considerations, it still
+remains admissible.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_94' id='f_94' href='#fna_94'>[94]</a> Report of the Fry Commission, p. 13.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_95' id='f_95' href='#fna_95'>[95]</a> Ibid., p. 14: &#8216;Some specific charges of misconduct or negligence have
+been made against lay Assistant Commissioners and Court valuers; as <i>e.g.</i>
+visiting the land without due notice to the landlord; visiting the holding
+when lying under snow or water, or when suffering from prolonged drought,
+and refusing to wait whilst a trench was dug to show the condition of the
+alleged drainage. We have investigated many of these cases, and the
+explanations given have generally been satisfactory to us.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_96' id='f_96' href='#fna_96'>[96]</a> Evidence taken by Mr. Morley&#8217;s Commission on the Irish Land Acts, p.
+236.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_97' id='f_97' href='#fna_97'>[97]</a> Ibid., p. 397.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_98' id='f_98' href='#fna_98'>[98]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 131.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_99' id='f_99' href='#fna_99'>[99]</a> Ibid., p. 208.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_100' id='f_100' href='#fna_100'>[100]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission: Mr. Campbell, p. 41.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_101' id='f_101' href='#fna_101'>[101]</a> Ibid., p. 682.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_102' id='f_102' href='#fna_102'>[102]</a> &#8216;Democracy and Liberty,&#8217; vol. i. pp. 205, 206.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_103' id='f_103' href='#fna_103'>[103]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 692. As a County Court
+judge I have a concurrent jurisdiction, happily seldom exercised, in
+fixing &#8216;fair rents.&#8217; I had a somewhat similar case before me some
+seventeen or eighteen years ago, and I adjourned the hearing for four
+years to allow the land to recover. I believe I am the only official who
+did anything of the kind until quite recently.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_104' id='f_104' href='#fna_104'>[104]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 836.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_105' id='f_105' href='#fna_105'>[105]</a> Evidence taken by the Morley Commission, 1894-95, p. 333.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_106' id='f_106' href='#fna_106'>[106]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 952.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_107' id='f_107' href='#fna_107'>[107]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 607. The procedure of the
+Sub-Commissions has, since 1896, been somewhat improved with respect to
+deterioration and waste, but many years too late.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_108' id='f_108' href='#fna_108'>[108]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 677.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_109' id='f_109' href='#fna_109'>[109]</a> Ibid., p. 842.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_110' id='f_110' href='#fna_110'>[110]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, pp. 478, 476.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_111' id='f_111' href='#fna_111'>[111]</a> Ibid., p. 476.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_112' id='f_112' href='#fna_112'>[112]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 129.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_113' id='f_113' href='#fna_113'>[113]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 339.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_114' id='f_114' href='#fna_114'>[114]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission: Mr. Campbell, p. 25.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_115' id='f_115' href='#fna_115'>[115]</a> Mr. Vernon, the Lay Commissioner, was, of course, not responsible for
+this.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_116' id='f_116' href='#fna_116'>[116]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 156.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_117' id='f_117' href='#fna_117'>[117]</a> Ibid., p. 615.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_118' id='f_118' href='#fna_118'>[118]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 33.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_119' id='f_119' href='#fna_119'>[119]</a> Ibid., p. 30.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_120' id='f_120' href='#fna_120'>[120]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission: Mr. Campbell, p. 30.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_121' id='f_121' href='#fna_121'>[121]</a> Report of the Fry Commission, p. 18. I entirely dissent from the
+above opinion of the head Commissioner.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_122' id='f_122' href='#fna_122'>[122]</a> Evidence taken by the Morley Commission, p. 507.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_123' id='f_123' href='#fna_123'>[123]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 461.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_124' id='f_124' href='#fna_124'>[124]</a> Ibid., p. 616.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_125' id='f_125' href='#fna_125'>[125]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 628.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_126' id='f_126' href='#fna_126'>[126]</a> Ibid., p. 631.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_127' id='f_127' href='#fna_127'>[127]</a> Ibid., p. 941.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_128' id='f_128' href='#fna_128'>[128]</a> Report of the Fry Commission, p. 22.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_129' id='f_129' href='#fna_129'>[129]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 676.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_130' id='f_130' href='#fna_130'>[130]</a> Report of the Fry Commission, p. 20.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_131' id='f_131' href='#fna_131'>[131]</a> Ibid., p. 21.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_132' id='f_132' href='#fna_132'>[132]</a> Ibid., p. 9.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_133' id='f_133' href='#fna_133'>[133]</a> Ibid., p. 14.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_134' id='f_134' href='#fna_134'>[134]</a> Report of the Fry Commission, pp. 18, 19.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_135' id='f_135' href='#fna_135'>[135]</a> Ibid., pp. 12-26.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_136' id='f_136' href='#fna_136'>[136]</a> Ibid., p. 15.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_137' id='f_137' href='#fna_137'>[137]</a> Report of the Irish Land Commission to March, 1900, p. 64.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_138' id='f_138' href='#fna_138'>[138]</a> It is but just to the Land Commission to state that the reductions
+of rent made by the County Courts were somewhat higher than those it made.
+But this was notoriously because rack-rented tenants, for the sake of
+expedition, rushed first to these tribunals.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_139' id='f_139' href='#fna_139'>[139]</a> Report of the Irish Land Commission, p. 64.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_140' id='f_140' href='#fna_140'>[140]</a> Report of the Irish Land Commission, p. 3.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_141' id='f_141' href='#fna_141'>[141]</a> See a remarkable instance in the Evidence taken by the Fry
+Commission, p. 683: &#8216;The holding was let in 1771 at 30<i>s.</i> the Irish acre,
+equal to about &pound;1 per statute acre. The Sub-Commissioners have now cut it
+down to less than 12<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> per acre.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_142' id='f_142' href='#fna_142'>[142]</a> Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, pp. 496, 609, 670.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_143' id='f_143' href='#fna_143'>[143]</a> &#8216;Democracy and Liberty,&#8217; vol. i. pp. 202, 203.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_144' id='f_144' href='#fna_144'>[144]</a> Letters to the <i>Manchester Guardian</i>, written in 1890, and since
+republished. This little work was much noticed at the time; attempts to
+answer it were made to no purpose. The facts now speak for themselves.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_145' id='f_145' href='#fna_145'>[145]</a> Swift&#8217;s &#8216;Works,&#8217; vol. ii. p. 82, ed. 1870.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_146' id='f_146' href='#fna_146'>[146]</a> &#8216;Reflections on the Revolution in France,&#8217; vol. i. p. 440.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_147' id='f_147' href='#fna_147'>[147]</a> The <i>Manchester Guardian</i>, 1890. I quote this passage, for I think
+its substance was referred to by the late Mr. Rathbone, member for
+Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_148' id='f_148' href='#fna_148'>[148]</a> Mr. Lecky, &#8216;Democracy and Liberty,&#8217; vol. ii. pp. 487-489, rather
+favours the policy of creating and extending peasant ownership in Ireland,
+and, to a certain extent, approves of the so-called &#8216;Land Purchase&#8217; Acts,
+but only as a doubtful experiment, to endeavour to escape from a
+hopelessly bad land system. The distinguished historian and thinker, in my
+opinion, is not sufficiently alive to the iniquity of these measures as
+they affect landlords who wish to retain their estates, or, rather, what
+remains of them; but he clearly perceives some of the objections to this
+vicious legislation. I quote his remarks at some length: &#8216;In Ireland, as
+is well known, great efforts are made to create such a proprietary; but
+the conditions of Ireland are unlike those of any other part of the
+civilised globe. It has been the deliberate policy of the Government to
+break down, by almost annual Acts, the obligation of contracts, and the
+existing ownership of land has been rendered so insecure, the political
+power attached to it has been so effectually destroyed, and the influences
+tending to anarchy and confiscation have been made so powerful, that most
+good judges have come to the conclusion that it is necessary to force into
+existence by strong legislative measures a new social type, which may,
+perhaps, possess some elements of stability and conservatism. In order to
+effect this object, the national credit has been made use of in such a way
+that a tenant is enabled to purchase his farm without making the smallest
+sacrifice for that object, the whole sum being advanced by the Government,
+and advanced on such terms that the tenant is only obliged to pay for a
+limited number of years a sum from 20 to 30 per cent. less than his
+present rent. In other words, a man whose rent has been fixed by the Land
+Court at &pound;100 a year, can purchase his farm by paying, instead of that
+sum, &pound;70 or &pound;80 a year for forty-nine years. The arrangement sounds more
+like burlesque than serious legislation; but the belief that political
+pressure can obtain still better terms for the tenant, and that further
+confiscatory legislation may still more depreciate the value of land to
+the owner who has inherited it, or purchased it in the open market, has
+taken such deep root in Ireland that the tenants have shown little
+alacrity to avail themselves of their new privilege. What may be the
+ultimate issue of the attempt to govern a country in complete defiance of
+all received economical principles remains to be seen. The future must
+show whether a large peasant proprietary can be not only called into
+existence, but permanently maintained, under these conditions, and whether
+it will prove the loyal and conservative element that English politicians
+believe. According to all past experience, peasant proprietors rarely
+succeed, except when they possess something more than an average measure
+of industrial qualities, and the Irish purchase laws give no preference to
+the energetic, the industrious, and the thrifty. On the contrary, it is
+very often the farmer who is on the verge of bankruptcy who is most eager
+to buy, in order to reduce his annual charge. The tendency of the new
+proprietors to mortgage, to sublet, and to subdivide, is already manifest,
+and some of the best judges of Irish affairs, who look beyond the present
+generation, are very despondent about the future. They believe that a
+peasant proprietary, called into existence suddenly and artificially, with
+no discrimination in favour of the better class, in a country where
+industrial qualities are very low, and where the strongest wish of the
+farmer is either to divide his farm among his children, or to burden it
+with equal mortgages for their benefit, must eventually lead to economic
+ruin, to fatal subdivision, to crushing charges on land. The new policy
+must also, they contend, almost wholly withdraw from the country life,
+where it is peculiarly needed, the civilising and guiding influence of a
+resident gentry. Whether or not these apprehensions are exaggerated time
+only can show. Two predictions may, I think, with some confidence be made.
+The one is, that the transformation is likely to be most successful if it
+is gradually effected. The other is, that a great part of the influence
+once possessed by the landlord will, under the new conditions, pass to the
+money-lender.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_149' id='f_149' href='#fna_149'>[149]</a> I quote these remarks of Burke, a striking instance of his political
+wisdom (&#8216;Tracts on the Popery Laws,&#8217; vol. ii. p. 446): &#8216;It is on this
+principle (to get rid of short and unprofitable tenures) that the Romans
+established their <i>emphyteusis</i>, or fee-farm. For though they extended the
+ordinary term of their creation to nine years only, yet they encouraged a
+more permanent letting to farm, with the condition of improvement, as well
+as of annual payment where the land had lain rough and neglected.&#8217; So John
+Stuart Mill (&#8216;Irish Land Question,&#8217; p. 31, ed. 1870): &#8216;The idea of
+property does not, however, necessarily imply that there should be no
+rent, any more than that there should be no taxes. It merely implies that
+the rent should be a fixed charge, not liable to be raised against the
+farmer by his own improvements, or by the will of a landlord. A tenant at
+a quit rent is, to all intents and purposes, a proprietor; a copyholder is
+not less so than a freeholder. What is wanted is permanent possession on
+fixed terms.&#8217; Mr. Morley said not long ago, in his place in Parliament,
+that, as things now stand in Ireland, the landlord must become a
+rent-charger and the tenant a copyholder, a true utterance.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_150' id='f_150' href='#fna_150'>[150]</a> &#8216;Principles of Political Economy,&#8217; book ii. chap. ii. p. 6. I may
+refer, too, to these pregnant remarks of Bentham (&#8216;Theory of Legislation,&#8217;
+chap, xv.): &#8216;The principle of security requires that reform should be
+attended with complete indemnity.... I cannot yet quit the subject, for
+the establishment of the principle of security demands that error should
+be pursued in all its retreats.... The interest of individuals, it is
+said, ought to yield to the public interest; but what does that mean? Is
+not one individual as much a part of the public as another? The public
+interest which you introduce as a person is only an abstract term; it
+represents nothing but the mass of individual interests.... Individual
+interests are the only real interests. Take care of the individuals; never
+molest them, never suffer any one to molest them, and you will have done
+enough for the public.... I shall conclude by a general observation of
+great importance. The more the principle of property is respected, the
+stronger hold it takes on the popular mind. Slight attacks on this
+principle prepare the way for heavier ones. A long time has been necessary
+to carry property to the point where we now see it in civilised societies;
+but a fatal experience has shown with what facility it may be shaken, and
+how easily the savage instinct of plunder gets the better of the laws.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_151' id='f_151' href='#fna_151'>[151]</a> For the constitutional position of the British and Irish Parliaments
+before the Union, see Hallam&#8217;s &#8216;Constitutional History,&#8217; vol. iii.,
+chapter on Ireland, and Ball&#8217;s &#8216;Legislative Irish System,&#8217; chaps. v., xv.
+See also Lecky&#8217;s &#8216;History of England in the Eighteenth Century,&#8217; vol. ii.
+chap. vii.; vol. iv. chaps. xvi., xvii. As to the financial position of
+the two countries, see the opening pages of each of the Reports of the
+Childers Commission.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_152' id='f_152' href='#fna_152'>[152]</a> Grattan described this vicious state of things in his inimitable
+style (&#8216;Speeches,&#8217; p. 258, ed. published by Duffy): &#8216;The Union is not an
+identification of the two nations; it is merely a merger of the parliament
+of one nation in that of another.... There is no identification in
+anything save in legislature, in which there is complete and absolute
+absorption. It follows that the two nations are not identified, though the
+Irish legislature be absorbed, and by that act of absorption the feeling
+of one of the nations is not identified, but alienated. The petitions on
+our table bespeak that alienation.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_153' id='f_153' href='#fna_153'>[153]</a> Report of the Childers Commission, p. 20.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_154' id='f_154' href='#fna_154'>[154]</a> I transcribe this part of the seventh article of the Treaty of
+Union; I believe that I have fairly described its purport (Report of
+Childers Commission, p. 140): &#8216;That if at any future day the separate debt
+of each country respectively shall have been liquidated, or if the values
+of their respective debts ... shall be to each other in the same
+proportion with the respective contributions of each country
+respectively.... And if it shall appear to the Parliament of the United
+Kingdom that the respective circumstances of the two countries will
+thenceforth admit of their contributing indiscriminately by equal taxes
+imposed on the same articles in each, to the future expenditure of the
+United Kingdom to declare that all future expense thenceforth to be
+incurred, together with the interest and charges of all joint debts
+contracted previous to such declaration, shall be so defrayed
+indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed on the same articles in each
+country, and thenceforth from time to time, as circumstances may require,
+to impose and apply such taxes accordingly, subject only to such
+particular exemptions or abatements in Ireland, and in that part of Great
+Britain called Scotland, as circumstances may appear, from time to time,
+to demand.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_155' id='f_155' href='#fna_155'>[155]</a> Grattan&#8217;s speeches, quoted in a memorandum supplied to the Childers
+Commission by Sir Edward Hamilton, p. 9.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_156' id='f_156' href='#fna_156'>[156]</a> &#8216;Minutes of Evidence,&#8217; Childers Commission, vol. i. p. 329.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_157' id='f_157' href='#fna_157'>[157]</a> Memorandum of Sir Edward Hamilton, p. 9.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_158' id='f_158' href='#fna_158'>[158]</a> Report of the Childers Commission, p. 143.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_159' id='f_159' href='#fna_159'>[159]</a> Ibid., p. 32.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_160' id='f_160' href='#fna_160'>[160]</a> Report of the Childers Commission, pp. 147, 148.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_161' id='f_161' href='#fna_161'>[161]</a> Ibid., p. 33.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_162' id='f_162' href='#fna_162'>[162]</a> Report of the Childers Commission, p. 158.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_163' id='f_163' href='#fna_163'>[163]</a> I think it necessary to set out verbatim the terms of reference to
+the Commission; I have for the sake of clearness changed their order: &#8216;To
+inquire into the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland,
+and their relative taxable capacity, and to report: I. Upon what
+principles of comparison, and by the application of what specific
+standards, the relative capacity of Great Britain and Ireland to bear
+taxation may be most equitably determined. II. What, so far as can be
+ascertained, is the true proportion, under the principles and specific
+standards so determined, between the taxable capacity of Great Britain and
+Ireland. III. The history of the financial relations between Great Britain
+and Ireland, at and after the Legislative Union, the charge for Irish
+purposes on the Imperial Exchequer during that period, and the amount of
+Irish taxation remaining available for contribution to Imperial
+expenditure; also the Imperial expenditure to which it is considered
+equitable that Ireland should contribute.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_164' id='f_164' href='#fna_164'>[164]</a> Report of the Childers Commission, p. 26.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_165' id='f_165' href='#fna_165'>[165]</a> Since 1896, when the Childers Commission made its report, the
+overtaxation of Ireland has increased.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_166' id='f_166' href='#fna_166'>[166]</a> Report of Childers Commission: &#8216;Minutes of Evidence,&#8217; vol. i. p. 17.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_167' id='f_167' href='#fna_167'>[167]</a> Report of the Childers Commission, p. 16.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_168' id='f_168' href='#fna_168'>[168]</a> Report of the Childers Commission, p. 89.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_169' id='f_169' href='#fna_169'>[169]</a> Report of the Childers Commission, pp. 159, 160.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_170' id='f_170' href='#fna_170'>[170]</a> &#8216;Minutes of Evidence,&#8217; Childers Commission, vol. ii. p. 218.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_171' id='f_171' href='#fna_171'>[171]</a> I quote from the Report of the Childers Commission, p. 68, these
+valuable remarks on the subject: &#8216;Neither can there then be any question
+that a system of equal rates of taxes on the same subjects is compatible
+with the utmost inequality of burdens between two countries contributing
+to one exchequer. All that need be done in order to exact an undue
+proportion&mdash;unlimited in extent&mdash;of the means of either of the countries
+is to tax the commodities most consumed in that country, and in fixing the
+rate of the tax on each commodity, to fix the higher rates on the
+particular commodities most generally in use in that country, and the
+lower rates on those most consumed in the other. The same kind of effect,
+of course, may be produced, and the same discrimination exercised, by
+totally exempting some commodities and taxing others, however lightly. In
+fact, a system of equal rates of taxes may thus be rendered more easily
+unjust and burdensome to the country discriminated against than one of
+differential taxes, because in the latter case, the unequal treatment, and
+the mode of it being manifest, are more liable to criticism and
+limitation; whilst in the former, the true effect of the system is
+disguised by the circumstances that each particular head of tax is at the
+same rate in both countries.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_172' id='f_172' href='#fna_172'>[172]</a> Report of the Childers Commission, p. 39.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_173' id='f_173' href='#fna_173'>[173]</a> Ibid., p. 166.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_174' id='f_174' href='#fna_174'>[174]</a> Report of the Childers Commission, p. 11.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_175' id='f_175' href='#fna_175'>[175]</a> Ibid.: Evidence of Mr. Munough O&#8217;Brien, pp. 12, 13: &#8216;The system of
+Imperial loans for temporary emergencies and charity tends to increase the
+poverty of Ireland, whose future income is mortgaged to pay interest on
+expenditure from which there is no return. There is no surer road to ruin
+for an individual than borrowing money to live upon, and most of these
+Imperial loans are practically made from time to time to enable the Irish
+people to live or relieve acute distress and disorder. Loans are almost
+annually made to keep the people quiet or to keep them alive. Yet this
+expenditure does not prevent the recurrence of famine, distress, and
+discontent; it rather tends to cause their recurrence.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_176' id='f_176' href='#fna_176'>[176]</a> Report of the Childers Commission: Report of Mr. Sexton and others,
+pp. 102, 103.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_177' id='f_177' href='#fna_177'>[177]</a> Report of the Childers Commission: &#8216;Evidence,&#8217; vol. ii. p. 18.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_178' id='f_178' href='#fna_178'>[178]</a> Report of the Childers Commission, pp. 194, 195.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_179' id='f_179' href='#fna_179'>[179]</a> 6 &amp; 7 Will. IV. c. 116. The works of Messrs. Vanston and Foote on
+the grand juries of Ireland may be referred to.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_180' id='f_180' href='#fna_180'>[180]</a> The reader may be referred to Mr. Moore&#8217;s work on the Irish poor
+law.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_181' id='f_181' href='#fna_181'>[181]</a> See the Report of a Committee of the House of Lords, and especially
+of the Evidence, taken in 1884-85, with respect to the administration of
+the Irish poor law at the time.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_182' id='f_182' href='#fna_182'>[182]</a> For a further account of local government in Ireland, a reader may
+consult the Report of Mr. W. P. O&#8217;Brien on Local Government, 1878, and
+reports on the towns of Ireland and their taxation about the same date. An
+excellent tract on the subject was published by Mr. William J. Bailey in
+1888, called &#8216;Local and Centralised Government in Ireland.&#8217; With respect
+to the system of municipal government in Ireland as it existed before
+1840, nothing is so valuable as the Reports of the Commissioners, very
+able men, charged to inquire into the subject in 1834-35. A useful and
+well-informed account will also be found in Mr. Barry O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s &#8216;Fifty
+Years of Concessions to Ireland,&#8217; vol. i. book v.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_183' id='f_183' href='#fna_183'>[183]</a> I have only been able to sketch the outlines of the measure, the
+Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, p. 1, 62 Vict. cap. 37. A good
+commentary on it has been written by Mr. Brett of the Irish Bar.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_184' id='f_184' href='#fna_184'>[184]</a> Mr. Lecky, &#8216;Democracy and Liberty,&#8217; Cabinet Edition, Introduction,
+p. 13, has well described this vaunted reform: &#8216;It was a measure
+introduced in fulfilment of distinct pledges, and it contains very skilful
+provisions intended to protect existing interests. But, after all is said,
+it means a great transfer of power and influence from the loyal to the
+disloyal, and it goes in the direction of democracy far beyond anything
+that a few years ago would have been accepted by the Conservatives, or by
+the moderate Liberals.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_185' id='f_185' href='#fna_185'>[185]</a> For a description of elementary education in Ireland up to 1812, see
+passages in Wakefield&#8217;s &#8216;Account of Ireland;&#8217; and for a description in
+earlier and later times, see Mr. Barry O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s &#8216;Fifty Years of
+Concessions to Ireland,&#8217; book i. chs. i.-xiv.; Mr. Graham Balfour&#8217;s
+&#8216;Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland,&#8217; pp. 80-128; the Report
+of the Commissioners of Irish Education, 1810-21; the important Report of
+the Powis Commission, 1870-71; and the Reports of the Commissioners of
+National Education in Ireland. Mr. Froude, in his &#8216;English in Ireland,&#8217;
+vol. i. p. 514; vol. ii. p. 491, has characteristically eulogised the
+Charter Schools; but he stands alone; Mr. Lecky, &#8216;History of England in
+the Eighteenth Century,&#8217; vol. ii. pp. 200-304, has commented on this
+odious system as it deserved.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_186' id='f_186' href='#fna_186'>[186]</a> Barry O&#8217;Brien, &#8216;Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,&#8217; vol. ii. p.
+322.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_187' id='f_187' href='#fna_187'>[187]</a> See Wakefield&#8217;s &#8216;Account of Ireland&#8217; for the state of her secondary
+schools in 1812; Barry O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s &#8216;Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,&#8217;
+book x. chs. i., ii., iii.; Graham Balfour&#8217;s &#8216;The Educational System of
+Great Britain and Ireland,&#8217; pp. 203-218; and the Reports of the two
+Commissions of 1854-57 and of 1878-80, of which the heads were Lord
+Kildare and the Earl of Rosse.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_188' id='f_188' href='#fna_188'>[188]</a> See the resolutions in Duffy&#8217;s &#8216;Young Ireland,&#8217; pp. 713, 714. There
+has been much misrepresentation on this subject.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_189' id='f_189' href='#fna_189'>[189]</a> See &#8216;The Problem of Irish Education,&#8217; by Butt, a masterly and
+impartial tract.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_190' id='f_190' href='#fna_190'>[190]</a> See for the figures &#8216;The Irish University Question,&#8217; by Archbishop
+Walsh, <i>passim</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_191' id='f_191' href='#fna_191'>[191]</a> For further information on the history and the present state of the
+University system in Ireland, see &#8216;The History of the University of
+Dublin,&#8217; by the Rev. J. W. Stubbs, and &#8216;The Constitutional History of the
+University of Dublin,&#8217; by D. C. Heron; Howley on &#8216;Universities;&#8217; &#8216;What is
+meant by Freedom of Education,&#8217; by the O&#8217;Conor Don; &#8216;University
+Education,&#8217; by an Irish Protestant Celt; and especially &#8216;The Problem of
+Irish Education,&#8217; by Butt. See also the Irish University Debates in
+Hansard for 1873, and the very able debate in Trinity College. The reader,
+too, may be referred to Mr. Barry O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s &#8216;Fifty Years of Concessions to
+Ireland,&#8217; book xi.; to Mr. Graham Balfour&#8217;s &#8216;Educational Systems of Great
+Britain and Ireland,&#8217; pp. 273-288; to Mr. Godkin&#8217;s &#8216;Education in Ireland;&#8217;
+and to Archbishop Walsh&#8217;s &#8216;The Irish University Question.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_192' id='f_192' href='#fna_192'>[192]</a> Too much is not to be made of &#8216;Nationalist&#8217; clamour; but these
+remarks of Mr. Dillon, M.P., are significant (<i>Freeman&#8217;s Journal</i>, April
+13, 1901): &#8216;I do not believe that these movements will ever succeed ...
+until that fortress of English domination and anti-Irish bigotry, Trinity
+College, is for ever swept away, or there is placed opposite to it a truly
+National University, where the most honoured classes will be the classes
+of Irish literature and Irish history.&#8217; Archbishop Walsh, a much abler
+man, has written in the same sense in his work, &#8216;The Irish University
+Question.&#8217; The question, he contends, in many passages, must be settled by
+levelling up or by levelling down, that is, by raising the Catholic
+University to the position of Trinity College, or by disestablishing and
+disendowing Trinity College. The evil precedent of the Act disestablishing
+the Anglican Church in Ireland, will, it is hoped, be eschewed.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_193' id='f_193' href='#fna_193'>[193]</a> See on this subject Mr. Lough&#8217;s &#8216;England&#8217;s Wealth, Ireland&#8217;s
+Poverty,&#8217; pp. 88-94.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Present Irish Questions, by William O'Connor Morris
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+Project Gutenberg's Present Irish Questions, by William O'Connor Morris
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Present Irish Questions
+
+Author: William O'Connor Morris
+
+Release Date: October 26, 2011 [EBook #37853]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS ***
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+
+Present Irish Questions
+
+
+
+
+Publisher's Announcement
+
+_By the Same Author_
+
+    The Campaign of 1815: Ligny, Quatre Bras, Waterloo.
+
+    Demy 8vo, cloth, with Maps, 12_s._ 6_d._ net.
+
+M. Houssaye, in a letter to the author, says, "J'ai lu avec beaucoup de
+plaisir votre livre sur La Campagna de 1815. C'est un excellent resume,
+copieux et critique, tres judicieux, tres precis, et tres clair."
+
+Captain Mahan, in a letter to the author, says, "Your narrative is very
+clear, and to me quite convincing."
+
+_The Times_: "We can recommend this book as a painstaking and instructive
+survey of the campaign."
+
+_The Spectator_: "Provides what has long been wanted--a study of the
+campaign by one well qualified to sift evidence dispassionately."
+
+_Pall Mail Gazette_: "Will fill a high place in the all too scanty library
+of British Military literature."
+
+  LONDON: GRANT RICHARDS
+  9 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, W.C.
+
+
+
+
+  Present Irish Questions
+
+
+  BY WILLIAM O'CONNOR MORRIS
+
+  COUNTY COURT JUDGE AND CHAIRMAN OF
+  QUARTER SESSIONS OF ROSCOMMON AND
+  SLIGO, AND SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF
+  ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD
+
+
+  [Greek: Nosei de moi propas stolos, oud' eni
+  phrontidos egchos ho tis alexetai.]--SOPHOCLES.
+
+  'Blessed is the Amending Hand.'--_Old Proverb._
+
+
+  London
+  Grant Richards
+  New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
+  1901
+
+
+
+
+  I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
+  A TRIBUTE OF ADMIRATION AND ESTEEM
+  TO THE MARQUIS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA, K.P.
+  THE MOST DISTINGUISHED IRISHMAN OF HIS TIME
+
+
+  LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
+  STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
+
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+
+I have written much on Ireland from early youth, especially in the
+_Edinburgh Review_ and the _Times_; and two works of mine, 'Ireland,
+1494-1868' published in 'The Cambridge Historical Series,' and 'Ireland,
+1798-1898,' have been received with more than ordinary favour. I have
+ventured to think that the opinions of a veteran inquirer into Irish
+affairs, with respect to 'Present Irish Questions' just now of much
+importance, and certain to be ere long fully discussed in Parliament and
+elsewhere, may be of some use to a younger generation, that will have to
+examine and must be affected by them. I am not unaware of the cynical
+remarks of Swift on the disregard shown to authors who may be said to have
+had their day; and I do not pretend that, in the instance of myself, 'old
+experience' has given something of a 'prophetic strain' to what is
+contained in this volume. But I can say, with truth, that few living men
+have had such opportunities as have fallen to my lot, during a long series
+of years, to understand Ireland in its different parts, and the feelings
+and sentiments of the Irish community; to form sound and moderate views on
+the many and perplexing phenomena called 'Irish Questions;' to deal
+reasonably with Irish political and social problems, free from the
+influences of party prejudice and passion; in short, to do my subject
+complete and impartial justice. How the accidents and associations of a
+life already protracted beyond the ordinary span, have, as I hope, given
+me these qualifications, I have explained at some length in my 'Ireland,
+1798-1898;' I shall not repeat what I have already written. But Ireland
+has constantly been uppermost in my thoughts; and as regards the
+conclusions I have come to in these pages, I may say, with the Roman
+historian, 'haec senectuti seposui.'
+
+The examination of 'Present Irish Questions,' in this work, shows the
+views I entertain with regard to the actual condition of Ireland in its
+various aspects, and to her probable future destinies. These views may be
+censured as too gloomy, and even paradoxical; but Ireland remains, as she
+was when Macaulay wrote of her, 'A member indeed of the Empire, but a
+withered and distorted member;' the revolution which has passed, nay, is
+still passing, over her, has destroyed a great deal that ought to have
+been preserved, and has put little that is solid and stable in its place;
+there is much that is threatening and even dangerous in her political and
+social order, and in the sentiments of the mass of her community. In the
+case of Ireland, indeed, as in that of any other people, I have faith in
+the effect of salutary legislation on wise and just principles, and of
+consistent good government steadily carried out, of both of which there
+has been but too little evidence, during the last twenty years, in Irish
+affairs; above all, my trust is large in the healing influences of Time.
+But I have not forgotten that the vision of 'Pacata Hibernia,' which
+flitted even before the majestic understanding of Bacon, three centuries
+ago, has not been realised; the thoughtless optimism, which, during the
+last two generations, has represented Ireland to be in a state of
+continual 'progress,' nay, as 'contented and happy,' whenever she has not
+been convulsed by disorder and trouble, or racked by poverty and distress,
+has been completely falsified; and with nations, as with individuals, the
+profound remark of Butler is true; a life of repentance often fails to
+redeem the errors of the past. I proceed to indicate some at least of the
+authorities which relate to the different parts of my subject. The
+material condition of Ireland of late years may, perhaps, be best
+ascertained by studying, over some length of time, the large body of
+statistics compiled by the Government, and contained in that valuable
+publication, 'Thom's Directory,' and by a perusal of the Irish debates in
+Hansard. Reference, too, should be made to the important papers of Mr.
+Childers, of Lord Farrer, and of Mr. Sexton in the Report of the Childers
+Commission, and especially to the evidence of Sir Robert Giffen, and even
+of Sir Edward Hamilton, in the Blue Books appended to that inquiry.
+'England's Wealth, Ireland's Poverty,' by Thomas Lough, M.P., though a
+one-sided book, also deserves attention; and useful information may be
+obtained from 'The Five Years in Ireland, 1895-1900,' of Mr. Michael J. F.
+McCarthy, too much a eulogy, however, of things as they are, and marked by
+a spirit of aversion to, and distrust of, the Irish priesthood, which are
+a characteristic of a small section of the Irish Catholics.
+
+The sources of our knowledge respecting the moral, social, and political
+state of Ireland are numerous and ample; I shall confine myself, as much
+as I can, to those which relate to what may be called her recent
+revolutionary period, though Irish history in the past, even in the
+distant past, is anything but an 'old almanack.' This mass of evidence
+faithfully represents the disturbances and the troubles that have
+prevailed in Ireland, with intervals of time between, during the last
+twenty years and upwards, and the fierce animosities and conflicts which
+have been the consequence. Here a reader should again consult Hansard,
+notably the debates on Ireland, during the agitated period from 1880 to
+1889; of course he should only study the great speeches. The publications
+on this subject are very many, and some of real importance; as regards
+the policy and conduct of the Land, and even of the National Leagues, and
+the frightful outbreak of disorder and crime which was the result, nothing
+is equal in value to the Report of the Judges of the 'Special Commission,'
+and to the immense body of evidence brought before them; 'The Verdict,' by
+Professor Dicey, sums up well the conclusions at which they arrived. The
+utterances of the so-called Irish 'Nationalist' Press, throughout these
+years, fully verify the facts disclosed in the Report, and its findings;
+they have, indeed, been continued in a less ferocious and violent, but in
+a significant, strain ever since; a collection of them will be found in
+the volumes published by the Irish Unionist Alliance. On this subject, and
+also on the state of opinion existing among a large majority, probably, of
+the Irish people, see 'The Continuity of the Irish Revolutionary
+Movement,' by Professor Brougham Leech; 'The Truth about the Land League,'
+by Mr. Arnold Foster, M.P.; 'Parnellism and Crime,' republished from the
+_Times_; 'Incipient Irish Revolution,' anonymous but able; some valuable
+articles on Ireland by the late Lord Grey that appeared in the _Nineteenth
+Century_; 'Disturbed Ireland,' by Mr. T. W. Russell, M.P.; 'The Plan of
+Campaign Illustrated;' and 'About Ireland,' by Mrs. E. Lynn Lynton. The
+recent revolutionary and agrarian movements in Ireland have not found many
+to vindicate them, or even fully to explain their causes; but reference
+may be made to 'The Parnell Movement,' by T. P. O'Connor, M.P.; to the
+'New Ireland' of Mr. A. M. Sullivan; to Mr. Barry O'Brien's 'Irish Wrongs
+and English Remedies;' and to a series of articles called 'Ungrateful
+Ireland,' in the _Nineteenth Century_, from the pen of Sir G. Duffy. A
+host of papers in quarterly, monthly, and other reviews and magazines on
+the political and social condition of Ireland of late years has, also,
+been published from time to time. Attempts have been made, quite recently,
+to show that the troubles of Ireland have become things of the past, and
+that she is a prosperous and happy land; but though real improvement has
+certainly taken place, these are mere repetitions of the optimistic
+fancies that have so often proved delusions.
+
+The great question of Home Rule, 'present' if for a time postponed, was
+first put forward formally by the late Isaac Butt. His 'Irish Federalism'
+is a thoughtful and able treatise that ought to be studied. The speeches
+in Parliament, from 1874 to 1885, on this subject, collected in Hansard,
+deserve attention; notably the violent attacks on this policy made during
+many years by Mr. Gladstone. Hansard, too, should be perused, after that
+statesman became a convert to Home Rule, for the speeches on both sides,
+on the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893; some are of marked power and
+insight, though few rise to the heights of great constitutional
+principles. Mr. Gladstone's defence of his sudden change of front will be
+found in his 'History of an Idea,' a tract published soon after his defeat
+at the polls in 1886; he has endeavoured to vindicate his later Irish
+policy, in many pamphlets and speeches, in volumes collected by himself.
+For a masterly examination of his public conduct on matters relating to
+Ireland, and in some other passages in his career, I would especially
+direct the reader to the 'Memoirs of the late Lord Selborne,' part ii.
+vol. ii. pp. 339-360; Mr. Lecky's brilliant sketch in his 'Democracy and
+Liberty,' Cabinet Edition, Introduction, pp. 19-56, is a composition of
+rare excellence. Nothing is to be compared to Professor Dicey's 'England's
+Case against Home Rule,' and his 'Leap in the Dark,' for a thorough
+investigation, from the Unionist point of view, of the natural and the
+probable consequences of the Gladstonian Irish policy, and for an analysis
+of the two Home Rule Bills; few political works have attracted equal
+attention. There have also been many publications, on the side of the
+Union, of more or less merit; see 'Home Rule,' reprinted from the _Times_,
+containing several very able letters and papers; 'The Truth about Home
+Rule;' 'A Sketch of Unionist Policy;' and a number of articles in the
+_Edinburgh_ and the _Quarterly Review_, and in other reviews and
+magazines. The publications which advocate Home Rule have not been
+numerous; a reader may consult the 'Hand Book of Home Rule,' edited by Mr.
+Bryce, M.P.; 'Irish Members and English Gaolers,' and 'Combination and
+Coercion,' by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre; and some contributions to a few reviews
+and other serials.
+
+The 'Present Question' of the Irish land, and of Irish landed relations,
+goes back to even remote antiquity, and is connected with the whole course
+of Irish history. The characteristics and peculiarities of tribal land
+tenure in Ireland, before the Anglo-Norman Conquest, have been admirably
+explained in Sir Henry Maine's 'Early History of Institutions,' a very
+valuable work. I may refer to an article on this book, from my pen, in the
+_Edinburgh Review_ of July, 1875. See, also, the 'Senchus Mor,' and the
+'Book of Aicile,' fragments of the Brehon Laws, well annotated by the late
+Professor Richey. The state of the Irish land, from the Anglo-Norman
+Conquest to the beginning of the Tudor period, has been fully illustrated
+in the 'Statute of Kilkenny,' edited by James Hardiman, whose learned
+commentary is useful and important; in the 'Discovery' of Sir John Davies;
+in Spenser's 'View of the State of Ireland;' in the 'O'Conors of
+Connaught,' by the O'Conor Don; in Hallam's 'Constitutional History,' vol.
+iii. chapter on Ireland; and in Professor Richey's 'Lectures.' I have
+glanced at the state of Irish land tenure during the tribal and the feudal
+ages, in the introductory chapters to my 'Ireland, 1494-1868,' in the
+'Cambridge Historical Series.' The most complete account, perhaps, of the
+confiscations of the Irish land, from the reign of Henry VIII. to that of
+Charles I., will be found in the 'Carew Papers,' edited by J. S. Brewer
+and William Bullen; valuable information abounds in the 'State Papers
+relating to the reign of Henry VIII.,' edited by Hans Claude Hamilton; in
+'The Life of Sir John Perrott and his Letters;' in the 'Earls of Kildare,'
+edited by the Marquis of Kildare; in the 'State Papers,' edited by
+Hamilton, _ante_, 'relating to the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and
+Elizabeth;' in the 'Annals of the Four Masters;' and see Davies and
+Spenser, _ante_. Several modern writers have treated this subject in their
+narratives of Irish history; Froude's 'History of England,' vol. ii. ch.
+viii.; vol. iv. ch. xix.; vol. v. ch. xxviii.; vol. viii. chs. vii.-xi.;
+vol. x. ch. xxiv.; vol. xi. ch. xxvii., may be consulted; but a reader
+should be put on his guard against the brilliant but partisan historian.
+There is a valuable chapter also, in a very different work, Mr. Lecky's
+'History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' vol. ii. ch. vi. pp. 92
+_seqq._; and a great deal may be learned from the 'O'Conors of Connaught,'
+and Richey's 'Lectures,' _ante_; and especially from an 'Historical
+Account of the Plantation of Ulster,' by the Rev. George Hill, and from
+Sigerson's 'History of Irish Land Tenure.' In the momentous period of
+confiscation, from the beginning of the reign of Charles I. to that of
+William III., a reader should study 'Strafford's Letters;' Carte's 'Life
+of Ormond;' Lord Clanricarde's 'Memoirs;' the 'Letters of Cromwell,'
+edited by Carlyle; the 'Acts of Settlement and Explanation;' the 'Articles
+of the Treaty of Limerick;' Sir William Petty's 'Political Anatomy of
+Ireland;' 'Macariae Excidium;' and the Abbe MacGeoghegan's 'History of
+Ireland.' The modern authorities on this period are numerous and some of
+great value; see Gardiner's 'History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate'
+(the Irish chapters), notably vol. iii. ch. xliv.; 'The Cromwellian
+Settlement of Ireland,' by John P. Prendergast; 'The Life of Sir William
+Petty,' by Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice, with an article by me in the
+_Edinburgh Review_ of July, 1895; 'The Patriot Parliament,' by Thomas
+Davis; Macaulay's 'History of England' (the Irish chapters), vol. iv. ch.
+xxii.; vol. v. ch. xiv.-xvi.; vol. vi. ch. xvii.; and Mr. Lecky's
+'History,' _ante_, vol. ii. ch. ix. Many instructive and philosophic
+passages on all these confiscations and their results, will be found
+scattered among the writings of Burke; they are admirable.
+
+The era of violent confiscation closed with the reign of William III.; the
+modern history of the Irish land system begins from this period. For an
+account of the penal code, as it affected Irish landed relations,
+reference may be made to Vincent Scully, 'On the Penal Laws;' to Howard's
+'Popery Cases;' and especially to Burke's 'Tracts on the Popery Laws.'
+Much, too, can be gathered from Curry's 'State of the Irish Catholics;'
+from Primate Boulter's and Archbishop Synge's 'Letters;' from the writings
+on Ireland of Swift and Berkeley; and from various passages in the 'Works
+and Correspondence of Burke.' For the state of the Irish land from the
+beginning of the reign of George III. to the Rebellion of 1798, study the
+celebrated 'Tour' of Arthur Young, written in 1776-78; Crumpe's 'Essay;'
+an admirable sketch by Mr. Lecky in his 'History,' _ante_, vol. vii. ch.
+xxvii.; and Sir George Lewis on 'Irish Disturbances,' a book which gives
+an account of the rise and progress of the Whiteboy movement, and carries
+the narrative down to 1836. Froude has illustrated this subject very
+skilfully in his 'Two Chiefs of Dunboy;' but his account, in his 'The
+English in Ireland,' is very inaccurate and one-sided. The nature of Irish
+landed relations during the troubled period before the Union is fully
+explained in many passages of Mr. Lecky's 'History,' _ante_, vols. vii.
+and viii.; and the reader should peruse Lord Clare's speech in the Irish
+House of Lords during the debates on the Union. From the Union to the
+present time, the authorities on the Irish land system are very numerous;
+it is not easy to make compendious selection. For the period of the Great
+War, Edward Wakefield's 'Account of Ireland' is valuable, and so is, for
+the immediately subsequent period, the evidence on the state of Ireland
+taken by a Committee of the House of Commons in 1825. The nature and the
+characteristics of the Irish land system, in 1843-44, are fully explained
+and commented upon in the well-known Report of the Devon Commission, and
+the voluminous evidence; and for the revolution wrought in the Irish land
+by the Famine of 1845-47, see the 'Irish Crisis,' by Sir Charles
+Trevelyan, republished from the _Edinburgh Review_; and a 'History of the
+Great Irish Famine,' by the Rev. John O'Rorke. Much information, too, on
+the subject, as a whole, may be obtained from 'L'Irlande, Sociale,
+Politique, et Religieuse,' of Gustave de Beaumont; from 'Ireland from the
+Treaty of Limerick to 1851,' by John Mitchell; from parts of 'Two
+Centuries of Irish History,' edited by James Bryce, M.P.; from several
+'Reports' of the Loyal National Repeal Association; and from parts of Mr.
+Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,' and 'Irish Wrongs
+and English Remedies.'
+
+The Irish land question has given birth to a literature of its own in the
+last half-century; legislation on the Irish land system has been
+extraordinarily active. With respect to the first, reference may be made
+to 'Two Centuries of Irish History,' _ante_, and to Mr. Barry O'Brien's
+works, _ante_; to 'Emigration and the Tenure of Irish Land,' by Lord
+Dufferin; to John Stuart Mill's 'The Irish Land Question;' to 'The Irish
+People and the Irish Land,' by Butt; to Sir George Campbell's 'The Irish
+Land,' a very good little book; to Judge Longfield's essay on the Irish
+land in 'Systems of Land Tenure;' and to my own 'Letters on the Land
+Question of Ireland,' republished from the _Times_. I am happy to think
+that, on this subject, I have always 'pitched my Whiggery low;' my first
+essay was on the Encumbered Estates Act; when fresh from Oxford I
+condemned that scheme of confiscation as unequivocally as, in the present
+and other works, I have condemned Irish agrarian legislation since
+1880-81. Other books contain passages on the Irish land system that may be
+read with profit; see the 'Recollections and Suggestions' of Earl Russell;
+'Ireland in 1868,' by Gerald Fitzgibbon; 'Ireland,' by Lord Grey;
+'Journals, Conversations, and Essays relating to Ireland,' by Nassau
+Senior; and 'New Views on Ireland,' by Lord Russell of Killowen. As
+regards recent legislation on the Irish Land, from 1870 to 1896, the Acts
+passed by Parliament must of course be studied, and also the important
+debates reported in Hansard. Butt wrote a very able volume on the Land Act
+of 1870; I contributed a short treatise; an exhaustive and technical work
+of great value, on all the Irish Land Acts, has been produced by Messrs.
+Cherry and Wakely; this, with the Irish Reports, supplies ample
+professional, and even general, information. With respect to the
+administration of the Irish Land Acts, see the Report of the Committee of
+the House of Lords, and the evidence published in 1872; the Report of, and
+the evidence collected by, the Bessborough Commission of 1880-81; the
+Report of a Committee of the House of Lords on the working of the Land Act
+of 1881, published, with the evidence, in 1882; the Report, with the
+evidence, of the Cowper Commission, 1888-89; the Report, with the
+evidence, of the Morley Commission, 1894-1895; and, especially, the Report
+of Sir Edward Fry's Commission of 1897, with the important evidence it has
+put together. Mr. Lecky, in his 'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. ch. ii.,
+has criticised, almost as severely as I have done, recent Irish agrarian
+legislation; no serious defence of it has ever been made or attempted.
+
+To understand the real state of the financial relations between Great
+Britain and Ireland, it is necessary to go back to the times of the Union;
+those who resist the Irish demand avoid an appeal to history. The debates
+in the Irish Parliament in 1800 should be carefully studied, especially
+the speeches of Castlereagh, Grattan, and Foster. The Seventh Article of
+the Treaty of Union, set forth in this work, should also be diligently
+scanned and perused. See, too, the debates in the Imperial Parliament in
+1816; the resolutions passed by the House of Commons in that year; and the
+Act abolishing the separate Exchequer of Ireland. Reference, moreover,
+should be made to the evidence taken before General Dunne's Committee in
+1864, in which sophistry triumphed for the moment over truth. All these
+sources of information, however, are scanty and imperfect compared to the
+celebrated Report of the Childers Commission, with the valuable evidence
+annexed to it; this for the first time completely brings out the whole
+facts on the subject. The debates in Hansard on the financial claims of
+Ireland may also be looked at; but they are not of peculiar importance;
+the same remark applies to nearly all the articles in reviews, magazines,
+and journals, in which endeavours have been made to answer the Report. I
+may be allowed to say that I have some claim to have a distinct opinion in
+this matter; when still quite a boy I often heard my grand-uncle, the late
+Sir John Newport, one of the ablest and last of the Chancellors of the
+Irish Exchequer, condemn the financial treatment of Ireland from 1800
+onwards; many years afterwards I was intimately acquainted with several of
+the independent Irish gentlemen, survivors of the great school of Grattan,
+who protested against Mr. Gladstone's fiscal Irish measures from 1853 to a
+later date; Butt and Judge Longfield, both very able economists, fully
+concurred. With respect to local government and administration in Ireland,
+see Mr. Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,' vol. i.
+books iv. and v.; the Report of the Commissioners on Irish Corporate
+Reform issued in 1833-34, and the Irish Municipal Corporation Reform Act
+of 1840; the Irish Towns Commissioners Acts; a report made by Mr. W. P.
+O'Brien in 1878; a good treatise by Mr. Bailey published in 1888; and the
+recent Irish Local Government Act of 1898, with the debates in Hansard on
+this measure, should be perused. The authorities on Irish education of all
+kinds are numerous, and some valuable. Froude has glanced at the subject,
+with characteristic unfairness, in his 'The English in Ireland;' the
+refutation of Mr. Lecky, in his 'England in the Eighteenth Century,' is
+complete. A good description of education in Ireland, in all its branches,
+as it existed in 1812, will be found in Edward Wakefield's 'Account of
+Ireland,' vol. ii. ch. xxiv.; another in Mr. Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty Years
+of Concessions to Ireland,' vol. i. book i.; vol ii. book x.; the author
+brings the narrative down to 1881. As regards high education in Ireland,
+reference may be made to 'The History of the University of Dublin,' by the
+Rev. W. Stubbs; to 'The Constitutional History of the University of
+Dublin,' by D. C. Heron; to the Report of Archbishop Whateley's
+Commission, in 1853, on the University of Dublin; to Mr. Gladstone's Irish
+University Bill of 1873, and the able debates on the subject in Trinity
+College and the House of Commons; to Mr. Fawcett's Act of 1873; to a
+masterly pamphlet by Butt, on the whole question, published in 1875; and
+to the 'Irish University Question,' by Archbishop Walsh, with recent
+debates in Parliament on Irish University reform. For the nature,
+constitution, and working of the Queen's Colleges and the Queen's
+University, see the debates in Parliament when Peel introduced this
+policy; many Reports; the work of Archbishop Walsh, _ante_; and the Act
+creating the Royal University in Ireland may be examined. As regards
+primary and secondary education in Ireland, see the Reports of the
+Education Commissioners from 1810 to 1825; the Reports of the National
+Education Board; the Reports of the Kildare, Rosse, and Powis
+Commissions, noticed in this work; and Mr. Godkin's 'Education in
+Ireland.' An excellent synopsis of the subject, as a whole, will be found
+in 'The Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland,' by Mr. Graham
+Balfour.
+
+WILLIAM O'CONNOR MORRIS.
+
+  GARTNAMONA, TULLAMORE,
+    _14th May, 1901_.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+                                                                     PAGES
+
+  CHAPTER I
+
+  IRELAND IN 1901
+
+    Ireland has passed through a revolution in the Victorian
+    age--Material progress--Dublin--Belfast--Improvement in
+    Catholic places of worship and in the habitations of the
+    people--State of the Irish community--Symptoms of
+    retrogression--Decline of agriculture--The progress of Ireland
+    Ireland much less than that of England and Scotland, and
+    why--State of the Irish land system--Recent legislation has
+    done some good, but it has been unjust, and has had pernicious
+    effects--Ireland divided into three peoples--Notwithstanding
+    great reforms Catholic Ireland is still, in the main,
+    disaffected--Presbyterian Ireland--Cry for the confiscation of
+    the Irish land--Protestant Ireland--Fall of its old
+    ascendency--Discontent among the landed gentry--Nature of the
+    government of Ireland by the Imperial Parliament--Its merits
+    and defects--Attitude of the greater part of Ireland towards
+    it--The administration of Irish affairs--The bureaucracy of
+    the Castle--The Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic Irish
+    Churches--The administration of justice in Ireland--Irish
+    literature and public opinion--General survey of the present
+    state of Ireland--Irish policy of Lord Salisbury's
+    Ministry--'Present Irish Questions' to be discussed in this
+    work                                                              1-38
+
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+  THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE
+
+    The question of Home Rule not extinct--The reasons--Butt's
+    scheme of Home Rule--It is denounced and ridiculed by Mr.
+    Gladstone, and defeated in the House of Commons--Death of
+    Butt--The Home Rule movement becomes allied with a foreign
+    conspiracy--Davitt and Parnell--The Land League--Mr.
+    Gladstone's surrender to it--The movement makes no progress
+    in the Parliament of 1880-85--The General Election of
+    1885--Mr. Gladstone suddenly adopts the policy of Home
+    Rule--The probable reasons--The Home Rule Bill of 1886--Its
+    nature and tendencies--Decisive objections to the
+    measure--It is rejected at the General Election of 1886,
+    having been previously rejected in the House of Commons--
+    Policy and conduct of Mr. Gladstone--The Home Rule movement
+    makes some progress in England, and why--The Home Rule Bill
+    of 1893--It is much worse than that of 1886--The reasons--It
+    is rejected by the House of Lords--Home Rule under different
+    forms--The Union must be maintained--Proposal that Parliament
+    should occasionally sit in Dublin--The over-representation
+    of Ireland should be redressed                                   39-83
+
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+  THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND--SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE
+  LAND SYSTEM OF IRELAND TO THE YEAR 1870
+
+    Great importance in the history of Ireland of the conditions
+    of land tenure--The ancient Celtic land system and its
+    characteristics--The Norman conquest of Ireland--Norman
+    feudalism in the Irish land--The policy of Henry VII., and
+    especially of Henry VIII.--The era of the conquest and
+    confiscation of the Irish land--The possessions of the
+    O'Connors of Offaly wrested from them--Forfeiture of the
+    domains of Shane O'Neill, and of the Earl of Desmond--Attempts
+    at colonisation--All Ireland made shire land--The extinction
+    of the old Celtic land system--The Plantation of Ulster--
+    Progress of confiscation during the reigns of the two first
+    Stuarts--The Civil War--Immense confiscations made by
+    Cromwell--His scheme of colonisation a failure--The era of
+    confiscation closes after the battle of the Boyne and the fall
+    of Limerick--The Penal Code of Ireland--Its fatal effects on
+    the Irish land--Dismal period in Irish landed relations--
+    Gradual improvement--The period described by Arthur Young--
+    Evil traces of the past remain--Whiteboyism and agrarian
+    disorder--State of Irish landed relations up to the rebellion
+    of 1798, and after the Union--Over-population and the
+    results--Distress after the Peace--State of Irish landed
+    relations up to 1844--The Report of the Devon Commission--The
+    Famine and its effects on the Irish land--The Encumbered
+    Estates Acts--State of Irish landed relations from 1848 to
+    1868                                                            84-129
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+  THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (_continued_)--THE IRISH LAND
+  ACT OF 1870--THE LAND LEAGUE AND THE NATIONAL LEAGUE--THE LAND
+  ACT OF 1881--SUBSEQUENT LEGISLATION AS REGARDS THE LAND SYSTEM
+  OF IRELAND
+
+    State of landed relations in Ireland in 1869-70--Mr. Gladstone
+    Prime Minister--The Land Act of 1870--Its merits and defects--
+    A short period of prosperity in Ireland--Ominous symptoms--
+    Michael Davitt--The teaching of John Finton Lalor in 1848--The
+    'New Departure' in Fenianism arranged in America--Foundation
+    of the Land League--It was a foreign rebellious conspiracy,
+    with an agrarian side, under a constitutional mask--Parnell
+    the master spirit of the League--His visit to America and the
+    results--A short period of distress in Ireland--Conduct of the
+    Irish landlords--Progress of the Land League--Mr. Gladstone
+    again Prime Minister in 1880--The Compensation for Disturbance
+    Bill rejected by the House of Lords--Outburst of agrarian
+    crime, as the Land League increases in power--Rents at
+    Griffith's valuation--Boycotting--Frightful state of Ireland
+    in 1881--After a short attempt to repress it, Mr. Gladstone
+    surrenders to the Land League--The Land Act of 1881--Mr.
+    Gladstone breaks the pledges he had made in 1870--His promise
+    of compensating the Irish landlords--The Land Act of 1881 a
+    bad and unjust measure directly inconsistent with that of
+    1870--The 'No Rent Manifesto'--The Kilmainham Treaty--The
+    Phoenix Park tragedy--Coercion--Parnell founds the National
+    League, the successor of the Land League--Renewal of agitation
+    in 1886--Struggle with law and the Government--Subsequent
+    agrarian legislation for Ireland--This is really a concession
+    to agitation, for the benefit of Irish tenants, and to the
+    injury of Irish landlords                                      130-187
+
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+  THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (_continued_)--THE ADMINISTRATION
+  OF THE IRISH LAND ACTS
+
+    The administration of the Land Act of 1870 in the main
+    good--Difficulty about claims for tenants' improvements--The
+    administration of the Land Act of 1881, and of its
+    supplements--The Land Commission and its Sub-Commissions--
+    Allowances to be made for these tribunals--Principles which
+    the Land Commission should have adopted in fixing 'fair
+    rents'--The procedure and practice it ought to have
+    established--It made mistakes as to both--The nature of the
+    Sub-Commission Courts--This was objectionable in the highest
+    degree--These Courts have, however unconsciously, done grave
+    wrong to Irish landlords--Causes of this--Characteristics of
+    their proceedings--They disregarded the principles they
+    ought to have followed, and adopted faulty and erroneous
+    methods--Different illustrations of these grave mistakes--
+    The Land Commission and appeals as to 'fair rent'--Importance
+    of this subject--Faulty procedure of the Land Commission in
+    appeals--Valuers--The second Land Commission--Its procedure
+    worse than that of the first--Theory of occupation right--
+    This another wrong done to landlords--The Fry Commission and
+    its report--Confiscation of the property of Irish
+    landlords--The proofs of this--Apologies made for the Land
+    Commission--The administration of the Land Purchase Acts       188-229
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+  THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (_continued_)--PROPOSED REFORM
+  OF THE IRISH LAND SYSTEM
+
+    Retrospect of the present Irish land system--Position of the
+    Irish landlords--Position of the Irish tenant class--This
+    not as advantageous as might be supposed--The effects of the
+    land code on Irish agriculture injurious--The effects on the
+    general Irish community--Confiscation, violation of
+    contracts, shock given to credit, increased alienation of
+    classes, and demoralisation--The land system considered on
+    the side of ownership--'Voluntary purchase'--Mischief of
+    this policy--It sets up a false standard against rent, and
+    creates unjust distinctions between different classes of
+    tenants--The results it has produced already--An instance of
+    the system--The demand for the compulsory purchase of the
+    Irish land caused by 'voluntary purchase'--Compulsory
+    purchase has some hold on opinion, but is an impossible, and
+    would be a disgraceful and ruinous policy--It would ruin
+    Irish landlords as a class--Instances--It would ultimately
+    bring Ireland into the state in which she was before the
+    Great Famine--Proposed plan for the reform of Irish land
+    tenure--Questions as to the means of compensating Irish
+    landlords, a deeply wronged order of men                       230-270
+
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+
+  THE QUESTION OF THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN
+  AND IRELAND
+
+    The subject briefly considered--Financial position of
+    Ireland before 1782, and under Grattan's Parliament--Her
+    taxation and debt small before 1798--Ireland financially a
+    distinct country--At the Union, Pitt wished to 'assimilate
+    her in finance' with Great Britain, but this impossible, and
+    why--Ireland's contribution after the Union--This was
+    unjust, but it left her financially a distinct country--
+    Ireland made nearly bankrupt--The compromise of 1816--The
+    Irish Exchequer closed, and the Irish and British debts
+    consolidated--The object of the compromise was rather to
+    relieve Ireland from her burdens than to assimilate her in
+    finance with Great Britain--She still remained for many
+    years financially distinct from Great Britain, and is so
+    still to some extent--The conduct of Peel a striking proof
+    of this--Mr. Gladstone imposes the income tax on Ireland,
+    and her spirit duties are largely raised--Injustice of this
+    policy--The Committee of 1863-64--Ireland does not obtain
+    financial justice--The Report of the Childers Commission
+    made upon a reference by Mr. Gladstone following Mr.
+    Goschen--The Commission declares that Ireland has been
+    greatly overtaxed for many years--Evidence on which it has
+    founded this conclusion--Examination of arguments to the
+    contrary--Another Commission promised, but the promise not
+    fulfilled--Importance of settling this question                271-308
+
+
+  CHAPTER VIII
+
+  THE QUESTIONS OF IRISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND EDUCATION--OTHER
+  QUESTIONS--CONCLUSION
+
+    Irish county government--The grand jury system in the
+    eighteenth century--Its merits and defects--The grand jury
+    system in the nineteenth century, and especially since
+    1836--The Irish poor law system--Elected and _ex-officio_
+    guardians--The local government of cities and towns in
+    Ireland--Municipal institutions founded in Ireland by the
+    Norman kings--Why they did not prosper--Boroughs and
+    municipalities founded by James I. and the Stuarts--Their
+    condition in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries--The
+    Municipal Reform Act of 1840--The Towns Commissioners
+    Acts--Attempts to reform the municipal system of local
+    government in Ireland--The Local Government of Ireland Act,
+    1898--Complete change in Irish local government--The County
+    Councils--The County Borough Councils--The District, Rural,
+    and the Urban District Councils--Their functions, rights,
+    and duties--All these bodies placed on a democratic basis--
+    Attitude of the County Councils in the southern provinces--
+    Education in Ireland--History of primary education--The
+    National system of education--The principles on which it is
+    founded--How it has worked, and what its results have
+    been--Secondary education in Ireland--Its history--Its
+    present condition very imperfect--The Intermediate
+    Education Act--University education in Ireland--Its
+    history--Trinity College--The Queen's Colleges and the
+    Queen's University founded by Peel--Their comparative
+    failure--Mr. Gladstone's Bill to reform University education
+    in Ireland--Its glaring errors and failures--Trinity College
+    thrown open in 1873--The Royal University founded in 1879--
+    Present state of University education in Ireland--The true
+    principles of reform--Other Irish questions--Conclusion        309-360
+
+  APPENDIX        361-428
+
+  INDEX            429
+
+
+
+
+Present Irish Questions
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+IRELAND IN 1901
+
+    Ireland has passed through a revolution in the Victorian age--Material
+    progress--Dublin--Belfast--Improvement in Catholic places of worship
+    and in the habitations of the people--State of the Irish
+    community--Symptoms of retrogression--Decline of agriculture--The
+    progress of Ireland much less than that of England and Scotland, and
+    why--State of the Irish land system--Recent legislation has done some
+    good, but it has been unjust, and has had pernicious effects--Ireland
+    divided into three peoples--Notwithstanding great reforms Catholic
+    Ireland is still, in the main, disaffected--Presbyterian Ireland--Cry
+    for the confiscation of the Irish land--Protestant Ireland--Fall of
+    its old ascendency--Discontent among the landed gentry--Nature of the
+    government of Ireland by the Imperial Parliament--Its merits and
+    defects--Attitude of the greater part of Ireland towards it--The
+    administration of Irish affairs--The bureaucracy of the Castle--The
+    Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic Irish Churches--The
+    administration of justice in Ireland--Irish literature and public
+    opinion--General survey of the present state of Ireland--Irish policy
+    of Lord Salisbury's ministry--'Present Irish Questions' to be
+    discussed in this work.
+
+
+To understand thoroughly the Ireland of the present day, it is necessary
+to have studied her history in the past. Nevertheless, if we go back to a
+comparatively recent period, say to the beginning of the reign of
+Victoria, we can obtain a reasonably clear idea of her existing
+condition. A revolution has passed over her in this space of time almost
+as complete as the revolution which has transformed France; the results
+have not yet been fully developed, but in nearly all respects they have
+been immense. The community has, for the most part, made material
+progress; but this has been far from great or decisive; it has been
+interrupted by seasons of distress, one culminating in a dire catastrophe,
+and has been retarded by many causes of trouble. Taking the external
+aspect of Ireland first, Dublin has certainly advanced in the last sixty
+years; the capital has been surrounded by fine and increasing suburbs; the
+squares, the streets, the shops have improved; above all, though much
+remains yet to be done, the contrast between the dwellings of the rich and
+the poor is much less painful than it was within living memory. No city,
+however, has made such progress as Belfast: its population, which, in
+1841, was not more than 75,000 souls, was, in 1891, upwards of 255,000;[1]
+its opulence has probably grown tenfold; it is the centre of the great
+manufacture of Ulster; its building-yards are renowned for its magnificent
+ships; its estuary is crowded with the thronging fleets of commerce. The
+towns dependent on it, too, and the whole adjoining region, are
+flourishing from the great trade in linen, which has been aggregated
+within a comparatively small space; indeed, this prosperity has extended
+over all the north-east of Ireland, and Londonderry has long been a
+thriving seaport. Few of the towns of the rest of Ulster and of the
+southern provinces have improved; but signs of augmented wealth appear in
+other directions; in this respect they are striking in the extreme. The
+places of worship and the religious houses of the Catholic Church of
+Ireland have been transformed; the mean 'chapels' of the past have largely
+disappeared; most parishes have a suitable church; fine cathedrals
+dominate many towns; we often admire monasteries and convents in
+architectural splendour. The most remarkable phenomenon, however, of this
+description is the great and fortunate change which has taken place in the
+habitations of the community throughout the country. The dense and
+wretched hovels which, sixty years ago, barely sheltered the millions of
+Irish indigence, if still too frequent, have been, for the most part,
+effaced; the houses of the better class have greatly increased in numbers,
+though the population has enormously declined.[2] And the face of the
+landscape in most counties bears witness, on the whole, to a still
+perceptible progress. The chief industry of Ireland, indeed, as I shall
+show afterwards, has certainly retrograded within the last twenty years;
+her agricultural area and resources have much diminished. The advance,
+too, which, from about 1853 to 1876, was manifest and rapid in most of her
+rural districts, has been, to a considerable extent, checked; capital has,
+for some time, been avoiding her soil. But if the process was stern, nay,
+appalling, the land has, within the last half century, been thrown open to
+husbandry, infinitely better and more fruitful than had existed before;
+the exertions which were made, for a long space of time, to improve
+cultivation have left far-spreading traces; we still behold the beneficent
+results. The land over the greater part of its surface is not 'puckered
+up' in thousands of squalid patches, the holdings of masses of cottar
+paupers; it has been made more available for real farming; and it has been
+largely drained, enclosed, and covered with woodland--at least, up to a
+recent period.
+
+The material condition of the Irish community has, also, improved since
+the late Queen ascended the throne. This, no doubt, is to be largely
+ascribed to the effects of the great Famine of 1845-47, and of the immense
+emigration that followed in its train. The resources of Ireland, before
+that calamity, were unable to support, in anything like comfort, the
+teeming multitudes crowded on her soil; an official report, made in 1838,
+proved that two millions and a half of the poor in Ireland were for months
+in the year on the brink of starvation; this huge mass of indigence, which
+forced up rent, beat down wages, and was most injurious to good husbandry,
+was almost incompatible with real social progress. The great and
+continuing exodus of the Irish race, which has gone on for more than half
+a century, has not been without untoward results; but it has relieved the
+country from a destructive incubus; and this has certainly wrought a
+beneficent change, though the population has declined from about eight
+millions in 1837 to about four and a half millions in 1895.[3] Ireland,
+indeed, is still, mainly, a poor country--in some districts she is
+exceedingly poor; but the disappearance of overwhelmingly redundant
+millions has enabled her to maintain the millions that have remained much
+better than of old, and has distinctly raised the standard of living among
+all the humbler classes. The wages of agricultural labour, seldom more
+than six or seven shillings a week before the Famine, and then paid in
+potatoes by a vile truck system, have risen to ten and even twelve
+shillings, usually paid in cash; and they have not fallen, though Irish
+agriculture is very far from prosperous. The wages of the higher kinds of
+labour have also greatly increased; this is apparent in nearly all trades,
+and is especially apparent in the trades of Ulster. At the same time, the
+potato has long ceased to be the sole food of the poor; their dwellings,
+though still too often mean and bad, are infinitely better than they once
+were; their attire, and even their appearance, has greatly improved. I do
+not think, indeed, that O'Connell's description of the peasantry of
+Munster in 1825 could now be fairly applied to even the worst parts of
+Ireland, the impoverished tracts on the seacoast of Connaught: 'They have
+no clothes to change, they have none but what they wear at the moment....
+Their food consists of potatoes and water during the greater part of the
+year; potatoes and sour milk during another portion; they use some salt
+with their potatoes when they have nothing but water.'[4] There is
+evidence, also, that, even of late years, the wealth of Ireland has, in
+some measure, increased, especially in the middle and lower middle
+classes. The landed gentry, indeed, owing partly to the effects of Free
+Trade, and partly to those of legislation I shall describe afterwards,
+have been impoverished in many instances, and in many ruined; and the
+Irish tenant farmer, if gorged by the spoil of his landlord, has not
+gained all that an agrarian revolution was expected to give him. But the
+commerce of Ireland has made progress, within the last two decades, if
+this has not been by any means great; and though the capital she holds in
+the best securities has perceptibly diminished of late years, there has
+been a very large increase in most kinds of other investments.[5]
+
+This picture of Ireland, however, has dark features; her welfare has been,
+at best, partial; considerable deductions must be made from it. The
+progress of the capital, as has been the case in London, is largely to be
+ascribed to the depletion of many country districts, a change that has
+been going on for a long period, and has been accelerated by the decline
+of the landed gentry in wealth. The enormous advance of Belfast, and of
+the adjoining neighbourhood, has been, to a great extent, caused by the
+concentration of the linen manufacture within a small area; the hand-loom
+has disappeared from Ireland; this has been injurious to many petty towns
+and villages. The population and the trade of nearly all the chief towns
+in the southern provinces have diminished; Cork, with its immense natural
+advantages, has not prospered; Limerick and, notably, Galway are in decay;
+most of the inland towns show few signs of improvement; the outskirts of
+almost all are defaced by lines of ruined hovels, the wrecks of abodes a
+dwindling tale of indwellers has left. Many of these urban centres were,
+sixty years ago, seats of manufactures and of other industries, which, to
+a certain extent, were flourishing; but these sources of wealth have, for
+the most part, been dried up; they have been blotted out by the gigantic
+manufactures of England and Scotland poured into Ireland, everywhere,
+within a few hours, by steam. The collapse, indeed, of Irish manufactures
+in the last half century has been striking and mournful; 696,000 persons
+were employed in textile and dyeing industries in 1841; in 1881 there were
+only 130,000; and though the growth of machinery may in part account for
+this difference, it assuredly cannot fully explain it.[6] The same remark
+applies to Irish fishing industry; the small craft which once swarmed
+along the coast, and, rearing a breed of hardy mariners, gathered in the
+prolific harvests of the sea, have been vanishing year after year; in
+1867, 9332 boats, and 38,444 men and boys were engaged in this calling;
+the numbers were 5646 and 21,940 in 1891.[7] Turning to the face of the
+country, agriculture, we have seen, has improved, if we look back to the
+period before the Famine; but it is still centuries behind that of England
+and Scotland, and of late years it has markedly declined. It is not only
+that the prices of agricultural produce are much less than they were, in
+the last generation, and that its total value has fallen from L97,885,000
+in 1851-55, to L88,955,000 in 1889-93.[8] The agricultural area of Ireland
+has diminished from 1879 to 1899 by rather more than 400,000 acres;[9] and
+it is absolutely certain that within these decreasing limits, as I shall
+point out in subsequent chapters, agriculture has made little or no
+progress, and in some districts has distinctly become worse; we see the
+results of the vicious legislation of the last twenty years in
+deteriorated farms, in hundreds of cases, in a most injurious neglect of
+arterial drainage, and in the destruction of thousands of acres of
+woodland. And the ruin which has overtaken many of the landed gentry has
+been made only too manifest in the desolate aspect of scores of country
+seats, once happy homes, that now know their owners no more.
+
+It must be borne in mind, too, as we examine the present state of Ireland,
+that if, on the whole, she has made some progress, she is still, as I have
+said, a poor country, and that a considerable part of Connaught, her
+western province, has, for years, been in so poor a condition, that the
+Government of late has laudably made a great effort to raise it out of the
+depths of indigence. Other considerations, moreover, must be taken into
+account, if we would form a just conclusion as to the material position
+of Ireland, and, especially, as to her material prospects. The reduction
+of her population, up to a certain point, was an essential condition of
+her social progress; but that limit appears to have been far surpassed;
+this continuous decline, during more than half a century, has become an
+ominous symptom. More than 3,700,000 of souls have emigrated from Ireland
+since 1851;[10] and this number does not include the masses which fled
+from the catastrophe of 1845-47. This immense drain on the life of a
+nation has, for years, had a pernicious effect; in large parts of the
+country labourers have become so scarce that it is often difficult to save
+the harvest, which should be quickly gathered in, in a wet climate; and
+hands are wanting to industry in many places. Emigration, too, has taken
+away the best part of the people, men and women in the flower of
+existence; the reproductive power of the community has, accordingly,
+declined; the birth-rate of Ireland is less than it was; infirmity,
+disease, and, notably, insanity have increased; the population of the
+towns is seldom active and thriving.[11] At the same time, the taxation of
+Ireland has become many degrees more excessive in the last sixty years;
+the local rates have advanced from about L1,000,000 to nearly L4,000,000;
+the general taxation has been well-nigh doubled; and a tribunal of the
+very highest authority has recently declared that Ireland is immensely
+overtaxed, and has been for upwards of forty years. Nor can there be a
+real question but that large interests connected with the land have
+suffered greatly in the period that has now extended from 1878-79. It is
+unnecessary to refer to the condition of the landed gentry; I shall notice
+it at some length afterwards; but, much as the Irish people dislike the
+Poor-law, pauperism has distinctly increased during the last ten years,
+though the population has fallen off in numbers, and the charge of
+pauperism shows a corresponding increase.[12] The Income Tax returns, too,
+as regards the land, are of sinister omen; those under Schedule A have
+greatly diminished since 1890; and there is a considerable decline of
+property in the Funds.[13] As to the argument that the Tenant Right of the
+Irish farmer has risen in value, and that this proves Irish agriculture to
+be in a prosperous state, this is a complete, nay, a grotesque, fallacy.
+The rise in the value of Tenant Right is simply one of the many signs that
+a huge confiscation has taken place in the Irish land.
+
+If Ireland, therefore, has made material progress, this has been slow,
+partial, and with large drawbacks; such as it is, it must be mainly
+ascribed to the results of the Famine, which liberated the soil from a
+destructive burden. The whole country, it has truly been said, has still
+too much the look of a 'great neglected estate,' requiring development in
+most of its parts; large sections of the population are poor, feeble in
+health, and backward. Any advance, moreover, which Ireland has made in
+well being, since 1837-38, is as nothing compared with the extraordinary
+growth of the prosperity of England and Scotland, within the same period.
+True-hearted Irishmen grieve as they pass from the lesser to the greater
+island, and contrast the husbandry of Galway and Mayo with that of the
+Lothians and Kent; as they gaze on the Shannon, with scarcely a sail on
+its waters, and the Clyde teeming with its fleets of commerce; above all,
+as they turn from the decaying towns of their own country to such centres
+of wealth and of gigantic trade, as some even of the provincial cities of
+Britain, not to speak of the mighty world of London. The causes, indeed,
+of this contrast may be easily found; the mineral resources of Ireland are
+scanty; her commerce and manufactures are small; she is essentially an
+agricultural land, which has lost much from the effects of Free Trade; she
+has suffered greatly from misgovernment, agitation, and social disorder;
+all this has kept her back in the national race. The mineral products, on
+the other hand, of England and Scotland are immense, and of the first
+importance in an age of invention; they have decisively contributed to the
+huge development of the opulence and the trade of Great Britain; the
+policy of Free Trade, carried out for years, has had marvellous results in
+the same direction; if British agriculture is not progressing, British
+commerce and manufactures are still supreme; and Great Britain has been
+for ages a law-abiding land, in which order has been happily combined with
+liberty. These considerations fully explain the wide and ever-increasing
+distinction between Ireland and England and Scotland, only too manifest;
+they have been amply verified by unerring statistics. Two figures may
+suffice for a general reader; the resources of Ireland were estimated, a
+few years ago, at a sum of about four hundred millions sterling, that of
+Great Britain at not less than ten thousand millions.[14]
+
+The social structure of Ireland springs from the soil; it is most apparent
+in the relations that have been formed in the land. I shall dwell, at some
+length, in other chapters of this work, on the history and the
+characteristics of the Irish land system, and on the revolution through
+which it has passed; I can here only briefly glance at the subject. That
+system, at the beginning of the late reign, still represented, in many
+respects, the features it had borne in the eighteenth century, though
+these had been, in a great degree, modified. The land, over four-fifths of
+its surface, was still in the ownership of a small class of men, divided
+in race and faith from its occupants; the conquests and confiscations
+which had drawn deep lines of distinction between the Anglo-Protestant
+landlord and the Catholic and even the Presbyterian peasant, had still
+left their indelible traces, if these had been, to a considerable extent,
+effaced. Absenteeism had increased since the Union, though absentee
+estates were showing signs of improvement; middleman tenures, with their
+manifold and complex mischiefs, were disappearing, but were still
+numerous; various causes, to operate for many years, were diminishing the
+security of the peasants' tenure. The power of the dominant landlord class
+was declining; it was being weakened by the Castle bureaucracy, and by the
+emancipation of Catholic Ireland; but it was still nearly supreme in
+landed relations; this class was all but the absolute lords of the tillers
+of the soil. It is untrue that it was oppressive and unjust as a rule; but
+some of its members abused their excessive power; it had too much in
+common with an exclusive caste; and a whole train of economic causes were
+aggravating the evils of a land system from its origin placed on unsound
+foundations. Agriculture was advancing in not a few counties; many of the
+landed gentry were improving men, who were making a beginning in the
+scientific farming, which, before long, was to be more fully developed.
+But the population, we have seen, had increased by millions Ireland could
+not support; over whole districts, especially in Munster and Connaught,
+the land had been split up into petty holdings, the seats of a huge
+multitude of human misery. Rents, therefore, were being unnaturally forced
+up, and the wages of labour unnaturally cut down; the land system was
+disorganised, and filled with dangerous elements. The worst vice of the
+system, however, has yet to be noticed; from different causes which I
+shall point out afterwards, the occupiers of the soil in Ireland had, as a
+general rule, made even the permanent improvements on their farms, and
+large sums had repeatedly been paid on the transfer of these; they had
+thus gradually acquired concurrent rights in the land, in tens of
+thousands of instances; and yet these were outside the pale of the law,
+and could be annihilated by eviction, or even the raising of rent. These
+rights had the support, in parts of Ulster, of a long-established custom,
+and were usually respected in the southern provinces; but they ought long
+before to have had full legal protection; and they were sometimes violated
+or disregarded by unscrupulous landlords. The results were seen in the
+White Boy and the agrarian disorders which had disturbed Ireland for more
+than a century, and even ran back to the confiscations of the past.
+
+This land system, essentially bad as it was, marked by evil distinctions
+and pregnant with wrong, scarcely attracted the attention of British
+statesmen, until nearly the middle of the nineteenth century. Peel was the
+first minister who, even dimly, perceived its vices; he appointed a
+Commission to report on the subject. The labours of this body were, in
+part, laudable; but the Commissioners, filled with prejudice as to the
+excellence of British land tenure, and without experience of that of
+Ireland, made a capital mistake in the suggestions they offered. Instead
+of recommending that the concurrent rights of the Irish tenant in the
+land, often equivalent to a real joint ownership, should receive, as was
+but just, the sanction of law, they proposed to restrict these in many
+ways; they put forward a plan of 'compensation,' as they called it, that
+was worse than useless. Legislation to this effect was withdrawn from
+Parliament; the terrible visitation of 1845-47 had ere long shattered the
+Irish land system, bringing ruin on hundreds of the landed gentry, making
+thousands of farmers of the better classes bankrupt, forcing the petty
+holders of the land--the cottar population, as it was named--to fly from
+the country in despairing multitudes. The land was largely set free from a
+dense mass of wretchedness; it was the general belief of the public men of
+the day, that what was most required, at this conjuncture, was to attract
+men of capital to it to do it justice, and to get rid, as quickly as
+possible, of the large body of Irish landlords, who, even before deeply
+involved in debt, had been made hopelessly insolvent by recent events. The
+Encumbered Estates Act became law, with scarcely an opposing protest; it
+was to 'regenerate Ireland,' its authors proclaimed; its results were to
+develop a bad class of landlords, to annihilate the rights of the Irish
+peasant wholesale, and to cause an iniquitous confiscation on an enormous
+scale. The Irish Land Question, as was the phrase, was now raised once
+more; in 1852 the occupiers of the Irish soil set on foot an agitation to
+vindicate their rights, destroyed or endangered by what had lately
+occurred; the Government of Lord Derby lent a favourable ear; but it was
+defeated in the House of Commons by intrigue; the land system remained in
+the state in which it had been left; no real attempt to improve it was
+made. A series of years followed in which Ireland made distinct progress,
+and her agriculture advanced; it became a fixed idea with British
+statesmen, that there was nothing radically bad in Irish land tenure, and
+that its defects would gradually disappear; the grievances of the Irish
+peasant were ignored; his claims to what was now known as his Tenant
+Right, urged feebly by his advocates, were voted down in Parliament; and a
+general belief prevailed that what Ireland most needed was a still further
+and steady removal of what was deemed 'her surplus population' from her
+soil.
+
+As has so often happened in the affairs of Ireland, her real condition at
+this period was not understood; and the reform in her land system, which
+had become essential, was indefinitely delayed with disastrous results.
+Meanwhile, though things were serene on the surface, the inherent vices in
+Irish landed relations were not really changed, and, in some respects,
+were made worse. The Fenian troubles and outbreak of 1865-67 showed how
+much there was still peccant in the state of Ireland; Mr. Gladstone
+addressed himself, in 1870, to the task of effecting a reform in her land
+system. The measure he carried through Parliament was bold, and, in the
+main, statesmanlike; but it was injured by the predilection for English
+land tenure its author avowed, a general misconception of British
+statesmen; it was not without marked and even grave defects; and though
+unquestionably it did real good, it did not satisfy the tenant class--at
+least, the men who had become its leaders. In a few years the frightful
+period of the Land League had begun; a Reign of Terror prevailed in about
+a third part of Ireland, accompanied by far-spreading and atrocious crime.
+The movement was really a huge conspiracy, formed in America to overthrow
+British rule in Ireland; but Mr. Gladstone, now minister for the second
+time, resolved to deal with it only on its agrarian side; he wrought a
+complete revolution in the Irish land system, on principles wholly
+different from those of his measure of 1870. This legislation was prepared
+without reflection; it passed through Parliament when that assembly was
+almost in a state of panic; its author professed that his only object was
+to secure the occupier of the Irish soil in his legitimate rights; but the
+methods he adopted to attain this end have never been heard of in modern
+times, and have never been employed before in civilised lands. The
+principle of the mediaeval statutes, which endeavoured to fix the price of
+bread, and the rate of wages, was extended to the Irish land system; rents
+were to be adjusted through the agency of the State, by tribunals to which
+no parallel can be found; tenants' improvements were declared exempted
+from rent; and a mode of land tenure, hitherto condemned by Mr. Gladstone,
+and known as the 'theory of the Three F's,' was applied to the great
+majority of Irish tenancies, in an exaggerated, crude, and dangerous form.
+This legislation, revolutionary and socialistic alike, has been given more
+ample scope in the last twenty years; it probably affects four-fifths of
+the rented lands in Ireland; it has fashioned the type of land tenure over
+nearly all the country. The successors of Mr. Gladstone, who, indeed, had
+boasted that it set the doctrines of Adam Smith at nought, were not blind
+to the evils it soon developed; but it is questionable if their attempts
+to mitigate these, and to place the Irish land system on a better basis,
+have not been at least as open to censure. With the ignorance of Irish
+land tenure common in British statesmen, they proclaimed, what assuredly
+was not the fact, that Mr. Gladstone had 'created a dual ownership' in the
+Irish land, and that, in order to get rid of this intolerable thing, it
+was necessary, in accord with English ideas, to bring Ireland, as far as
+possible, under 'single ownership,' and to make the occupiers of the Irish
+soil, to a large extent, its owners. The system of 'Land Purchase' in
+Ireland, begun in 1870, was freed from the limitations which made it safe
+and just, and widely enlarged under new conditions; Irish tenants were
+encouraged to acquire the fee in their holdings, by a process never
+contemplated before; instead of having to pay any part of the price, the
+State advanced them the whole purchase moneys, repayable by an annual
+charge much less than any true rent. About a tenth part of the tenant
+class of Ireland have become owners of their farms by these means; the
+transaction has been in no sense a 'purchase;' though given the name, it
+is really the exact opposite.
+
+I shall describe all this legislation, in detail, afterwards, and shall
+indicate its far-reaching effects; here I can only take a cursory survey.
+The attempts that have been made to reform the Irish land system, in the
+last sixty years, have been, with scarcely an exception, failures; the
+Irish land, it has truly been said, is strewn with the wrecks of repeated
+errors. The Land Act of 1870 was, on the whole, a well-conceived measure;
+but the recommendations made by the Devon Commission, the iniquitous and
+destructive Encumbered Estates Act, the agrarian revolution wrought by Mr.
+Gladstone, and the 'Land Purchase' Acts, as they are falsely called, have
+been monuments of want of insight and knowledge. And, what is even worse,
+legislation on the Irish land has, over and over again, been too long
+delayed, and has been inconsistent, fitful, founded on no principle; the
+results have been in a high degree disastrous. Reforms that would have
+been gladly welcomed if made years before, have been treated with contempt
+when made too late; and reforms have more than once been hasty
+experiments, carried out under the stress of menacing troubles. The fable
+of the Sibylline books has been realised in this matter; and not a few of
+the efforts to improve Irish land tenures have been little better than
+sudden leaps in the dark. As to recent legislation in this province, its
+consequences and tendencies have become manifest. That it has effected
+some good may be admitted; it has removed grievances that no doubt
+existed; it has made the government of Ireland more easy for the time; it
+has allayed discontent for a moment; but the good is far outweighed by
+the evil. It is not only that the nostrum of the 'Three F's,' and the
+adjustment of rent by the intervention of the State, have cut down the
+rental of Ireland to an extent that cannot be justified, and have
+transferred to the occupier of the Irish soil a large part of what was the
+owner's property by a process of confiscation concealed, but certain. It
+is not only that the status of the Irish landlord has been iniquitously
+transformed to his extreme injury, and that the status of the Irish tenant
+has been changed to his extreme advantage, in both instances without a
+pretence to right. The Irish land system has been reduced to an almost
+hopeless state; it presents some of the worst features of the past; its
+conditions discourage the improvement of the land, promote its
+deterioration in many ways, and banish capital away from it; and its plain
+tendency has been to make agriculture decline. And the revolution, which
+has been thus accomplished, has aggravated the divisions of classes in
+Ireland, and has been attended with ruinous litigation on a huge scale;
+and it has produced demoralisation far-reaching and profound, a sense of
+insecurity in all landed relations, and a far too general disregard of the
+respect due to contract. The policy, too, of so-called 'Land Purchase' has
+been accompanied with a train of evils on the increase. It is not
+creating, as its authors fondly hoped, a class of loyal and thriving
+freeholders; it is not even creating a body of industrious and improving
+farmers. It is, on the contrary, developing, in some of its parts, the bad
+land system of the eighteenth century; it has proved injurious to
+agriculture in one important respect. Above all, from the very nature of
+the case, it has drawn harsh, nay, unjust, distinctions between the landed
+classes, which necessarily have been a cause of much discontent; and it
+has inevitably provoked a demand for a universal confiscation of the Irish
+land even worse than any of those which have been the curse of Ireland.
+
+I pass from the material and general state of Ireland to that of the Irish
+community, in its different parts. That community is still divided, as it
+has been for ages, into three separate and distinct peoples, marked off
+from each other in race and faith; whatever 'Nationalist' leaders may
+assert, it is not, and has never been, in a real sense, a nation. The
+lines of demarcation between Catholic, Presbyterian, and Protestant
+Ireland are at least as clearly defined as they have always been; they
+have probably been widened by the troubles of late years, and by the
+legislation which has been a consequence. Catholic Ireland has a
+population of some three millions and a half of souls; it is in the main a
+Celtic race, but with a considerable admixture of other elements; it has
+passed through a revolution remarkable and immense. Sixty years ago, the
+worst parts of the Penal Code had long been things of the past; but the
+Irish Catholics had only recently thrown off the last remains of that
+thraldom, under O'Connell's guidance; and their emancipation had only been
+effected by a great and very threatening movement. They were still
+comparatively an alien and a subject people; they had not many owners of
+land; they were not numerous in the upper trading and the professional
+classes; education was greatly wanting among them; they were for the most
+part a backward and poor peasantry, almost serfs of landlords distinct in
+creed and in blood; and they formed the bulk of the teeming millions that
+vegetated on the soil in indigent misery. The Irish Catholics, too, had
+still many and real grievances; the tithe of the Established Church had
+long been an unjust burden on the petty husbandman; it had recently given
+rise to a frightful war of classes, and had only been commuted a short
+time; the Established Church itself was a moral wrong, felt acutely by the
+Irish priesthood at least. Catholic Ireland, besides, was deeply sunk in
+ignorance; the system of national education had only begun to flourish;
+and the Irish Catholic was still all but wholly excluded from county
+administration and municipal government. The worst of these grievances,
+however, was the state of the tenure of the land; this was especially
+harsh on the Catholic peasant; if oppression was not general or even
+common, he was too often subjected to excessive rent and unfair eviction.
+This order of things has all but completely passed away; the position of
+Catholic Ireland in the State has almost wholly been changed. Catholic
+emancipation has long been an accomplished fact; Irish Catholics and
+Protestants are equal before the law; and have really equal chances in
+fighting the battle of life. Though still not numerous, the Catholic
+owners of land have multiplied; the Irish Catholic middle classes have
+made a marked advance; they have grown in knowledge and increased in
+wealth; they have risen to a higher plane of existence. At the same time,
+the grievances of the past have nearly all been removed by law, often
+indeed very late, and by questionable means; but the Established Church
+has fallen from its high estate; education has been diffused through the
+Catholic masses; the Irish Catholics have obtained more than a just share
+in local government and administration of all kinds; their ascendency in
+this province is well-nigh assured. The most important, however, of these
+changes is that which has taken place in the state of the Irish Catholic
+peasantry. The process which lifted up millions of these from the land and
+sent them into exile was, no doubt, terrible; but it was the condition of
+the welfare and the progress of the population which remained. A great
+deal of the legislation, besides, which has revolutionised the tenure of
+land in Ireland, and has had a special effect on the Catholic occupiers of
+the soil, has been essentially ill designed and unjust; above all, it has
+been much too long delayed. But the Irish Catholic peasantry have long ago
+ceased to be serfs; they are more the owners of their own holdings than
+their former landlords; their rights in the land have been more than
+protected; they have acquired the fee in their farms in thousands of
+instances; the days of rack rents and harsh evictions have passed away for
+ever. If the lines of the old Irish land system may still be traced, they
+rather resemble, it has truly been said, the lineaments of a phantom than
+of a living being.
+
+The attitude, however, of Catholic Ireland, and the sentiments of the
+immense majority of the Irish Catholics, must cause painful misgivings in
+reflecting minds. Their aristocracy, indeed, and their landed gentry have
+always been loyal and true subjects; they can scarcely be distinguished
+from their Protestant fellows. The Irish Catholics, too, of the upper
+middle classes are generally attached to the institutions under which they
+live; and Catholic Ireland has produced many eminent public servants, and
+has given splendid ornaments to the Bench and the Bar. But the spirit that
+prevails among the Irish Catholic lower middle classes, and notably among
+the masses of the peasantry, and the opinions and feelings they
+ostentatiously avow, are deeply to be regretted in many respects.
+Notwithstanding all that has been done for it, and the immense reforms
+made in its interest, this part of Catholic Ireland is, beyond question,
+more disaffected and disloyal to the State than it was when O'Connell was
+its master spirit; it is more hostile to government, law, and the existing
+order of things. The teaching of the Land and the National Leagues, and of
+the successor which has taken their place, has penetrated into the
+Corporations and Local Boards, in which the Catholic Irish are supreme;
+these assemblies echo with revolutionary and socialistic cries, and
+denounce the whole system of British rule in Ireland, aiming especially at
+the Sovereign and those in the highest places. The Irish Catholics, too,
+in the three provinces of the south, have gained a complete ascendency in
+county and municipal affairs; their first object has been to exclude the
+landed gentry from them, and to destroy the influence which belongs to
+property; and they have exhibited tendencies absolutely opposed to the
+Constitution to which they owe their authority. The worst symptoms,
+however, appear in the state of the peasantry; they have obtained
+advantages of which their fathers never even dreamed; the land system has
+been turned upside down for their behoof; they have no grievance in landed
+relations; and yet they remain unfriendly to the State, and show no sign
+of gratitude. This class contains the multitudes, who for more than twenty
+years, have allied themselves with a conspiracy against our power in
+Ireland, and who, at the bidding of designing men, shout treasonable
+utterances at mob gatherings, and denounce the 'Saxon' and 'landlordism'
+with one voice; and though they are a timid and somewhat inert mass, and
+they would not rise like their fathers in 1798, they would not lift a hand
+to support our rule were foreign invaders to descend on our shores. This
+state of opinion, no doubt, is intelligible to the real student of Irish
+history; the Irish Catholics are a people who have been cruelly wronged;
+they have only slowly risen out of serf-like thraldom; above all, they
+have only attained the position they hold in the State after long years of
+trials, and by giving trouble; they treasure the Celtic traditions of the
+past; we may regret that they are what they are, but can hardly feel
+surprise. In other respects, the Irish Catholic masses, especially in a
+democratic age, must arouse the solicitude of thinkers worthy of the name.
+Many thousands of them are still illiterate; they are too generally the
+mere followers of priests and demagogues, tossed hither and thither as
+their masters direct; they are animated by crude and wild ideas, like the
+peasantry of France before the Revolution; they have scarcely anything in
+common with the corresponding class in England, trained for centuries in
+habits of well-ordered liberty. They form, in a word, a dangerous and
+easily led democracy; and yet, owing to recent legislation, ever to be
+deplored, they possess almost a monopoly of political power in Ireland,
+and have sent representatives to Parliament whose acts are a byword.
+
+Conciliation, therefore, as the phrase is, has failed in the case of the
+greatest part of Catholic Ireland; this remains an alien, even a perilous,
+element in the State; it is worse than useless to shut our eyes to the
+truth; the time is still apparently distant when it will become contented
+and loyal. Presbyterian Ireland is a people of rather more than half a
+million of souls, almost concentrated within a nook of Ulster; it was
+rebellious in sentiment a hundred years ago; it is now devotedly attached
+to the British connection, and has firmly supported the Union during a
+period of trouble. This community, nevertheless, of artisans and farmers
+is rather widely separated from the aristocracy in their midst, for the
+most part English in blood, and of the Anglican faith; and though the
+Presbyterian farmer has obtained the benefit of the late reforms of land
+tenure, and has received advantages far in excess of justice, he declares
+himself to be discontented with his lot, and is clamouring for a vast
+confiscation of the Irish land in his selfish interest. The Irish
+Protestants are a population rather larger than the Presbyterians; but
+they are scattered over all parts of the country; they do not possess the
+political influence of their distant kinsmen in Ulster. They comprise at
+least three-fourths of the leading landed gentry, and a considerable
+number of the better class of farmers; they predominate in the learned
+professions, and in the higher walks of commerce. But their lower orders
+feel the loss of the ascendency which was once their birthright; they have
+been thrust out from corporate and local government; they are isolated
+amidst a population not in sympathy with them; as a people they can hardly
+be described as prosperous. As to the Protestant landed gentry, they have
+for centuries been the most loyal of subjects; it is significant that they
+have been called the British garrison by the conspirators who seek to
+overthrow our rule in Ireland; they have given many eminent worthies to
+the State, and proved their devotion to it at the gravest crises; what
+they are has been shown in the war in South Africa. At present, however,
+profound and just discontent has sunk deep into the hearts of this order
+of men. They are the heirs of conquest and confiscation, it is said; but
+they were placed in the position they hold by English kings and
+Parliaments; is that any reason that, within the last half-century, the
+Nemesis of conquest and confiscation should have been invoked against
+them, in the Encumbered Estates Act and predatory agrarian laws? They were
+too much of an exclusive caste, separated from their dependents, and
+possessing powers over the occupiers of the soil, which were sometimes
+abused; is that any reason that they should have been deprived of
+political influence, supplanted by the bureaucratic Castle, changed from
+owners of their estates into mere pensioners, shut out by the force of law
+from local and county government? What, however, the Irish landed gentry
+most deeply feel is that, in the course of the last sixty years, they have
+been deceived, nay, betrayed, by British statesmen, who, having repeatedly
+assured them that their position was secure, have sacrificed them when it
+seemed to suit their purpose.
+
+The Imperial Parliament has, during the last century, had absolute control
+over the affairs of Ireland. No impartial student of history will deny
+that it has governed Ireland very much better than her old Parliament
+could possibly have done, after the dreadful rising of 1798 had literally
+torn the country to pieces. The large majority of thinking persons have
+long ago been convinced that the policy of Home Rule, that is, the
+substitution for the Houses at Westminster of a statutory legislature
+seated in Dublin, would be disastrous to the Empire and Ireland alike; and
+that the evils attendant on the present system would be aggravated a
+hundred-fold by the revolution Mr. Gladstone tried to effect. Nor can it
+be questioned that the Imperial Parliament has, for a long period,
+sincerely desired to legislate and rule for the good of Ireland, and has
+accomplished important Irish reforms, whatever legitimate exceptions may
+be taken to them. Protestant ascendency and the Established Church have
+fallen; the law has long been indifferent to Irishmen of all classes;
+education has been brought home to the mass of the people; the tenure of
+land has been transformed, unwisely no doubt, but wholly in the interest
+of the occupiers of the soil. Nevertheless, much that the Imperial
+Parliament has done, and left undone, in the Victorian era, remains matter
+of censure and regret; and its Irish administration has been in many
+respects unfortunate. The neglect to make a provision for the Irish
+Catholic priesthood, a main object of Pitt and of our best statesmen, when
+the Anglican Church was disestablished in 1869, was a grave and a
+calamitous mistake; the attempts that have been made to reform the Irish
+land system have, with scarcely an exception, been sorry failures; the
+results have been, in no doubtful sense, deplorable. Few, too, will
+justify such measures as the establishment in Ireland of household
+suffrage, that is, giving a monopoly of political power to an ignorant and
+priest-ridden democracy,[15] and depriving property and intelligence of
+all influence, or as the handing over county and city government, in
+three-fourths of Ireland, to much the same classes. Nor are even positive
+errors such as these the worst, perhaps, that can be laid to the charge of
+the Imperial Parliament in the conduct of Irish affairs. With rare
+exceptions, the reforms it has made have been, unhappily, too late, and
+have been obtained only through menacing popular movements; it has over
+and over again made Irish questions the mere subjects of the selfish
+strife of party, with evil consequences for Irish interests; it has
+occasionally, and even for large spaces of time, shown a marked
+indifference to reasonable Irish demands; and its administration of
+Ireland has repeatedly been inconsistent, even contradictory,
+shortsighted, and feeble. It must be acknowledged, indeed, that the rule
+of the Imperial Parliament, in the circumstances in which Ireland has been
+placed, is, from the nature of the case, faulty in many respects; it is
+that of a dominant assembly practically controlling a subject dependency;
+and, as we see in the striking instances of Athens and Rome, this kind of
+government has never been free from great and real objections. This, no
+doubt, is no reason that we should fly from less to unbearable evils, and
+adopt the fatal scheme of Home Rule; and the causes that have made our
+Parliamentary _regime_ in Ireland as defective as it is are evident, and,
+as I shall point out afterwards, may probably be removed, to some extent
+at least, without subverting the constitution of these realms. But the
+broad fact remains, and cannot be concealed; the Imperial Parliament, much
+as it has done, has not reached the hearts or gained, in any degree, the
+sympathy of an immense majority of the Irish people.
+
+This conclusion, indeed, has been made only too manifest, if we look back
+at the history of Ireland within living memory. The Catholic Association
+defied the Imperial Parliament, and was supreme in four-fifths of Ireland,
+from 1824 to 1829; O'Connell, in 1843, rallied the Irish Catholic millions
+to the cause of the Repeal of the Union, that is, to the subversion of
+British rule from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear. Home Rule became a
+popular cry when proclaimed by Butt; Parnell soon rose to the head of an
+Irish faction, which deliberately tried to paralyse and cross Parliament,
+and to make its sway in Ireland of no avail and contemptible. The Land
+League and the National League were essentially conspiracies of foreign
+origin, and they appealed to socialistic greed in a season of distress;
+but their chief object was to annihilate British power in Ireland; they
+had the support of huge Catholic masses; they returned to Parliament a
+band of more than eighty men, one of whose purposes was to checkmate its
+authority. Too much is not to be made of these movements; three-fourths at
+least of the Irish community have repeatedly been led away by able but
+unscrupulous leaders, and rush into courses to which they are not
+earnestly inclined; but these unquestionable facts assuredly prove that
+the institutions under which they exist are not acceptable to the great
+body of the people of Ireland. This attitude has been displayed with
+marked and too plain significance, within a period, as it were, of
+yesterday. The United Irish League fills the place of the Land and the
+National Leagues; it is a conspiracy against the State, like its
+forerunners; it aims ultimately at the same objects; its organisation and
+machinery are the same; it seeks to establish its domination by similar
+methods. It is, no doubt, less formidable than the Land and the National
+Leagues; it has received little support from America, and has no one to
+compare with Parnell at its head; but it has sent more than three-fourths
+of the representatives of Ireland into the House of Commons; and these
+have combined to put in force the arts of obstruction with an audacity, a
+perseverance, and a measure of success, perhaps never so conspicuous
+before. Its authority is less far-reaching than that of its predecessors;
+but it has established a reign of tyranny in not a few counties; it is
+largely backed by the Irish priesthood and by much the greatest part of
+Catholic Ireland; and its leaders boast, not without truth, that, disloyal
+as many of their utterances are, they are completely in accord with
+popular sympathies. The acts and the speeches, indeed, of these men have
+never been more unequivocal than within the last two or three years;[16]
+yet almost everywhere they obtain the applause and the support of the
+multitude. An Irish contingent was sent to fight for the Boers; the war in
+South Africa was yelled at, at huge public meetings, as an odious instance
+of English tyranny and crime; every reverse that befell our arms was
+welcomed; the Irish masses, especially of late, have made a display of
+their antipathy to, and hatred of, the State. There was an outbreak of
+disloyal rioting in Dublin at the Diamond Jubilee; but for the accident of
+the Spanish War there would have been a great commemoration of the
+rebellion of 1798; even the visit of the late Queen to Ireland was made an
+occasion for seditious speeches; if her death was very generally mourned,
+public bodies were found to refuse an expression of regret.
+
+Irish administration, I have remarked, is in many respects faulty; this is
+mainly because it is dependent on British parties; it fluctuates as one or
+the other prevails in Parliament. It sometimes represents completely
+opposite principles; besides, as Lord-Lieutenants and Chief Secretaries
+usually hold office for a short time only, they are tempted to adopt a
+hand-to-mouth policy, and to govern with little thought of the morrow. A
+marked change, however, has, in the course of time, passed over the
+ordinary system of administration carried on at the Castle. The
+aristocracy and the leading Irish gentry had still, even at the beginning
+of the Victorian age, much influence in directing local affairs; their
+authority was not nearly as great as it had been; but they were still
+looked up to and consulted by the central government. This state of things
+has long ago ceased to exist; this order of men has long ago lost all
+political, and nearly all social, power; it has been superseded by a
+bureaucratic _regime_, depending mainly on paid officials and police,
+which rules Ireland from the Castle, with little external support. This
+mode of government is imposing and apparently strong; but it is
+essentially weak, and has little real hold on the country; the
+information, with which it is amply supplied, is often false, and
+occasionally causes grave mistakes; it forms an administrative system
+resembling that of the old centralised monarchy of France, of which
+Tocqueville has exposed the defects and the vices. Under this _regime_,
+however, the law of the land has certainly been vindicated more
+successfully than had been the case before; the Government has acquired
+decidedly increased power in dealing with disorders dangerous to the
+State, and perhaps in holding the scales of justice even between divided
+classes; it has not diminished the strife of hostile Irish factions, but
+it has maintained order more completely than of old; and this
+unquestionably is a great advantage, and a real set-off against some
+mischiefs and failures. It would be untrue to assert that this system of
+rule has been the paramount and even a main cause of the great decline in
+agrarian crime and trouble which Ireland has happily witnessed of late
+years; other and far more potent causes have concurred; but it may fairly
+be said that it has contributed to it. It would, however, be a complete
+mistake to suppose that agrarian disorder, even in its worst aspects, has
+become permanently a thing of the past in Ireland, or that this
+destructive curse of Irish social life has not immense influence even at
+this moment, though its outward manifestations have been greatly changed.
+It was, so to speak, only yesterday that, under the auspices of the Land
+and the National Leagues, there was the most frightful outbreak of
+agrarian crime that had been seen since the great tithe conflict; it
+assumed the proportions, in fact, of a horrible servile war; and shallow,
+indeed, the understanding must be which imagines that this state of things
+can never recur. If open agrarian disorder, too, has been largely
+diminished, the spirit of agrarian disorder is still strong; and it is
+doing infinite mischief in many parts of Ireland. Steadily adhering to the
+precepts laid down by Parnell, the United Irish League has brought the
+detestable system of 'boycotting' to a hideous perfection in several
+counties; whole districts are subject to this secret but villainous
+tyranny; the results are seen in numbers of derelict farms, in hundreds of
+victims writhing under ever-present terror, in an infamous interference
+with trade and industry. This malignant influence is more or less felt
+through nearly the whole of the southern provinces, and even to a
+considerable extent in Ulster; it should be added that the United Irish
+League, for the present, discourages active agrarian crime, though its
+agents hold this force in reserve; it believes it can compass its ends
+without making use of this weapon.[17]
+
+A few words must be said, in this short survey, on the organisations that
+uphold the Christian faith in Ireland. The disestablished Anglican Church
+has certainly made progress in spiritual life; it has more moral and even,
+perhaps, social influence than when it was an appurtenance of the Erastian
+Castle. It has been admirably administered and ruled; the uses of
+adversity have been sweet to it, and it has been successfully launched on
+its new career; this is a strong proof of the inherent energy and capacity
+of the Anglo-Protestant Irish people. Very different, too, from what had
+been expected, moderation and wisdom prevail in its councils; its clergy
+are sincerely pious, but not given to extreme doctrines; its members are
+for the most part free from the narrow sectarian views which had formerly,
+not without reason, been laid to their charge. Its funds, amassed by good
+management, are, for the present, ample; but the rapid impoverishment of
+the landed gentry, the class from which it chiefly obtains support, and
+the confiscation with which they are threatened, no doubt expose it to
+future dangers; and it must always be the Church of a small minority,
+surrounded by influences hostile to it, but a Church which the State is
+bound to protect. The Presbyterian Church of Ireland has but little
+changed; it has felt the effect of the great religious movement, which has
+stirred the Three Kingdoms in the last half-century, and it is less
+rationalistic than it once was; but it is still what it always was, a
+powerful centre of the faith of John Knox, with a communion of strong
+democratic sympathies. The Catholic Church of Ireland still rests on the
+old foundations; but it is hardly the unshaken structure it was in the
+last generation. Its material resources have enormously increased; its
+fine edifices spread over the land; it still exercises immense influence
+over probably nine-tenths of Catholic Ireland. But a party has been
+growing up within it which resents, and has even defied, its pretensions;
+and though the power it possesses is, in the main, beneficent in the
+extreme, this has too often been abused in the domain of politics, and
+especially of late in Irish landed relations. The priesthood still largely
+direct their flocks, but they are more dependent on them than they once
+were; had it been otherwise, they would have hardly conformed to the
+bidding of the Land and the National Leagues, as unhappily they did in too
+many instances. Their leading men perceived from the first that these
+conspiracies were destructive of their moral influence; and had the whole
+body of the clergy received a just provision from the State, it would all
+but certainly have condemned the methods of the Leagues as these were
+decisively condemned by Rome. For the rest, the Catholic Church of Ireland
+is no friend of Protestant England, and of many of the institutions that
+exist in Ireland; but this has been inevitable from the events of Irish
+history; and whatever may be said, it has been essentially an ally of the
+State, by reason of its great religious authority. And if properly
+understood, it is a mighty conservative power, which ought if possible to
+be won over to the side of order and law; this is an ample, if there were
+no other, reason that statesmen should comply with its most reasonable
+demand, and remove the grievance, in high Catholic education, that only
+blind bigotry can deny.
+
+The administration of justice in Ireland is better, on the whole, than it
+was in the early Victorian era. It is not only that the law's delay has
+been to a considerable extent, remedied, as it has been, in England, by an
+improved procedure. Traces of Protestant ascendency were to be seen on
+the Irish Bench sixty years ago, though these were evanescent and few;
+such a trial as that of O'Connell in 1844, marked by partiality and even
+by wrong, would be simply impossible at the present time. Trial by jury,
+however, in Ireland too often reflects the animosities and prejudices of
+class, and is liable to grave perversion and errors; it is sometimes
+necessary, in causes where religious or political feeling is engaged, to
+make a careful selection in forming juries, in order that common right
+should be done; this inevitable, but invidious, process, held up to
+execration by the name of 'packing,' is certainly a matter that causes
+regret. The fairness seen in the administration of the law in Ireland has
+been strikingly illustrated of late years; leaders and agents of the Land
+and the National Leagues have had to answer for their offences in the
+inferior courts; but despite rabid clamour against what is called
+'coercion,' the conduct of these inquiries has not been really impugned. A
+laudable attempt, however, to make the magisterial bench more popular, has
+lately placed on it an order of men, of whom some have abused their power;
+these instances, nevertheless, have not been frequent; the experiment
+cannot be pronounced a failure. The intellect of Ireland is not so
+fruitful as it was in the generation before the union; she has no
+political thinkers to be named with Burke, no writer of fiction equal to
+Maria Edgeworth, no dramatist to be compared to Sheridan, no orators who
+have reached the heights of eloquence reached by Grattan, Curran, Plunket,
+and other glories of her defunct Parliament. But there has been progress
+in this respect within the last sixty years; Ireland cannot boast of such
+public men as O'Connell, Sheil, and even Spring Rice; but she possesses
+Dufferin in the diplomatic sphere, and Lecky, and one or two others of
+repute in that of letters; she has only recently lost Lord Cairns and Lord
+Russell. The improvement of primary education in Ireland has been
+immense; the land is full of elementary schools, which, in the last
+generation, were, comparatively, very few, and though a considerable part
+of the population is still illiterate, the greater part, whose fathers
+were sunk in ignorance, has felt the good influence of the light of
+knowledge. High education, too, has advanced in Ireland; Trinity College
+is greater than before as a place of learning; if two of the Queen's
+Colleges have certainly failed, the Royal University has been, in a sense,
+successful. But, as I shall point out, in subsequent pages, University
+education in Ireland remains defective; a University for the Irish
+Catholic upper middle class is a requirement rightly demanded from
+Parliament. As for Irish secondary education, it is still backward, but
+there is hope of improvement in this respect; the general standard of
+Irish education, it should be added, is, except at Trinity College, low,
+though this has been inevitable if we look back at the events of history.
+Irish opinion generally still embodies the deep-seated animosities and
+strife of race and faith, at least as fully as it ever did; with few
+exceptions this appears in the tone of the newspaper press. The utterances
+of many of the self-styled 'Nationalist' journals have been far more
+hostile to the State, and are conceived in a much worse spirit, than those
+of the same class of journals in O'Connell's day.
+
+If we examine the condition of Ireland, as a whole, we see that there has
+been some material progress, but with retrogression in important respects;
+and if a certain measure of good has been done, great wrong and evil have
+been accomplished, in the principal and the most far-reaching of her
+social relations. Her moral and political progress has been at least
+doubtful; notwithstanding immense and searching reforms, the mass of the
+population is more disaffected than of old; discontent largely pervades
+the classes most loyal to the State; if the mere power of government has
+increased, its beneficent influence is but little recognised; the great
+body of the community maintains a hostile attitude. The crooked has not
+been made straight in Ireland, nor the rough places plain; a state of
+society exists, in which, as the Greek poet said, 'the fountains flow
+backwards, and things are out of joint.' An old order has nearly passed
+away; but the new order that is replacing it is but of little promise; a
+type of society has been well-nigh broken up, but a strong and solid type
+is not being formed in its stead; at all events, in the phrase of Bacon,
+the time is still distant 'when the strings of the Irish harp will all be
+in tune;' many respond to the player's hand in discord. 'The Constitution
+in Ireland,' Peel once exclaimed, 'is not the British Constitution, but
+its ghastly image;' let us see what it is in Ireland at the present time.
+The Sovereign is, in England, a main pillar of the State; he is a great
+political and social force; the Monarchy is enthroned in the heart of the
+nation. In Ireland he is almost an unknown name, associated with not a few
+evil memories; his influence, which ought to be immense over a Celtic
+race, has never made itself sensibly felt. In England Parliament responds
+to the national will, and has gathered the reverence of ages around it; in
+Ireland it is a foreign and alien assembly, with which the mass of the
+people has no sympathy. In England the aristocracy is at the head of
+public affairs, leads society, commands universal respect; in Ireland it
+has lost all authority; has no weight in the National Councils; has no
+popular support, is even disliked at the Castle. In England the middle
+class is enormously strong, and is the best bulwark of order and law; in
+England the democracy is almost wholly free from revolutionary ideas, as
+regards property, and seeks reforms by constitutional methods. In Ireland,
+it is unhappily quite otherwise; the middle class is comparatively weak,
+and, in its lower strata, is opposed to the existing order of things; the
+democracy is an easily led multitude, ready at its leaders' bidding to
+rush into socialistic courses. In England, too, the Commonwealth is
+completely secure; in Ireland there is literally no Commonwealth; and such
+organisations as the Land, the National, and the United Irish Leagues, are
+dangerous symptoms of a kind of Jacobin antipathy to the State. The words
+of Peel are still unhappily true; but painful as the contrast he pointed
+out is, even this is not the worst circumstance in the present condition
+of Irish affairs. What, I think, most alarms a reflecting mind, is the
+restlessness that pervades the mass of the people, an eagerness for some
+undefined change, a demand for the universal spoliation of a class, a
+sense of insecurity spreading far and wide, a neglect of the pursuits of
+calm industry in the hope of what a revolution may effect, an instability
+in the social fabric from top to bottom. The agitation, the disorder, and,
+I will add, the vicious legislation of late years, will, however, largely
+explain these phenomena.
+
+Lord Salisbury's Ministry came into office, six years ago, at the head of
+the most powerful majority that had been returned to the House of Commons
+since the great Reform era. The time was singularly opportune to consider
+the state of Ireland, and to deal with the Irish questions that required
+sound and wise treatment. The Opposition was paralysed by a rout at the
+polls; the National League conspiracy showed few signs of life; the
+'Nationalist' party was rent asunder; the community was more quiescent
+than it had been for years. It would be unfair to deny that, since it
+acquired power, the Government has been beset by many and grave obstacles
+in legislating on domestic subjects; it has been encompassed by a sea of
+foreign troubles; it has had to conduct the protracted war in South
+Africa. It would be absurd, too, to expect that it could, once for all,
+have placed Irish affairs permanently on a secure basis; this can only be
+the result of the wisdom of years aided by the healing influence of time.
+But it has disappointed enlightened Irish opinion; it has not done, or
+even tried to do, what it might have accomplished. Undoubtedly parts of
+its policy have been good; it has effected something, if not much, in
+developing the material resources of the west of Ireland, and in
+mitigating the danger and the stress of Irish poverty; it has carried on
+the excellent work of Mr. Arthur Balfour in this respect; the Department
+of Agriculture it has lately formed will, not improbably, be of real use
+in promoting industry and self-reliance among the peasantry, on the
+principles advocated, a century and a half ago, by Berkeley. But
+commendation, I think, must here end; the Government, I believe, has made
+grave mistakes; it has assuredly not successfully dealt with the great
+'Case of Ireland,' greater now than in the days of Molyneux and Swift. It
+has not reduced the excessive representation of Ireland in the House of
+Commons; until this is done the Union will not be secure. It has
+disregarded the verdict of the important Commission which has declared
+that Ireland has been immensely overtaxed for years; here it defies
+universal Irish opinion; and having pledged itself to make a further
+inquiry, it has not hitherto taken a step to redeem its pledge. It is
+divided on the question of high education in Ireland, and professes that
+this must be an 'open question,' as if this was not unwise and perilous;
+and though it has appointed a Commission to report on the subject,
+Catholic Ireland very possibly may not obtain the place of learning which
+it is entitled to demand. Above all, on the capital question of the Irish
+land, the Government has certainly all but ignored the recommendations of
+a Commission chosen by itself, and has refused to lessen the injustice
+proved to have been done wholesale; like its predecessors, in the case of
+the Encumbered Estates Act, it is still bent on agrarian legislation that
+has done infinite mischief. Its administration, too, up to this has not
+been successful; it has allowed the United Irish League to grow up and to
+gain strength, with far-spreading evil results; its conduct of Irish
+affairs has been weak and empirical, and notably marked by false
+optimistic fancies. Of late there has been improvement in this respect; we
+can only hope it will not be abortive.
+
+'In this gigantic body,' Macaulay exclaimed fifty-seven years ago, 'there
+is one vulnerable part near the heart.'[18] The Empire has expanded into
+ampler proportions than those described by the orator; its subject kings,
+dominations, princedoms, powers, above all, its myriads of many races and
+tongues, are united by far more durable ties than those which held it
+together in a generation that has passed away. Four years ago, Canada sent
+messengers from her great lakes, Hindustan representatives of her ancient
+dynasties, the great island continent envoys from her free nations, to do
+homage to Queen Victoria; the pageant, gathered 'within London's streaming
+roar,' was a magnificent spectacle of world-wide loyalty. England has seen
+another and a still more wonderful sight; the martial sons of our great
+self-governing colonies have flocked in thousands to do battle in her
+cause, in the distant and ill-known wastes of South Africa; in a long,
+bloody, and sometimes disastrous conflict, they have proved themselves to
+be worthy companions in arms of the offspring of the soldiery of Blenheim
+and Waterloo; they have fought and bled for England as if she was their
+common country. But Ireland, as regards the mass of the people, has, on
+both occasions, stood sullenly aloof; her heart has gone out in sympathy
+with the Boers; she remains, for the most part, hostile to our rule and
+disloyal. It is mere foolishness to shut our eyes to plain facts; still
+more so to join in the false paeans of interested partisans, and ignorant
+scribblers, who announce that because Ireland is, on the surface,
+comparatively at peace, she is in every sense a contented or a happy land,
+free from grave elements of political and social danger. She is still the
+'vulnerable part at the heart of the Empire;' the spectre at the great
+national festival; the warning token, as in the case of the Oriental
+despot, that human grandeur and power are, in the nature of things,
+mortal. She is still, as she was in the day of Spenser, a malign influence
+across the path of our greatness, a riddle difficult to understand and
+interpret; the many problems she still presents to the statesman are
+perplexing in the extreme, and await solution. That any policy will
+suddenly remove the many evils apparent in her organic structure is a
+delusion a rational mind rejects; the deep-seated ills in that distempered
+frame may never be completely and finally cured. Something effectual,
+nevertheless, may, I think, be done; I proceed to examine, in the
+following chapters, the 'Present Irish Questions' that confront our
+rulers; and to consider what the amending hand may accomplish.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE
+
+    The question of Home Rule not extinct--The reasons--Butt's scheme of
+    Home Rule--It is denounced and ridiculed by Mr. Gladstone, and
+    defeated in the House of Commons--Death of Butt--The Home Rule
+    movement becomes allied with a foreign conspiracy--Davitt and
+    Parnell--The Land League--Mr. Gladstone's surrender to it--The
+    movement makes no progress in the Parliament of 1880-85--The General
+    Election of 1885--Mr. Gladstone suddenly adopts the policy of Home
+    Rule--The probable reasons--The Home Rule Bill of 1886--Its nature and
+    tendencies--Decisive objections to the measure--It is rejected at the
+    General Election of 1886, having been previously rejected in the House
+    of Commons--Policy and conduct of Mr. Gladstone--The Home Rule
+    movement makes some progress in England, and why--The Home Rule Bill
+    of 1893--It is much worse than that of 1886--The reasons--It is
+    rejected by the House of Lords--Home Rule under different forms--The
+    Union must be maintained--Proposal that Parliament should occasionally
+    sit in Dublin--The over-representation of Ireland should be redressed.
+
+
+Home Rule, it is very generally assumed, has vanished into the domain of
+extinct politics. Unlike what had been the case from 1886 to 1895, when
+this was the main of our domestic questions, Home Rule was scarcely
+referred to at the late election; it will receive little countenance at
+the hands of the present House of Commons, however Irish Nationalists may
+persist in urging their demand. It would, nevertheless, be imprudent to
+believe that this policy, as has been said, 'is as dead as Queen Anne,' as
+impossible as a return to Protection or to an unreformed Parliament.
+Isaac Butt's scheme of Home Rule was treated with scorn and ridicule by
+Mr. Gladstone during many years; Mr. Gladstone was the author of the Bills
+of 1886 and 1893, embodying Home Rule in forms few will now approve of;
+and he left nothing undone to convert them into law. At the General
+Election of 1880, Home Rule was regarded as a mere Irish craze, and hardly
+a candidate could be found, in England and Scotland, to consent to an
+inquiry upon the subject; within six years Home Rule was a Ministerial
+measure; and though the House of Commons pronounced against it, and its
+decision was emphatically ratified at the General Election of 1886, still,
+on this occasion, the votes in favour of Home Rule were not much less
+numerous than those cast against it.[19] In 1892 England condemned Home
+Rule, if not as decisively as six years before; but Ireland, Scotland, and
+Wales declared for it; and a Home Rule Bill received the sanction of the
+House of Commons, which, but for the resistance made by the House of
+Lords, would now be a fundamental law of these realms. It deserves notice,
+too, that not one of the Liberal leaders, although, as a rule, they
+avoided the subject, repudiated this policy at the late election; two or
+three, indeed, gave it a qualified support; and it is evident that they
+keep the question in reserve, in the hope of turning it to account at a
+more convenient season. Nor can it be denied, as long as Ireland can send
+more than eighty Nationalists into the House of Commons, pledged to insist
+on Home Rule as their country's right, that the subject must command more
+or less attention; for many reasons it is impossible to ignore the claims
+of a representation so large in numbers. It must be added that, under our
+system of party government, especially as this has existed of late years,
+a considerable group of politicians, with a fixed purpose, can effect much
+by throwing its weight indifferently into the Ministerial or the
+Opposition scale, and giving its support to either side, in order to
+compass its own ends; it has, sometimes with successful results, swayed
+majorities by these means, and not in vain. This is the hope of the Irish
+Nationalist leaders; 'let parties in the House of Commons,' they cynically
+argue, 'be equally divided, as must at some time happen,' and 'we shall
+gain Home Rule from either Tories or Whigs, if we assist either by our
+votes to keep them in office.' It cannot be said, if we look back at some
+political events within the last twenty years, that this expectation is
+wholly groundless; and though I am convinced it will not be realised, its
+existence alone suffices to prove that Home Rule cannot yet be dismissed
+as outside the sphere of practical politics.
+
+Home Rule, therefore, is a 'Present Irish Question,' and if not at this
+moment urgent, it remains the most important of Irish questions, for it
+directly affects the fortunes of the Three Kingdoms. It is necessary,
+accordingly, to examine it, in its principles at least; and an inquiry is
+opportune, at this juncture, for the subject can be fairly discussed in
+its different bearings, apart from the obscuring influences of national
+and party prejudice, and especially of political passion. Isaac Butt was
+the true author of the conception of Home Rule; for though a movement in
+favour of a Repeal of the Union had become dangerously active in 1843-44,
+and had been feebly intermittent since that period, this peculiar
+modification of the arrangements made at the Union, in fixing the
+relations between Great Britain and Ireland, was wholly an idea of that
+distinguished lawyer. The occasion, on which this scheme was put forward,
+was not a little remarkable for various reasons. Mr. Gladstone had just
+disestablished the Anglican Church in Ireland, and had disendowed it, to a
+considerable extent; this policy was angrily resented by a party of Irish
+Protestants; for the maintenance of the Established Irish Church had been
+made an essential condition of the Treaty of Union. These men, who were
+not without energy and parts, declared that a great international compact
+had been broken; and they gradually obtained the support of leaders of the
+'Young Ireland' following, of survivors of the 'Tail' of O'Connell, and
+even of adherents of the Fenian cause, all, in different degrees, opposed
+to the Union. Butt became the head and spokesman of this curiously
+assorted band, composed of essentially discordant elements; but he
+endeavoured to combine it into a strong Parliamentary force, by
+propounding a plan of Home Rule for Ireland, which he had thought out with
+patience and care, his hope being that this would unite his followers, and
+that his project would at least be entertained in Parliament, and would
+not be as hopeless as an attempt to repeal the Union. His views are set
+forth in his 'Irish Federalism,' a long-forgotten work, but which, even
+now, may be read with profit. Butt professed, and I have no doubt
+sincerely, that he did not seek to disturb the Union, and that the
+Imperial Parliament was to remain as it was; but he proposed to give
+Ireland a Parliament of her own, with full powers of legislation on Irish
+affairs, and an Executive practically appointed by this, which would have
+the government of Ireland in its hands. Having thus called into existence
+an Irish State, possessing State rights of supreme importance, he sought
+to connect Ireland with Great Britain by a Federal tie; representatives
+from Ireland were to repair to the Imperial Parliament, and to vote in
+that assembly on Imperial questions, but not, as I believe Butt meant, on
+those which belonged to England and Scotland.[20]
+
+The cry of Home Rule was welcomed in Ireland by her Catholic masses; at
+the General Election of 1874, sixty men were returned to the House of
+Commons to support this policy, a party formidable in numbers, if not in
+essential strength. Butt brought forward his plan, in outline, on three or
+four occasions; but the question was not discussed with the fulness of
+knowledge and the breadth of view it certainly required; on the whole, it
+was superficially treated. Neither Butt nor his opponents thoroughly
+perceived that his proposals virtually repealed the Union, for if the
+Imperial Parliament was, nominally, to be left intact, a real Parliament
+was to be placed in its stead, in Ireland, which would practically annul
+its effective authority, from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear; and they
+seem not to have understood that 'Irish Federalism' implied Federalism for
+Great Britain to a great extent, and introduced into the Constitution the
+Federal principle with its far-reaching and dangerous effects. Butt's
+scheme, however, was powerfully attacked in its details; by no one so
+powerfully as by Mr. Gladstone, who had lately announced, to an approving
+multitude, that Home Rule was sheer folly or worse, and had exultingly
+asked, 'Can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that, at this
+time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to disintegrate
+the great capital institutions of the country for the purpose of making
+ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind, and crippling any power
+we possess for bestowing benefits, through legislation, on the country to
+which we belong?'[21] Little knowing what the future was to bring forth,
+Mr. Gladstone declared that Home Rule was not to be even thought of, until
+it could be proved that the Irish affairs, to which the Irish Parliament
+was to be confined, could be separated from Imperial and British affairs,
+a partition he evidently deemed impossible; and he insisted that the
+introduction of Irish members into the Imperial Parliament, which,
+according to this plan, was to have nothing to do with Ireland, was not
+only essentially unjust, but involved the absurdity that these men 'were
+to judge as they might think fit of the general affairs of the Empire, and
+also of exclusively English and Scotch questions,' an interpretation not,
+I believe, correct. Home Rule was rejected by overwhelming majorities in
+the Parliament of 1874-80; and at the General Election of the last-named
+year, it found no countenance, I have said, in England or Scotland. The
+subject was scarcely referred to by Mr. Gladstone, wholly preoccupied by
+his Midlothian campaign, and by his persistent efforts to deprive Lord
+Beaconsfield of power.
+
+Butt had sincere reverence for the Constitution and the Law; the Home Rule
+movement, as long as he was at its head, was a constitutional and a lawful
+movement. But this eminent man had been supplanted, by degrees, by a
+politician of a very different nature; and when he had passed away in the
+spring of 1879, Parnell, and what was called the 'active Irish party,'
+which had baffled and incensed the House of Commons, became the directors
+of the Home Rule policy. The character of the movement was almost wholly
+changed; it became associated with a conspiracy hatched in the Far West,
+which aimed at the separation of Ireland from Great Britain; Butt's
+moderate followers fell away from it, especially the band of Protestants
+who had first set it on foot. Meanwhile, American Fenianism, which had in
+vain attempted open rebellion in Ireland in 1865-67, had, at the
+instigation perhaps of Michael Davitt, made another effort to compass its
+ends; the 'New Departure' in treason was made; the Land League was formed
+with the avowed purpose of overthrowing 'Irish Landlordism,' as it was
+called, as being the mainstay of British power in Ireland, and then of
+wresting Ireland by force from her British rulers. But Davitt was not well
+fitted for his work; Parnell became the leader of the Home Rule and the
+Land League movements; and during a short visit to the United States, he
+openly professed that his ultimate aim was 'to break the last link between
+Great Britain and Ireland,' though he was still the chief of an apparently
+constitutional cause. Ere long the Land League, availing itself of a
+season of distress, and subsidised by Fenians across the Atlantic, had
+taken root in different parts of Ireland; and gradually a reign of terror,
+marked by detestable crime, and essentially of the Jacobin type, had
+acquired a frightful ascendency in ten or eleven counties. By this time,
+Mr. Gladstone had become Minister: how he denounced the League in
+passionate language; endeavoured, for a few months, to hold it in check;
+succumbed to it, when he made the 'Kilmainham Treaty;' and, finally, how,
+after declaring that Parnell and his adherents were 'aiming at
+dismemberment through rapine,' he became the author of the Land Act of
+1881, and threw the Irish landed gentry as a sop to Cerberus,--is
+sufficiently known, but I shall recur to the subject. During these years,
+Parnell, artfully playing the double game, which this born conspirator
+especially made his boast, and linking what he called 'a constitutional
+with an illegal movement,' had more than once spoken on behalf of Home
+Rule in the House of Commons, his moderate and even statesmanlike language
+being in marked contrast with his treasonable harangues in Ireland. But
+Parliament had been otherwise engaged with Irish affairs; it had become
+more averse to Home Rule than ever; it had learned what the movement had
+begun to involve, veiled, if not open, rebellion against the State, and it
+voted down the question by immense majorities. Statesmen of all parties,
+Tory, Whig, and Radical, without exception, concurred in this view; Lord
+Salisbury, Lord Spencer, and John Bright alike condemned the very idea of
+Home Rule. Mr. Gladstone indeed asserted afterwards that he had a policy
+of this kind in his thoughts; but if he had, he kept it to himself; it
+cannot be gathered from his speeches of the time; he never breathed to
+his colleagues a word about it; he allowed them to pronounce against Home
+Rule with his full apparent sanction.[22]
+
+Mr. Gladstone's Ministry fell in 1885; Majuba, Gordon, and his Irish
+policy had set the best sense of the country against him. Lord Salisbury's
+Government came in his place; for a short time the tendency, too often
+seen in British parties, to temporise with sedition and even crime in
+Ireland was exhibited with untoward results; the negotiations between
+Parnell and Lord Carnarvon have not yet been explained. At the General
+Election of 1885, Parnell openly took the Conservative side, denounced the
+Liberals in the bitterest language, and perhaps, through the influence of
+the Irish vote, deprived them of a few seats in England. His principal
+object certainly was to increase his own power and that of his band by
+weakening the strongest of British parties; but this association with the
+Conservatives probably lessened the antipathy of their opponents to Home
+Rule, and was not without effect on the events that followed. Ireland,
+however, was by no means a prominent question in this electoral contest;
+the Tory, Whig, and Radical leaders dealt, for the most part, with
+different topics; and though Mr. Gladstone dropped ambiguous phrases,
+which, he ere long contended, indicated his conversion to Home Rule, his
+lieutenants continued to declare against this policy, their chief
+remaining openly in accord with them; indeed, all that could be collected,
+from what he wrote and said, was that he called upon the country to give
+him such decisive support as would make him independent of all Irish
+factions. The result of this General Election, taken as a whole, was to
+gain for the Liberals a majority of some eighty seats in Great Britain;
+but in Ireland it effected a notable change in politics. By a recent,
+and, for Ireland, a most unwise statute, the electoral franchise had been
+assimilated in the Three Kingdoms; political ascendency had, for the first
+time, been secured for the masses of Catholic Ireland, largely an ignorant
+and superstitious multitude; property and intelligence were overwhelmed at
+the polls; and Parnell and his satellites, now called Nationalists, won
+more than eighty seats out of a total of one hundred and three. The
+Liberal majority, therefore, would be effaced should the Irish leader and
+his men give the Conservatives their votes; a weak Government would be the
+inevitable result; Mr. Gladstone, now in his seventy-sixth year, could
+hardly expect to return to office. In these circumstances, it became
+gradually known that Mr. Gladstone had accepted Home Rule in principle,
+and was even prepared to legislate upon the subject. It would be unfair to
+assert that personal motives alone determined this sudden resolve; though
+obviously should the Liberal chief retain the allegiance of his party, and
+draw Parnell and the Nationalists to his side, by inaugurating Home Rule
+as a practical measure, he would inevitably be restored to power with a
+great majority. Mr. Gladstone, ever ready to yield to a popular cry, may
+have believed that five-sixths of Ireland were passionately eager for Home
+Rule; he may have been convinced himself that, as affairs now stood,
+Parliament would well-nigh be reduced to a deadlock should nothing be done
+to redress the balanced state of parties, and that Home Rule was the
+condition of a stable Government; he may have thought that since the
+Conservative dalliance with Parnell, it had become impossible permanently
+to resist this policy; yet these considerations form no apology for the
+conduct of the aged, but most impulsive, statesman. Only a few years
+before large parts of Ireland had been in a state of frightful anarchy; a
+rebellious and socialistic movement against British rule and Irish landed
+property had acquired great force; even at the present time, the National
+League, replacing the Land League, kept disorder prevalent in many
+counties. Was this the moment to effect a revolution in Ireland, to tamper
+with, and to impair, the Union, to hand over the loyalty, the property,
+and the worth of the island to the classes and the men against whom but,
+as yesterday, it had been necessary to put the severest coercion in force?
+
+Lord Salisbury resigned office in the first months of 1886; Mr. Gladstone
+became Prime Minister in his stead. Had parties in the House of Commons
+remained unchanged, the prospect for the old statesman would have been
+auspicious; the Liberals and Nationalists combined would have been
+supreme; Home Rule would have been the fruit of the new alliance. But the
+most distinguished men of the Liberal party, resenting a coalition far
+worse than that of Fox and North, and convinced that Home Rule would be
+ruinous to the State, fell off from their leader in large numbers; the
+powerful Press of Great Britain, with few exceptions, emphatically
+condemned the Minister's conduct. Mr. Gladstone, however, did not pause in
+his violent course; he introduced his first Home Rule Bill in April, 1886.
+I can only glance at the main features of this famous measure, and devote
+to it a passing comment.[23] A Parliament was to be established in the
+Irish capital; this, subject to the limitations set forth in the Bill, was
+practically to exercise supreme power in Ireland. This Parliament was to
+be composed of two Orders, the first containing one hundred and three
+members, and formed of a few Irish peers and of men of some substance; the
+second comprising two hundred and four or two hundred and six members
+elected on the existing democratic franchise. The two Orders were
+ordinarily to sit together; but should differences in legislative
+measures arise, the first Order was, for a short time, to have a
+suspensive veto on the decisions of the second Order, which, however,
+possessing an immense majority, would almost necessarily in the long run
+completely prevail. The Irish Parliament was precluded from legislating on
+many subjects, for the most part Imperial, but partly domestic; it was
+notably to have no control over the Customs and Excise of Ireland, which
+were to be kept in the hands of the Imperial Parliament; and though it was
+permitted to impose any other taxes, the whole revenue of Ireland was to
+pass through the hands of a British official, who was to pay into the
+Imperial Treasury a sum of about four millions sterling, as a contribution
+from Ireland, for Imperial purposes, before the Irish Treasury could
+receive a farthing. Bills voted by the Irish Parliament might be annulled
+by the veto of the Lord-Lieutenant and perhaps of the British Ministry;
+and the Judicial Committee of the English Privy Council, reinforced by a
+small body of Irish judges, was to have the power to pronounce Acts of the
+Irish Parliament void, if inconsistent with its constitutional rights.
+Subject, however, to these restrictions and checks, the Irish Parliament
+was to be a sovereign power in Ireland; it could practically appoint or
+displace the Irish Executive Government; it could enact, change, or repeal
+any laws it should think fit; it could pass any resolutions it pleased; if
+an assembly partly subordinate, it would be largely supreme. Ireland was
+to have no representatives in the Imperial Parliament, though this could
+dispose of the Irish Customs and Excise; no Irish protest could be made at
+Westminster against unjust fiscal exaction, by no means impossible. For
+the rest, the Union was nominally not disturbed, and the Imperial
+Parliament was nominally left intact; but it was declared that the Irish
+Parliament was to possess the rights secured to it, unless these were
+annulled by an Act of the Imperial Parliament, to which the Irish had
+given its consent, or by an Act of the Imperial Parliament, in which
+representatives from Ireland should have a voice.
+
+The Bill was debated with great force of argument, but hardly in its high
+constitutional aspects. Like the plan of Butt, and every plan of the kind,
+it impliedly, if not expressly, repealed the Union, for the very creation
+of an Irish Parliament destroyed the real authority of the Imperial
+Parliament, the symbol and guarantee of the Union, in one of the main
+parts of the Three Kingdoms. It effected a radical change in our polity as
+a whole, for practically it gave birth to three Parliaments, the Irish
+sitting in College Green in Dublin, the British at Westminster without
+Irish members, and the Imperial, properly to be only so-called, when
+assembled upon one great occasion; and, even more distinctly than the
+scheme of Butt, it let the principle of Federation into the constitution
+of the State. And it did all this obscurely, indirectly, and, so to speak,
+with reserve; the hand of a veiled prophet appeared in his work; this must
+have led to endless controversies dangerous in the extreme. Nor did the
+Bill even attempt to mark out the distinction between Irish, British, and
+Imperial affairs, which its author had declared was a _sine qua non_; this
+distinction, in fact, cannot be drawn, as Mr. Gladstone acknowledged
+afterwards; Irish, British, and Imperial affairs so run into each other,
+that they cannot be divided into separate heads, to be under the
+jurisdiction of different Parliaments. The conditions, too, which Mr.
+Gladstone described, as essential to a measure of Home Rule, were, in no
+sense, fulfilled. 'The Unity of the Empire,' that is, of Great Britain and
+Ireland, as Mr. Gladstone no doubt had in his mind, was not secured, or,
+even in name, preserved; the subordinate Irish Parliament and its superior
+might, and probably would, come in serious conflict; this was absolutely
+inconsistent with the unity to be maintained. The 'political equality of
+England, Scotland, and Ireland' was not assured; the Bill placed Ireland
+in a degraded position, especially in all that dealt with taxation, and
+through the exclusion of Irish members from the British House of Commons.
+It did not 'produce an equitable distribution of Imperial burdens,' for
+the financial arrangements were thoroughly unjust, and subjected Ireland
+arbitrarily to a most galling tribute, without giving her the means of
+making a complaint. It did not 'provide safeguards for the minority,' that
+is, for the loyal classes of Protestant and Catholic Ireland; it handed
+them over to an Irish Parliament, certain to be for years an instrument of
+their avowed enemies; and its supplement, a Land Purchase Bill, did not
+furnish a third part of the funds required to buy out the Irish landlords,
+a class which, Mr. Gladstone declared, it was 'an obligation of duty and
+honour' to save harmless, and which he admitted an Irish Parliament would,
+probably, plunder and destroy. Lastly, the Bill did not secure 'finality;'
+it was in no sense in the nature of a 'permanent settlement,' as
+subsequent events have conclusively proved.[24]
+
+It may be urged, however, that even if this measure made a fundamental
+change in the constitution of these realms, and did not satisfy the
+conditions its author laid down, still the real question was, would it
+bring peace to Ireland, and improve the relations in which she stood
+towards Great Britain? Mr. Gladstone and his followers assumed that this
+would be the case; the 'Union of Hearts' was to accomplish marvels; but
+this assumption was without the slightest warrant. The most favourable way
+to consider the subject, from the point of view of the Home Rule party, is
+to suppose that Great Britain and Ireland were two communities, in no
+sense estranged from each other, and that Ireland was not a widely divided
+people; and that both were not unwilling to accept the Bill, as a kind of
+modification of the partnership made by the Treaty of Union. This
+supposition would be obviously contrary to the facts; but, even on this
+supposition, the proposed measure would have completely failed to attain
+its objects, and, on any ordinary view of human nature, would have
+exasperated Great Britain and Ireland alike, and could not have been a
+'message of peace' to Ireland. The Parliament at Westminster would soon
+have found out that its real sovereignty in Ireland had been practically
+destroyed; that the Irish Parliament could, in many ways, interfere with
+British and Imperial affairs; that most of the checks on its powers were
+of little avail; this would certainly deeply offend the deceived British
+nation. The Irish Parliament, on the other hand, would necessarily resent
+the harsh limitations by which it had been bound; yet as it had most of
+the powers of a real Parliament, it could very effectually evade or impair
+these; could, through its Executive, largely annul them; could, at least,
+make continual and powerful protests. Discord, and perhaps conflict,
+between Great Britain and Ireland, from the nature of the case, would be
+the result; and, besides, there were special provisions in the Bill which
+would be deemed intolerable by five-sixths of Irishmen. Even loyal Ireland
+would not endure the banishment of Irish representatives from the British
+House of Commons, which would have power to impose the Irish Customs and
+Excise; this would be taxation without representation, in the very worst
+sense. It was monstrous that Ireland was to contribute a large sum for the
+charge of the Empire and yet was to have no voice in the Empire's affairs;
+it was humiliating that a British official was to have absolute control
+over the whole Irish revenue. All this was subjecting Ireland to a
+degrading tribute; it should be added that the prerogative of the English
+Privy Council, to set aside practically Acts of the Irish Parliament,
+would have provoked the deepest and most widespread discontent. The Bill,
+in a word, revealed strange ignorance of the feelings of mankind; it would
+have worked on the assumption only that human beings in Great Britain and
+Ireland were without passions and wills of their own; it would have been
+blown to the winds, when put to the test.
+
+But 'the circumstances,' to adopt the words of Burke, 'are what render
+every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind;'[25]
+what were the circumstances in the present instance? England and Catholic
+Ireland had been long opposed; the Land and the National Leagues formed a
+conspiracy against our rule in Ireland; England had interests in Ireland
+of the first importance; she had a large community of her own blood and
+faith in Ireland, attached to the Union and the old mother country.
+Ireland had been distracted for ages by feuds of race and religion;
+Protestant and Catholic Ireland stood apart from each other; the Irish
+Parliament, created by the Bill, would certainly be an instrument of the
+heads of the Catholic masses, supported by Parnell and his band, and by
+Fenians across the Atlantic. Under these conditions, Home Rule would have
+been a fatal gift, ruinous to Great Britain and Ireland alike. Suppose,
+for example, that an Irish Parliament, established in College Green, since
+1886, had ruled Ireland during the war in South Africa. It would
+unquestionably have taken the side of the Boers, as the Nationalist
+leaders have openly done; and it would have possessed the means of doing
+infinite mischief. It could have passed resolutions condemning the war;
+have called on Irishmen to keep aloof from the British army; have
+discouraged recruiting throughout Ireland; have sent messages of good will
+to the Boer Government. But probably it would have gone far beyond these,
+its constitutional, rights; it could have winked at the preparation of an
+armed force in Ireland to be despatched to the aid of the Boers; it
+could have invited Foreign Powers to put a stop to the conflict; nay, it
+could have laid hands on the Irish taxes, and refused to 'pay tribute to
+an alien Government;' and what, in these cases, would have been England's
+means of obtaining redress, save by the power of the sword? In the
+instance of other wars, the same course would be followed; we cannot
+forget that at Nationalist meetings, the Mahdi, the Dervishes, nay, all
+our enemies, were the objects of the applause of shouting Irish
+multitudes. And as the Irish Parliament could injure England in war, so it
+could embarrass and annoy her, in a hundred ways, in peace. There was
+nothing in the Bill to prevent Protection in Ireland, for the Irish
+Parliament could vote bounties on Irish exports; there was nothing to
+prevent the issue of Irish assignats, to mask confiscation of different
+kinds; and recourse would not improbably be had to these very expedients.
+It is unnecessary to dwell on what would be the legislation of the Irish
+Parliament at home, and the administration of the Executive it would have
+a right to set up. Composed as it would be, it would abolish 'landlordism'
+by a stroke of the pen, or by merely preventing the recovery of rent; it
+would simply turn society upside down, and establish a Catholic ascendency
+by many degrees worse than Protestant ascendency ever was; it would, in a
+word, let revolution loose in the island. Protestant Ireland would, as a
+matter of course, resist; a savage war of race and creed would certainly
+follow; the scenes of 1690 and 1798 might well be repeated; and the
+struggle would end in general bankruptcy. England, in her own interest,
+and in that of her friends in Ireland, would assuredly intervene, under
+conditions like these; and the concession of Home Rule would probably lead
+to reconquest.
+
+The Home Rule Bill of 1886--apart from the fatal evils it must have
+caused--placed Ireland in such an inferior position, that every Irishman
+of spirit ought to have treated it with contempt; it was so dangerous to
+Great Britain, and, indeed, to the Empire, that John Bright declared that
+not twenty English members approved of it at heart. Mr. Gladstone himself,
+it should be remarked, regarded it with no doubtful misgivings; he
+presented it to the House of Commons as 'but a choice of evils;' his
+measure itself, in many passages, revealed the profoundest distrust of the
+Parliament he proposed to create. Parnell, imposing his imperious will on
+his followers, accepted the Bill with professions of delight; this was
+effusively welcomed by the emotional statesman, deceived by an
+unscrupulous plotter, over and over again; it is now known this was a mere
+pretence; Home Rule, under the conditions of the scheme, would have been
+made a stepping-stone only for larger demands; and this, indeed, might
+have been easily foreseen. The Bill was rejected by a majority which did
+not express the true sense of the House of Commons, and showed how strong
+may be the ties of party; the great body of the Liberals, as, doubtless,
+they now bitterly regret, threw in their lot with Mr. Gladstone in his
+most reckless venture. It is of more importance to observe what the views
+on the subject were of the conspirators in America, who had set the Land
+and National Leagues on foot, and had supplied almost the whole of their
+funds; without their assistance the movement led by Parnell would probably
+have never struggled into life. The prospect opened by the Home Rule Bill
+was thus welcomed by the Clan na Gael, the most energetic and daring of
+the Fenian parties; it will be noted that it was to be a means only to a
+very decisive end. 'The achievement of a National Parliament gives us a
+footing on Irish soil; it gives us the agencies and instrumentalities of a
+government _de facto_, at the very commencement of the Irish struggle. It
+places the government of the land in the hands of our friends and
+brothers. It removes the Castle's rings, and gives us what we may well
+express as the plant of an armed revolution.'[26] And at a great Fenian
+meeting held after the rejection of the Bill, one of the leading speakers
+dropped these significant words: 'We have no desire to force the hand of
+Parnell, or to drive the Irish people into war unprepared. All that we
+demand is this, and we will be satisfied with nothing less--that no leader
+of the Irish people, who is supposed to speak for them, shall commit
+himself, or them, to accepting as a final settlement, bills of relief
+unworthy of the dignity of Ireland's national demand. We are perfectly
+willing to see them accept such bills as that of Gladstone, as a
+settlement on account, but that must not be accepted as closing the
+transaction. We see no wisdom in it. It lowers the tone of the national
+cause. It lowers the spirit of the true people. To ask them to subside to
+a species of mere provincialism is an outrage on their struggle of seven
+hundred years for liberty. We admit that it may be good policy on the part
+of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Davitt to be what is called moderate in tone; but
+for us, who represent the national idea of the Irish people, it would be
+worse than folly to conceal our sentiments. We recognise that Ireland is
+incapable of fighting at present.'[27]
+
+Mr. Gladstone dissolved Parliament when it had thrown the Bill out; he
+appears really to have believed that the nation would give its sanction to
+Home Rule. At the General Election of 1886, he exerted himself 'in the
+sacred cause of Ireland,' with the energy he had shown in his Midlothian
+Campaign; he associated his new Irish policy with appeals to the
+multitude; the opposition to him was that 'of the classes against the
+masses;' in a word, the enthusiastic, and perhaps sincere, convert played,
+with little scruple, the part of a mere demagogue. But England pronounced
+against him, with no uncertain voice; 'men of education and property,' as
+he sadly acknowledged, resisted him with the steadfastness of the English
+nature; a great majority was sent into the House of Commons pledged
+against Home Rule; Lord Salisbury's Government came again into office. It
+deserves special notice that the rejection of the Bill did not, as was
+predicted would be the case, arouse anything like real discontent in
+Ireland, or cause her Catholic community to stir; this spectacle, which
+has been seen over and over again, proves how little the main body of the
+Irish people care for a political revolution of the kind; and how Home
+Rule, as Parnell and his band conceived it, was the work of a conspiracy
+of foreign origin, seeking, through it, to subvert British rule in
+Ireland. The real purpose of these men was very clearly shown at a
+Convention assembled at Chicago, in the summer of 1886; speeches of the
+most incendiary nature were made; and two of Parnell's envoys, despatched
+to collect funds 'for the cause,' announced that, after the failure of Mr.
+Gladstone's measure, their 'duty was to make the government of Ireland by
+England impossible.' Two or three years of trouble in Ireland followed; it
+is unnecessary to refer to these at any length. A season of agricultural
+distress and of a fall in prices made the payment of Irish rents
+difficult; the occasion was seized by the heads of the National League,
+which had gradually been acquiring formidable strength; the 'Plan of
+Campaign' was set afoot; and another attack was made on the Irish landed
+gentry, with the ultimate object of paralysing the Irish Government, as
+had been solemnly proclaimed at Chicago. The social disorder of this
+period was not so deeply marked with horrible deeds of blood, as the
+Saturnalia of the Land League were; but the movement was, perhaps, not
+less dangerous; the cruel practice of 'boycotting' was reduced to a
+system, and caused widespread misery and distress; an agrarian war was
+carried on in a few counties; judges, magistrates, and juries were
+terrorised in the administration of the law; and there were too numerous
+instances of atrocious crimes. But a firm hand was at the helm of the
+Irish Government; Mr. Balfour did not palter with sedition and treason;
+the conspiracy was before long put down; and it should be added that
+'boycotting' and 'the Plan of Campaign' were unequivocally condemned at
+Rome.
+
+In this struggle between the forces of disorder and law, the Rump of the
+Liberal party, which had accepted Home Rule, freely declared itself on the
+side of the National League and of anarchy. Mr. Gladstone, however,
+towered over his fellows; his vehement and, when aroused, unscrupulous
+nature, has never been more unfortunately displayed. He had been three
+times at the head of the State, charged with the administration of Irish
+affairs; the Government in office was engaged in a conflict with a
+conspiracy of no contemptible strength; yet Mr. Gladstone did not shrink
+from throwing his full weight into the scale against it, and giving his
+sanction to the movement led by Parnell and his creatures. His conduct was
+so flagrantly at odds with his former self, that, but for the gravity of
+the situation, it would have been ludicrous; it consisted in adoring what
+he had burned, and burning what he had adored; nothing like it had been
+seen since Fox, breaking away from the traditions of British statesmen,
+flung himself into the arms of Jacobin France, and rejoiced at every
+reverse that befell England.[28] A remarkable episode in the politics of
+the day was not without real effect on events that followed. The acts of
+the Land and, in part, of the National Leagues, and of the leaders of the
+revolutionary movements which had convulsed Ireland, were investigated by
+the judges of the Special Commission appointed by Parliament for the
+purpose; the inquiry, which lasted many months, was of supreme importance;
+such a damning sentence was never pronounced on a body of public men, as
+that pronounced on Parnell and his followers, though the accusation of
+treason was not brought into question.[29] This decision was sufficient
+for well-informed and sensible men; but Parnell was acquitted on a
+personal, but minor, charge, that of having been the author of the
+well-known forged letters all but approving of the assassinations in the
+Phoenix Park; Mr. Gladstone and his adherents welcomed him as an injured
+martyr; the House of Commons rang with their plaudits when he re-entered
+its walls. For a few months Parnell became a popular personage in
+democratic England; he had negotiations with Mr. Gladstone with respect to
+Home Rule, the tenor of which has not transpired; his satellites appeared
+at many public meetings, and split the ears of the groundlings with
+plausible talk about 'self-government' for Ireland and the 'Union of
+Hearts.' This mystification and falsehood were not without effect; the
+cause of Home Rule made a kind of progress in England; and, strange to
+say, the fall of Parnell which ere long followed--I shall not dwell on its
+squalid and grotesque incidents--had an influence in the same direction.
+Ireland had been brought into a state of comparative repose; the power of
+the National League appeared broken; the formidable leader of the
+conspiracy had left the stage; his adherents were scattered sheep, which
+had not a shepherd. With the ignorance of Irish affairs so common to
+Englishmen, and the desire, partly selfish, but partly generous, to 'get
+rid of the Irish difficulty,' by any tolerable means, thousands in the
+constituencies, even in England, lately bitterly hostile to it, were
+gradually won over to the idea of Home Rule.
+
+The General Election of 1892 followed; a number of causes, in addition to
+that I have set forth, contributed to favour the Home Rule movement. The
+'swing of the pendulum,' seen in British politics, since Democracy has
+gained the ascendant, very distinctly appeared; the 'idea that each side
+ought to have its innings' was widely spread; many Unionist seats were
+lost by these means. The extraordinary energy shown by Mr. Gladstone, at
+an age far beyond the ordinary span, had considerable influence on the
+masses; and though his real authority had been long on the wane, he was
+still the popular figure in England and, above all, in Scotland. He had,
+also, carefully kept his Home Rule scheme to himself; it was announced by
+his followers that his next measure for securing 'self-government,' as it
+was called, for Ireland, would be free from the manifest faults of that of
+1886, and would finally, and happily, settle the question. A large part of
+the electorate was gained in this way; but the influence that most
+effectually assisted Mr. Gladstone was, essentially, of a very different
+kind. The Anti-Unionist Liberals had been out of power for many years;
+though they had long been split into separate groups, they resolved to
+combine against the common enemy, and to drive the Unionist Government
+from its seat, by appeals to the ideas they assumed were dominant in
+democratic England and Scotland. The Newcastle programme was
+ostentatiously published; the question of Home Rule was mixed up with
+projects for disestablishing the Church in England and Wales, for the
+destruction or the emasculation of the House of Lords, for enforcing
+temperance by the tyranny of the Local Veto, for extending the suffrage
+and raising the labourer's status; in this way they satisfied themselves
+they 'would sweep the country.' They knew, indeed, that Mr. Gladstone had
+no heart for much of their policy; but his passionate eagerness to
+accomplish Home Rule was notorious; they believed that by giving him a
+cordial support on this question, they would secure his powerful aid for
+the others, and that by the process known as 'log-rolling,' they would
+attain their objects. The Unionist party was weakened at the election; but
+the sanguine hopes of its opponents were not fulfilled. Many of the
+Radical cries were far from popular; they nearly all combined large
+classes against them; England returned a large majority to the House of
+Commons pledged against Home Rule, if not so considerable as six years
+before; and though Scotland and Wales were, in the main, favourable to Mr.
+Gladstone's policy, still the electorate of Great Britain, as a whole,
+pronounced against it. The election in Ireland presented features which,
+with respect to Home Rule, were of marked significance. In 1886, as in
+1885, the educated and upper classes were swamped at the polls, by the
+flood of illiterate and indigent multitudes; the Irish Catholic Church
+used, nay, abused, its immense authority, to secure votes for Mr.
+Gladstone's coming measure. The same spectacle was beheld in 1892; but an
+element of confusion and disorder came in; the leaders of the factions,
+divided by the fall of Parnell, though Nationalists, ferociously flew at
+each other's throats; the election was marked by disgraceful scenes of
+lawlessness. These certainly prefigured what would be the character of a
+future Irish Parliament sitting in College Green.
+
+This election gave Mr. Gladstone a majority of some forty seats in the
+House of Commons, but a majority composed of not well-united elements; and
+the best opinion of England was strongly averse to his policy. But the
+veteran statesman--he was in his eighty-third year--did not pause for a
+moment in his headlong venture, though ominous sounds were being already
+heard; after the resignation of Lord Salisbury, through a weak adverse
+vote, his rival became Prime Minister for the fourth time. He had staked
+everything to obtain the success of the cause to which he had passionately
+devoted his declining years; he brought in his second Home Rule Bill in
+the first months of 1893. The measure had much in common with that of
+1886; but in some respects it was very different, especially in one
+feature of supreme importance. An Irish Parliament was again to be set up
+in Dublin; but it was to be a much smaller body than that proposed by the
+previous Bill; it was to be composed of a Legislative Council of
+forty-eight members only, and of a Legislative Assembly of only a hundred
+and three; these were analogous to the First and Second Orders of 1886,
+but were not to be even half in numbers; and no Irish peers were to have a
+place in the new Parliament. The Legislative Council and Assembly,
+differing here from the original scheme, were to sit, not together, but
+apart; but the Legislative Council, like the First Order, was to have a
+temporary suspensive veto on the Assembly's acts; the Assembly, too, like
+the Second Order, possessing a majority which would place real power in
+its hands; and both bodies, it should be added, being more democratic than
+the two which were to have been created in 1886. The new Irish Parliament,
+like that to be formed seven years before, was restricted by
+limitations--these much the same as those contained in the former Bill--in
+a number of Imperial and domestic matters; it was, like its predecessor,
+to be subjected to the same kind of veto, and to nearly the same authority
+of the English Privy Council. In finance, the 'tribute,' which had been
+loudly condemned by all parties in Ireland, was given up; there was to be
+no British official to lay his hands on Irish revenue, and to divert it
+from its legitimate uses; but the Irish Customs were to be appropriated to
+the Imperial charge, which Ireland was declared to be justly liable to
+pay; and this was a sum of about two millions and a half, with an addition
+for a time of one million, a sum less than the estimate made in 1886. The
+Irish Parliament, however, if thus made largely subordinate, was like the
+Parliament of the preceding Bill, to be in many, and most important,
+respects supreme. It was to rule Ireland as a sovereign power, subject to
+the limitations by which it was to be bound; it could make, change, and
+repeal laws, as regards the Irish community, almost as it pleased; it
+could, in a word, do nearly everything within the province of a real
+Parliament. Above all, it could appoint and control the Irish Executive
+Government, to which the administration of Irish affairs would belong; and
+it would thus have complete power over the most important machinery of the
+State.
+
+The Bills of 1886 and of 1893 so far resembled each other, with some
+distinctions; but, in other respects, they markedly differed. The
+supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, implied but not expressed in the
+first scheme, was unequivocally asserted in the second, though this
+supremacy could not be effective, as respects Ireland. The Imperial
+Parliament was nominally left untouched by both Bills, though this was a
+play on words only; but it was to hold a position in the second it was not
+to hold in the first; the Union was not in terms repealed by either
+measure, though virtually it was repealed by both, through the mere
+creation of an Irish Parliament. The Bill of 1886 had, as its complement,
+a Land Purchase Bill; in fact, both were made parts of the same policy; a
+sum of L50,000,000 was to be an indemnity for Irish landlords who should
+think fit to part with their estates; for Mr. Gladstone, we have seen, had
+declared that it was 'an obligation of duty and honour' to protect this
+order of men; and he asserted that Parliament would, doubtless, vote any
+further sums required, a singular exhibition of credulous hope, for these
+would have amounted to L150,000,000 at least; and he had himself, in a
+speech addressed to Lord George Hamilton, valued the lands of Ireland at
+L300,000,000. But what was to be deemed sacred, in 1886, had a very
+different aspect in 1893; the settlement of the Irish land was, indeed,
+withheld for three years from the Irish Parliament, but, after this brief
+space of time, this was to be certainly left to a body, which Mr.
+Gladstone had evidently thought would make short work of the Irish landed
+gentry, and would drive them, in beggary, out of their own country. These
+differences, however, between the two Bills, sank into insignificance
+compared to a vital distinction which made them essentially unlike each
+other, and made their projects of Home Rule completely dissimilar. The
+exclusion of Irish representatives from the House of Commons at
+Westminster, under the measure of 1886, was palpably unjust, and had been
+condemned with much force of argument. Mr. Gladstone proposed to redress
+this wrong by summoning eighty Irish members into the Imperial House of
+Commons; these were to have no cognisance of British questions, but were
+to have a right to vote on Imperial and even Irish questions, though the
+Imperial Parliament was to have little or no power in Ireland, and an
+Irish Parliament was practically to fill its place, and to have all but
+supreme authority over Irish affairs. This strange expedient obviously
+made the Home Rule schemes of 1886 and 1893 altogether different; but Mr.
+Gladstone never saw the essential distinction; he maintained that the
+inclusion of the Irish members was little more than a detail of the
+measure. It would be perhaps unfair to insist that he introduced this
+immense change in order only to strengthen his already enfeebled party,
+which would be greatly in want of Irish votes at Westminster; more
+probably his intellect, yielding to old age, did not thoroughly grasp all
+that was involved in his project.[30]
+
+The Bill of 1893, from a purely constitutional point of view, was
+infinitely more objectionable than that of 1886. It not only, I have said,
+virtually repealed the Union; it created a kind of Federalism in these
+realms to which there has never been a parallel. The Irish Parliament was
+practically to rule Ireland; no British members were to show their faces
+in it; it was to be all but the sovereign of the Irish State. The British
+Parliament was nominally to be sovereign of the British State;
+representatives from Ireland were not to appear in it, and, in theory,
+they were not to deal with British questions. The Imperial Parliament was
+to be analogous to a supreme Federal Council; this ought to have
+jurisdiction over Imperial affairs alone; but eighty Irish members were to
+have seats in it, and they were to have a right to vote on Imperial and
+Irish questions, though Ireland was to have a separate Parliament of her
+own. This arrangement, in conception, was simply monstrous; it gave
+Ireland powers to which she had no pretence to a claim; it really
+subjected Great Britain to her; it formed a Federation in which a weak and
+small State was to have immense authority over another tenfold as strong;
+it might be described as one-sided Federalism run mad. Passing from the
+main principles to the details of the Bill, this, like its predecessor,
+did not satisfy the conditions Mr. Gladstone had deemed to be essential.
+It did not separate British, Irish, and Imperial affairs; its author
+admitted at last that this was not possible. It asserted the supremacy of
+the Imperial Parliament, and gave it a more imposing position than it had
+under the Bill of 1886; but it did not maintain the Unity of the Three
+Kingdoms; the mere creation of an Irish Parliament placed this in
+jeopardy. It did not provide for the 'political equality' of Great Britain
+and Ireland, for, in contradiction to the measure of seven years before,
+it practically gave Ireland a kind of ascendency; her representatives were
+to possess rights in no sense to be justified. It did not provide an
+'equitable distribution of Imperial burdens;' in this province it would
+have done wrong to Great Britain; for, while it abandoned the odious Irish
+tribute of 1886, and an effective control over Irish revenue, its
+expedient of allocating the Irish Customs, and nothing else, as the only
+source for the payment of Imperial charges, would, in all probability,
+have caused the Imperial Treasury a great loss; the Customs would have
+been enormously reduced by smuggling, to which Irishmen have always been
+much addicted, which the Irish Parliament would have no interest to
+prevent, and which, very likely, it would directly encourage. Again, it
+did not create 'safeguards for the minority;' as we have seen, it threw
+the Irish landed gentry, after a brief respite, to the wolves, that is, to
+the tender mercies of the Irish Parliament; and, like the measure of 1886,
+it took no heed of Protestant and loyal Catholic Ireland, as a whole,
+though this assuredly was 'a minority' that required protection. Finally,
+it could not have effected a 'permanent settlement' of the affairs of
+Ireland; a 'lopsided' and iniquitous arrangement like this would certainly
+have had a very short existence.
+
+The measure of 1893, in short, would have effected a complete revolution
+in the polity of these realms; it would have given the least important of
+the Three Kingdoms an iniquitous authority over the most important; it
+would unnaturally have placed weakness in superiority to power; it would
+have subjected the dominant to the lesser partner; all this, it will be
+observed, followed from the inclusion of Irish representatives in the
+Imperial Parliament, who, though a Parliament in Dublin was to rule
+Ireland, were to have a right to deal with Imperial and Irish questions.
+Mr. Gladstone, I repeat, seems never to have understood the strange and
+ruinous consequences this would involve; but this can be made manifest by
+one or two examples. The Irish members would be excluded from the British
+Parliament, and would have no right to vote on purely British questions,
+say upon the extension of the British railway system, or the
+disfranchisement of an English or Scottish borough. But they would have
+eighty seats in the Imperial Parliament; and as it was impossible to
+separate a number of British questions from those of an Imperial or Irish
+character, they would have a most potent influence over British affairs;
+for example, they could legitimately vote upon such subjects as the
+confidence to be placed in a British Ministry, the financial relations
+between Great Britain and Ireland, or the validity of British incumbrances
+affecting Irish estates. The exclusion, however, of Irish members from the
+British Parliament, and their introduction into the Imperial Parliament,
+would have led to even more disastrous results; it must, in many
+instances, have caused a complete paralysis of the State. This in-and-out
+plan, as it was derisively called, must have made Parliamentary government
+well-nigh impossible; if Irish members were to have a right to vote in the
+same House of Commons on Imperial and Irish questions, but were not to
+have a right to vote on British questions, to vote, say, upon a war with a
+Foreign Power, and upon the domicile and status of Irish subjects, but not
+to vote on matters of purely British commerce, there might, and very often
+would be, two conflicting majorities in the leading House of Parliament;
+Parliamentary affairs would be brought to a stand; the tenure of even the
+strongest Ministry would be utterly insecure. It is needless to point out
+that the relations between Great Britain and Ireland would almost
+certainly have been more strained, under the Bill of 1893, than they would
+have been under that of 1886; and that the government of Ireland by the
+Irish Parliament, would, under both, have been much of the same character.
+The British nation would have been indignant at the humiliation of their
+ancient Parliament, which would be sometimes placed at the mercy of Irish
+members; it would have condemned the weakening in Ireland of its
+authority, through the mere establishment of an Irish Parliament; it would
+have been sorely vexed that Irish smuggling would filch away a large part
+of British revenue. It should be borne in mind, too, that the Irish
+members, who would have been let into the Imperial Parliament, would have
+been more difficult to deal with, by many degrees, more openly disloyal,
+more obstructive, than Irish Nationalists could be, as affairs stand at
+present; they would have the support of the Irish Parliament; the Imperial
+Parliament could hardly impose a check on them. As for the rule of the
+Irish Parliament, within its proper domain, it would have been the same,
+or much the same, under either measure; that is, it would have been a
+succession of angry wranglings with England and oppression in Ireland,
+leading to anarchy and general ruin.
+
+The Home Rule Bill of 1886, in a word, bad measure as it was, was
+innoxious compared to the Home Rule Bill of 1893. The fatal tendency of
+the scheme was quickly perceived; the sound mind of England was profoundly
+stirred; the Bill was publicly burned in the City of London; innumerable
+petitions against it flowed in; an immense assembly, representing loyal
+Catholic and Protestant Ireland, met in the capital, and denounced this
+whole policy in most determined language. As had happened, too, seven
+years before, the Press of Great Britain, all but universally, condemned
+the new measure as hopelessly bad; it was significant that the Liberal
+Press was well-nigh silent, and that Mr. Gladstone was supported by very
+few petitions. The Opposition simply tore the Bill to shreds in the House
+of Commons; but the self-deluded Minister desperately held his course; the
+Radical groups servilely gave him their votes; the process of
+'log-rolling,' never before so recklessly displayed, kept his petty
+majority almost intact, a crying disgrace to any party in the State. At
+last, whether afraid of the country rising against him or yielding to the
+instigation of his Irish allies--his subserviency to their truculence had
+been most painful--Mr. Gladstone forced the measure through the House of
+Commons by a method never employed before; 'closure by compartments,'
+rightly compared to the 'guillotine,' put an end to resistance by
+iniquitous means. The Bill passed the Lower House by thirty-four votes
+only; not half of it had been examined or discussed; the part that had,
+had been so completely transformed, that its parent could hardly have
+known his own offspring. The most notable of these changes was that the
+in-and-out plan was given up; its ruinous effects had been fully dragged
+into the light, but an arrangement, perhaps even worse, had been placed in
+its stead. Ireland was to retain her Parliament in College Green; but the
+eighty Irish members were to have a right to sit in the Imperial
+Parliament, and to vote on all questions, not only Imperial and Irish, but
+strictly British alike. A philosophic and calm-minded writer has indicated
+what this would involve: 'Irish members may disestablish the Church of
+England, though England is to have no voice in the pettiest of Irish
+affairs. Irish members are to be allowed to impose taxes on England, say,
+to double the income tax, though of these taxes no inhabitant of Ireland
+will pay a penny; the Irish delegation, and this is the worst grievance of
+all, is to be enabled, in combination with a British minority, to detach
+Wales from England, or to vote Home Rule for Scotland, or to federalise
+still further the United Kingdom by voting that Man, Jersey, and Guernsey
+shall send members to the Imperial Parliament.'[31] To say that this
+proposal would be unconstitutional would be to do it too much honour; it
+was scandalous in the existing situation of affairs; it implied that heads
+of the National League, leaders of a rebellious and socialistic movement,
+would have the power, without restriction or check, to rule the Imperial
+Parliament, in many instances, with reference to exclusively English and
+Scottish questions; it practically bound Great Britain hand and foot in
+fetters to Ireland; it was rightly called 'an absurd piece of infamy.' It
+is unnecessary to say that the system it would have established could not
+have stood a trial of even three months; England, whenever crossed, would
+have indignantly swept it away. But Nemesis had commended the poisoned
+chalice to Mr. Gladstone's lips; the project, on which he had staked his
+fortunes, was that which he had incorrectly ascribed to Butt, and had
+declared to be impossible and worse.
+
+The Bill, it was notorious, could not have passed the House of Commons had
+not its rejection by the House of Lords been assured beforehand. It
+received its quietus, in that assembly, by a majority of about ten to one;
+the mind of England felt unquestionable relief; a great national peril had
+been averted. Exactly as had happened in 1886, scarcely a sound of
+discontent was heard in Ireland; the demand for Home Rule, in fact, is
+largely a fictitious cry, with which the great body of Irishmen has little
+or no sympathy; the evidence of this can be no longer doubtful. Mr.
+Gladstone retired, within a few months, from public life; one of his last
+acts was to shoot a Parthian arrow at the House of Lords, which, happily
+for these realms, had wrecked his policy; since that time he has
+disappeared from the scene; few eminent statesmen have been so soon
+forgotten. Home Rule was scattered to the winds at the General Election of
+1895; it has not been a prominent question at that of 1900; but if Ireland
+has sent more than eighty of its supporters into the House of Commons, the
+best elements in her community remain angrily hostile; and the opinion of
+Great Britain is distinctly adverse. For many reasons, however, as I have
+remarked, it is impossible to ignore the subject; in the strange chances
+and changes of British politics, and under our system of party government,
+a minister may again become an advocate of Home Rule, though certainly
+not in the present Parliament. Mr. Gladstone's Bills, it is likely, will
+not be heard of again; but Home Rule may be embodied in other forms; I may
+briefly refer to, and comment, on these. The project of restoring the
+Parliament of 1782-1800, an ideal of O'Connell during many years of his
+life, will hardly be revived in these times; the conditions in Great
+Britain and Ireland have so completely changed. The centripetal forces
+which, a hundred years ago, held the British and Irish Parliaments, in the
+main, together--they differed, however, on important questions--have long
+ago been all but completely destroyed; the present Irish Parliament could
+not be an assembly identified in race and faith with England; its House of
+Commons could not be elected by a small body of Protestants, and latterly
+by masses of Catholic peasants, the serfs of their landlords. The
+centrifugal forces, on the other hand, those which would keep the two
+Parliaments utterly apart, would probably be overwhelmingly strong; the
+Irish House of Commons would practically, at least for years, be ruled by
+the nominees of the National League and of the Irish Catholic priesthood;
+its electorate would, for the most part, be subject to these dominant
+powers; and Protestant Ireland would alike be swamped and incensed.
+Nevertheless, the restoration of what has been called Grattan's
+Parliament, would, in my judgment, be a much better project than either of
+Mr. Gladstone's schemes of Home Rule. The Irish Parliament would be bound
+by known and fixed precedents, which it would be difficult wholly to
+disregard; an Irish House of Lords would exist as a check on the House of
+Commons; above all--and this is of the very first importance--the Irish
+Executive would not be subject to the Irish Parliament; it would be
+appointed from Westminster by British statesmen. A Parliament of this type
+could hardly effect the ruinous mischiefs which Mr. Gladstone's Irish
+Parliaments could certainly effect.
+
+Ireland, it has been urged, would obtain Home Rule, if she were
+assimilated to one of our self-governing colonies. These nations, as they
+may fitly be called, are by no means, as is commonly supposed, wholly
+independent of the Crown and the Imperial Parliament; they have
+Parliaments and Executives of their own; but these in theory, and partly
+in fact, are subordinate. No Act passed by the Parliament of a
+self-governing colony can in any way contravene an Imperial statute; the
+governor of a self-governing colony is a real governor; appeals run to the
+English Privy Council from colonial Courts of Justice. Nevertheless,
+self-governing colonies are practically all but independent; they pay no
+contribution to Imperial charges; they maintain their own garrisons,
+without a British army in their midst--at least, in a great many cases;
+they are hardly ever interfered with by the Imperial Parliament, or by the
+men in power at Westminster. Why, it may be argued, should not the same
+liberties belong to Ireland, for centuries the peccant part of these
+kingdoms; would not the concession make her as loyal as most of our
+self-governing colonies? The answer is short, but amply sufficient; the
+circumstances of our self-governing colonies and of Ireland are altogether
+different. In none of these settlements is there the profound estrangement
+which has long divided Great Britain from Ireland; in none is there a
+community in which a loyal minority is separated from a disaffected
+majority by long-standing discords of race and faith; Ireland is at our
+doors, our self-governing colonies distant. Give Ireland a Parliament like
+that of Victoria, and Ireland would break off from the British connection;
+the Irish Parliament would possess ample power to trample on and oppress
+hundreds of thousands of law-abiding men, of whom the protection was
+England's duty; the Irish Parliament and Executive, within a few leagues
+of our coasts, could, in innumerable ways, do infinite mischief. The
+supposed analogy, therefore, completely fails; it would be treason to the
+State, and to loyal Irishmen, to make Ireland a self-governing colony; and
+no British politician has as yet countenanced this mode of Home Rule. It
+has been hinted again, but with bated breath and humbleness, that the
+relations of Great Britain and Ireland have been so long unfortunate, such
+a dreary record of disputes and miseries, that we should say to our
+intractable partner, 'Depart in peace;' in a word, separation is a
+conceivable Home Rule policy. This proposal has never been discussed in
+Parliament; the interest, the self-respect, the pride of Englishmen almost
+forbid the thought. Yet separation, strange as it may appear, would be a
+better and more safe expedient than either of Mr. Gladstone's schemes of
+Home Rule. The Imperial Parliament would have complete liberty to exercise
+its sovereign power in Great Britain; it would have a free hand to prevent
+injustice in Ireland, either by the strong arm, or by fiscal and other
+expedients, say, by laying an embargo on Irish products; it would not be
+subject to the exasperating but often effective checks which Home Rule
+would in any form involve; and the Imperial Executive would possess ample
+means to protect the interests of England and of her friends in Ireland.
+Let it not be forgotten that in perhaps the ablest speech ever made, in
+the House of Commons, on this subject, Peel declared that he would
+infinitely prefer separation to a repeal of the Union, by no means so evil
+a policy as Home Rule.
+
+A few politicians, however, have put the theory forward that 'Home Rule
+all round' will meet the 'national demand' of Ireland, and give her what
+they are pleased to call 'self-government.' England, Scotland, Ireland,
+and perhaps Wales are to have local Parliaments to deal with their own
+affairs; Imperial affairs are to be directed by an Imperial Council. I am
+willing to admit that a scheme of this kind would be better than Mr.
+Gladstone's Home Rule Bill of 1893; it would be less illogical, possibly
+not more disastrous. But I must be permitted to doubt whether these sages
+understand what their project certainly involves; this, indeed, seems to
+be rather in the nature of a device to angle for Nationalist votes,
+without scruple, and then to propose a plan which England, Scotland,
+Ireland, and Wales have never asked for, and which England and Scotland,
+at least, would indignantly reject. This scheme is pure Federalism, in the
+proper sense of the word; let us briefly consider what this means from the
+very nature of the case. England, Scotland, Ireland, and, I assume, Wales
+would form separate States; they would have separate Legislatures and
+Executives to manage their local affairs, separate local forces, separate
+Courts of Justice; they would be, essentially, separate countries. The
+Imperial Parliament and its Executive would be the only link between them;
+there would be an Imperial army, and navy, and Imperial tribunals; but the
+Imperial Parliament and its Executive would only have jurisdiction over
+Imperial affairs, and would be only the head of the separate States as
+respects Foreign Powers. But as it would be difficult in the extreme,
+under these conditions, to distinguish local from Imperial affairs, an
+arbiter of some kind, armed with sufficient powers, would be necessary to
+say what affairs were local and what Imperial, and decisively to pronounce
+on the subject, on the innumerable occasions when the question would
+arise; and it would be necessary, too, that there should be some means,
+perhaps a Referendum to a popular vote, to effect any constitutional
+change, to reform or to abolish the Constitution itself. This scheme
+obviously would be complex, intricate, and difficult to carry into effect;
+it would be a huge system of divided, and probably conflicting, powers,
+not easy to reconcile with each other; for this, and other reasons, it
+would require a formal Constitution reduced to writing, and setting forth,
+under distinct heads or articles, the conditions of the Federation that
+had been established, the spheres of the authority of the separate
+States, and the sphere of the authority of the Imperial Council. Is it
+possible to suppose that the Parliament of the United Kingdom would ever
+break up this ancient and undivided Monarchy; would tamely surrender its
+sovereign rights, and would substitute a new-fangled fabric of this kind
+for the venerable and unwritten constitution of these realms--a majestic
+temple that has grown up in silence; and that the British people, at all
+events, would not rise up in wrath at the very thought of such a change?
+For Federalism 'amounts to a proposal for changing the whole constitution
+of the United Kingdom. It is, in fact, the most "revolutionary" proposal,
+if the word "revolutionary" be used in its strict sense, which has ever
+been submitted to an English Parliament. The abolition of the House of
+Lords, the disestablishment of the Church, the abolition of the Monarchy,
+might leave the English Constitution far less essentially changed than
+would the adoption of Federalism.'[32]
+
+It should be observed, too, with respect to this subject, that the
+conditions, under which Federalism would have a chance of success, would
+be absolutely wanting in the present instance. England, Scotland, Ireland,
+and Wales have long been moulded into a single sovereign State, and united
+under a supreme Monarchy; no Federation, I venture to assert, has been
+formed out of communities that have had a government of this kind.
+Federations, in fact, have almost always grown out of an association of
+existing States, which desire to remain separate, and yet to be a nation
+for some purposes; they have not been evolved out of the fragments of one
+State artificially rent asunder. Again, Federalism requires that no single
+State should be enormously more powerful than the other partners; there
+must be something like equality between the different States;[33] it is
+unnecessary to remark that England has tenfold the resources and strength
+of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; and, in truth, would annihilate the
+Federation were her will really crossed, and break through the arbitrary
+limitations imposed on her. Suppose, for example, that England had set her
+heart on a great foreign war, and had the support of her own Parliament;
+does any one suppose that, if she were outvoted, by deputies from
+Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, in the Imperial Council, even though backed
+by their own Parliaments, the people of England would submit to be
+thwarted in this way; was Samson bound by the withs of the Philistines?
+Something like this, indeed, was seen in the great Civil War; the result
+was the subjugation of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and the complete
+ascendency of England, under Cromwell; an attempt to federalise the Three
+Kingdoms might lead to a similar issue. Let us assume, however, that,
+through some evil stroke of destiny, Federalism were made the constitution
+of these realms, and that this strange arrangement could be made to work
+even for a few years; the inevitable consequences, from the nature of the
+case, would follow. The omnipotence of the Imperial Parliament, the
+mainstay of the Empire, would be gone; so would the omnipotence of the
+Imperial Executive Government, the best security for justice and for equal
+liberties. Their powers would be parcelled out and subdivided; they would
+not survive anywhere in their complete fulness; they would be distributed
+in fractions between separate States, and would be transformed and
+impaired in the process; real Imperial unity and sovereignty could have no
+existence. General national weakness would be the probable result,
+leading, perhaps, to despotism within a short time; for Federalism is
+essentially weak; I have no sympathy with Jacobin France, but the
+Committee of Public Safety rightly put Federalism down, when they were
+engaged in their death-struggle with Europe; and Napoleon--perhaps the
+ablest ruler of the nineteenth century--approved of their conduct. But
+weakness would not be the only consequence; the dissemination of different
+powers would certainly produce disputes and conflicts between the Federal
+and the State authorities; above all, the very existence of separate
+States and of a Federal Government would divide allegiance, and powerfully
+tend to disruption, as was seen in the great Civil War in America. As
+regards Ireland, the establishment of 'Home Rule all round' would
+necessarily be attended by all the evils inseparable from Mr. Gladstone's
+schemes; but Federalism, having been thus made manifest, would probably
+increase, and in some sense justify, the alienation of Ireland from the
+other parts of these kingdoms.
+
+Home Rule, therefore, whatever the form it may assume, would be, it is my
+firm conviction, incompatible with the welfare of the Three Kingdoms,
+injurious to Great Britain, a curse to Ireland. In the peculiar
+circumstances which exist in Ireland, and to which I have adverted before,
+separation, I believe, would be an expedient less disastrous than Home
+Rule of any description, this involving the creation of an Irish
+Parliament, and of an Irish Executive, which would be its instrument. Home
+Rule, in fact, gloss it over as you please, has been forced to the front
+by an Irish faction, hostile to a man to the existence of British rule in
+Ireland, and depending on Fenianism in the United States; this party would
+be all-powerful in an Irish Parliament; and Home Rule would be made the
+means to a ruinous and disgraceful end. Thousands of Irishmen, indeed,
+honestly think Home Rule would do their country good, and have little or
+nothing to do with this bad conspiracy; this too, doubtless, is the case
+with the followers of Mr. Gladstone; but Home Rule is an Irish Nationalist
+movement, and Irish Nationalist movements are dangerous to the safety of
+the State. The Union, therefore, must be maintained in the interest of
+Great Britain and Ireland alike; and the Union is an international
+settlement that has endured for a century. But no candid student of Irish
+history, no impartial observer of Irish affairs, from 1800 to the present
+time, can deny that the Union has been in many respects a failure. It has
+been an incident, perhaps a result, of the Union, that Presbyterian
+Ireland, rebellious from 1795 to 1798, has, we have seen, become attached
+to the British connection, and is now devotedly attached to England. The
+power of the Imperial Parliament and of its Executive have kept
+lawlessness and disorder down in Ireland, and has restrained the evil
+passions of Irish factions more than was ever the case under the rule of
+the Irish Parliament. The Imperial Parliament, too, has accomplished
+reforms in Ireland, if often unwise, in the main beneficent; and, under
+the Imperial Executive, justice in Ireland has been administered, for many
+years, in a very different way from that which was seen a century ago; its
+tribunals are perfectly free and impartial. But the Union was, in itself,
+a bad half measure, tainted with iniquity and false promises; it did gross
+wrong to Catholic Ireland; the evil consequences are felt to this hour.
+The Union has not fulfilled the sanguine hopes of Pitt; Ireland, as I have
+pointed out, is far more behind Great Britain in wealth than she was sixty
+years ago; she is perhaps the poorest country in Europe at the door of the
+richest. The Union, too, has not reconciled the feuds of religion and race
+in Ireland; they are as marked as they were a century ago, if not attended
+with such deeds of violence; above all, the Union has not made the chief
+part of the Irish community attached to England, as Pitt confidently
+predicted would certainly happen. Nor can it be denied that the Irish
+reforms of the Imperial Parliament have too often been ill-designed and
+faulty, especially, as we shall see, as regards the land; and they have
+unfortunately, in many instances, been concessions to agitation and
+dangerous social movements, and have been effected too late to do real
+good. The administration of Ireland reveals the same defects; it has been
+marked by good intentions, which, sometimes, have proved gross mistakes;
+and notably it has, over and over again, been shifty, vacillating, without
+principle, and showing a curious disregard of sound Irish opinion.
+Unquestionably, too, Ireland has, on many occasions, to the indignation of
+true-hearted Irishmen, been made the mere plaything of British faction,
+with the worst results to her best interests; this has been perhaps the
+most pernicious incident that has followed the Union; and in the immense
+revolution which has transformed Ireland, within the last hundred years,
+the effects that may be traced to the Union have by no means been wholly
+on the side of good.
+
+These evil consequences cannot be really questioned; it is very advisable
+to consider their causes, and if possible to see how they can be removed
+or lessened. They are partly to be ascribed to the fact that Great Britain
+and Ireland are countries differing from each other in most important
+respects, and standing, so to speak, on different planes of existence;
+this alone makes British rule in Ireland difficult, and perplexes and
+embarrasses British statesmen. They are partly due to defects in the
+English national character, essentially just in intention, and even
+generous, but with no sympathy with races of a character unlike its own,
+self-asserting, obstinate, sometimes rude and offensive; this has had
+marked and evil effects in the affairs of Ireland. They are largely to be
+attributed to the nature of Irish administration, seldom consistent, and
+changing with party changes: British statesmen appear at the Castle; rule
+for a few years; and then depart and give place to successors, who
+probably carry out a very different policy. They are largely due to the
+nature of the representation of Ireland, notably of late years; the
+Nationalist party--and the same remark applies, in some degree, to the
+'Tail' of O'Connell--have shown such an aversion to England, have used
+such seditious and even criminal language, have been so extravagant and
+wild in their demands, and have been such a dangerous element in the House
+of Commons, that Englishmen and Scotchmen turn away from Irish questions
+with disgust, and Ireland unfortunately has often been the sufferer. But
+the most important of these causes, one which may be traced throughout
+Irish history, and has been scarcely less evident since the Union, has
+been the strange but signal ignorance of Irish affairs--of all, in a word,
+that relates to Ireland--which has been but too characteristic of the
+British people, and, in a lesser degree, of many British statesmen. This
+capital fault aroused the _saeva indignatio_, of Swift; it was exposed by
+Grattan, O'Connell, even by Lord Clare; it was condemned in severe but
+thoughtful language by Burke; it has been conspicuous during the events of
+the last twenty years.[34] The resulting mischiefs have been numerous and
+grave in the extreme; can nothing be done to mitigate these and to make
+them less, consistently with maintaining the Union in its full
+completeness? I, for one, have long thought that much could be effected
+were the Imperial Parliament occasionally to hold its sessions in Dublin,
+and to govern Ireland directly, so to speak, on the spot. This very
+measure was proposed by many distinguished Irishmen, during the agitation
+for Repeal in 1843-44; it was made the subject of an eloquent eulogy by
+Sheil at O'Connell's trial; it was seriously entertained by the Whig
+opposition of the day, as we know from a remarkable letter of Lord
+Waveney. This policy unfortunately passed out of sight; but even now, I
+believe, it would do the greatest good in Ireland. It would be something
+that the proposed change would cause the wealth of England and Scotland
+largely to flow into a poor country; that Irish absenteeism would be
+diminished; that Ireland would become, more than she is now, an attractive
+place of resort to the traveller. But it would be far more that the
+presence of the Imperial Parliament in College Green would necessarily
+largely remove the ignorance of Irish affairs I have just referred to; it
+would make English and Scotch members familiar with the requirements, the
+feelings, the wishes of Irishmen; as has happily been said, it would
+render our Irish legislation and administration 'racy of the Irish soil.'
+And probably more than any other expedient, it would exorcise the weak
+phantom of Home Rule by bringing Irishmen in contact with the majesty of
+the Sovereign Assembly of the British Empire. I shall not comment on the
+petty inconveniences the scheme might cause; really they are not worthy of
+serious attention.
+
+The occasional presence of Royalty, too, in Ireland, as was made manifest
+during the late Queen's visit, unquestionably would have beneficent
+results. It would gratify a sentiment of Celtic nature, always attached to
+persons rather than to institutions and laws, and especially attached to
+rulers and chiefs, which, in Ireland, has been scarcely gratified before;
+it would spread far and wide a happy and good influence; it would
+certainly improve the social life of Ireland, and add something to her
+scanty material wealth. The maintenance of the Union, however, is the
+first requirement of a sound Irish and Imperial policy; one means of
+strengthening that fundamental law of these realms, consistently with
+strict constitutional justice, nay, if constitutional wrong is not to
+continue, has long been apparent to impartial minds. The
+over-representation of Ireland, in the House of Commons, is a flagrant
+anomaly, acknowledged for years; as I have remarked, it was largely
+expected that this important subject would have been taken up before this
+by Lord Salisbury's Government, and have been settled in the Parliament of
+1895-1900. Taking the test of population alone, Ireland has, compared to
+England, Wales, and Scotland, an excess of twenty-three members; taking
+the test of population and property combined, she has an excess probably
+of from thirty to forty. I am willing to allow that, in this matter, we
+ought not to follow arithmetic only; Ireland, a poor country, far away
+from Westminster, may have a claim to a representation somewhat more
+numerous than mere figures would give her. But can anything be more
+unjust, nay, absurd, than that Ireland should have one hundred and three
+members, and that the world of London, with a population about the same as
+that of Ireland, and probably possessing tenfold wealth, should have
+little more than half that number? This excessive representation must be
+reduced, and Irish Nationalists cannot here appeal to the Union; the Union
+did not save the Established Church of Ireland, secured by the Treaty in
+emphatic terms; and the Union must not be wrested to work gross injustice.
+The anomaly can be only removed by a large scheme for the redistribution
+of seats, founded on sound constitutional principles; and should this
+become law, as I confidently hope will be one of the achievements of the
+existing Parliament, the Union will acquire a new security, for the
+Nationalist vote in the House of Commons would be greatly reduced, and the
+Irish Unionist vote would be greatly increased. A very few figures will
+prove this: the rural populations of the Unionist counties of Antrim and
+Down are upwards of four hundred and thirty thousand souls; the rural
+populations of the Home Rule counties of Kildare, Kilkenny, King's,
+Longford, Wicklow, and Louth have a population less than three hundred and
+ninety-eight thousand;[35] yet Antrim and Down have only eight members,
+the other six counties have no less than twelve. The same disparity runs
+through all the Irish counties; in the boroughs of Ireland it is even more
+visible. Protestant and Unionist Ireland, in a word, has probably fifteen
+or sixteen members too few; Catholic and anti-Unionist Ireland fifteen or
+sixteen too many; it is high time this plain wrong should be redressed; it
+is unnecessary to point out how this would strengthen the Union. And what
+probably is not less important, it would make the representation of
+Ireland, not, what it is now, an utterly false index of Irish opinion, but
+a reasonably fair and trustworthy index; were the Irish representation cut
+down to eighty members, the Nationalists would probably command not more
+than fifty seats; the Unionists would command about thirty; and this,
+taking all things into account, would be a proportion approaching what is
+just. The 'doing' of right, in this matter, has been too long deferred;
+loyal Ireland feels strongly upon the subject; the reform would be
+altogether in the interest of the State.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND--SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE LAND SYSTEM
+OF IRELAND TO THE YEAR 1870
+
+    Great importance in the history of Ireland of the conditions of land
+    tenure--The ancient Celtic land system and its characteristics--The
+    Norman conquest of Ireland--Norman feudalism in the Irish land--The
+    policy of Henry VII., and especially of Henry VIII.--The era of the
+    conquest and confiscation of the Irish land--The possessions of the
+    O'Connors of Offaly wrested from them--Forfeiture of the domains of
+    Shane O'Neill, and of the Earl of Desmond--Attempts at
+    colonisation--All Ireland made shire land--The extinction of the old
+    Celtic land system--The Plantation of Ulster--Progress of confiscation
+    during the reigns of the two first Stuarts--The Civil War--Immense
+    confiscations made by Cromwell--His scheme of colonisation a
+    failure--The era of confiscation closes after the battle of the Boyne
+    and the fall of Limerick--The Penal Code of Ireland--Its fatal effects
+    on the Irish land--Dismal period in Irish landed relations--Gradual
+    improvement--The period described by Arthur Young--Evil traces of the
+    past remain--Whiteboyism and agrarian disorder--State of Irish landed
+    relations up to the rebellion of 1798, and after the
+    Union--Over-population and the results--Distress after the
+    Peace--State of Irish landed relations up to 1844--The Report of the
+    Devon Commission--The Famine and its effects on the Irish land--The
+    Encumbered Estates Acts--State of Irish landed relations from 1848 to
+    1868.
+
+
+The fortunes of many communities, it has truly been said, have been
+decisively affected by the conditions of the ownership and the occupation
+of the soil. The social, even the political, life of modern Europe has
+been, in a great measure, moulded by the land tenures that have grown out
+of the feudal system; I need only refer to the history of England, of
+France, and of Germany. This remark, however, especially applies to the
+events that make up the annals of Ireland; that long and unhappy tale of
+misfortunes and errors is intimately associated, all through, with the
+land, and with the relations connected with it. Modern research has shown
+how grotesque and mischievous was the ignorance of the Tudor lawyers and
+statesmen, who described the ancient organisation of the Irish land as a
+medley of barbarian and pernicious usages; it was an archaic and imperfect
+specimen of the feudal system, with differences indeed, but marked with
+its essential features. Norman feudalism, lawless and ill-ordered, was for
+centuries, after the first Conquest, placed beside this primitive form of
+society, in parts of a country not half subdued; the results were seen in
+incessant strife and discord, and in social anarchy, which prevented
+civilisation growing up. The Irishry had well-nigh driven the Englishry
+into the sea, when Henry VII. tried to make his authority felt in Ireland;
+his successor, partly a Celt in blood, and a real statesman, devised a
+noble scheme for bringing an ill-governed dependency within the domain of
+order and law, by planting an Anglo-Norman and native aristocracy in the
+soil, subject to a strong monarchy that would have protected the community
+as a whole. Most unfortunately the policy of Henry VIII. was not carried
+out; in the great conflict of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries,
+Ireland was drawn into a long struggle with England, and was repeatedly
+made a place of arms for her foes; an era of savage conquest, accomplished
+piecemeal, with ruthless confiscation following in its train, was
+protracted during nearly a century and a half; and at the close of the
+reign of William III., nine-tenths probably of the land of Ireland had
+been wrested from its former possessors, and the old Celtic land system
+had been destroyed by the sword and by law. Race and religion made this
+position of affairs much worse; the age of Protestant ascendency in
+Ireland began; in infinitely the greatest part of the island the land was
+parcelled out among a caste of owners distinct in blood and faith from the
+children of the soil, and lording it over an oppressed peasantry; and the
+system was propped up by a code of cruel laws, which maintained and, so to
+speak, stereotyped these evil divisions. The lines of the land system of
+Ireland were thus finally laid down; a variety of economic and social
+causes increased and deepened their extreme harshness; and though they
+have gradually been softened, and are now all but effaced, their traces
+and the results are still to be seen. The last thirty years have witnessed
+repeated attempts to effect radical changes in the modes of the ownership
+and the occupation of the land in Ireland; they have wrought a revolution
+in Irish landed relations, and have well-nigh turned them upside down; but
+the consequences have assuredly not been fortunate. The land system of
+Ireland has been made a chaos of economic disorder, of dissensions of
+class, of legalised wrong, absolutely incompatible with social progress
+and the general welfare.
+
+I must glance, for an instant, at the distinctive features of the land
+system of Ireland in the Celtic age, for despite the effects of
+confiscation and conquest, faint traces of it may still be seen, and have
+a kind of influence.[36] As was the case in all communities of the Aryan
+stem, the land originally was largely held in collective ownership; but
+agriculture developed individual ownership by degrees, though less so in
+Ireland than in more progressive countries. The people were settled on the
+soil in tribes, clans, and septs, these being the larger and the smaller
+units; the modes of the tenure of the land, misinterpreted by Elizabethan
+sages, differed widely from each other, but revealed the traditions of old
+patriarchal usage and power, especially in their canons of descent and
+succession. The feudalisation of the land, as it has been significantly
+called, a process which took place in nearly the whole of Europe, was also
+witnessed in Ireland, to a certain extent; but this was not so complete
+and strongly marked as in France and England. The land, nevertheless, was,
+throughout the island, held ultimately from a supreme monarch; it was
+divided, under him, among families of princely chiefs, who ruled vast
+tracts with scarcely controlled authority; inferior chiefs were subject to
+these; the organisation of the land had much in common with the
+organisation of the Anglo-Norman manor, and with the position of the Lord
+Paramount of every manor, the head of the English State. The Irish kings
+and chiefs had lands in demesne; they had a landed and a personal
+_noblesse_; the territories they ruled were held by classes strongly
+resembling the free tenants, the villeins, and the serfs of the feudal
+system. All this, however, was not as perfectly defined as it was in lands
+feudalised to a higher degree; and though the Davieses and Spensers were
+wholly in error in representing the dependents of the Irish kings and
+chiefs as little better than a horde of fighting men and slaves, Ireland
+never fully possessed the liberties feudalism secured. The Ceile of
+substance, who had lands of his own, seems to have been in an inferior
+position to the English freeholder; the Saer stock and Daer stock tenants
+held their lands by a tenure like that of the metayers of France; the
+Fuidhirs were kept in complete subjection, and had not even the rights of
+the villein. The land, too, was still largely held in collective
+ownership; in its occupation this is even now seen in backward and poor
+districts; and, curiously enough, distinctions were drawn between what was
+a 'fair' and a 'rack rent,' words still common in the mouth of the Irish
+peasant, and to which recent legislation has given its sanction.
+
+As in the case of most lands where anything resembling feudalism
+prevailed, with the single exception of England, under her strong
+Monarchy, Ireland in these circumstances was torn by continual discord,
+increased by the recurring struggles with the Dane. The Celtic kings and
+chiefs, nevertheless, were beloved by their people; the land system fell
+in with Celtic tribal ideas and sentiments. I pass over the incidents of
+the first Norman Conquest; in the course of time, an Anglo-Norman colony
+was established, within a Pale ever-varying in extent, and held parts of
+the country under feudal conditions, the remaining, and by far the
+greatest, parts being left in the possession of the Celtic kings and
+princes. Anglo-Norman feudalism, however, was completely different, in
+Ireland, from what it was in England; it was not subject to vigorous
+kingly rule; it was confined within comparatively small limits. In these
+circumstances the Pale fell into the hands of a few leading and great
+families; these, as had been largely the case in Scotland, formed a
+domineering and oppressive _noblesse_, continually engaged in quarrels
+between themselves, and in petty wars with the Celtic chiefs, and
+completely superior to the royal power in England. The Geraldines, the
+Butlers, the De Burghs, and other great houses, had no law but their own
+wills in their vast lordships; their exactions and tyranny became a
+byword; their lives were spent in savage feudal strife, and in 'hostings
+against the Irish enemy.' Strange to say, too, these scions of a mighty
+conquering race fell under the spell of the Celtic genius, and, as it was
+said, 'became more Irish than the Irish themselves; they were at least
+largely assimilated to a Celtic model, and they adopted many of the usages
+of the Celt. It was not much otherwise in the Celtic region outside the
+Pale; the Irish chiefs often blended in marriage with the Anglo-Norman
+settlers; but they were continually at war with them, and with each
+other. Under these conditions, feudalism, in its best aspects, could take
+no root, in the land, in Ireland; and there is much reason to believe that
+the archaic Irish land system was gradually changed and almost broken up,
+the power of the kings and chiefs being greatly increased, and the
+position of their dependents being made essentially worse. It is obvious
+that in a land, a scene of such disorder and misrule, civilisation and all
+that the word implies could not exist; Ireland was probably more barbarous
+at the close of the fifteenth century than she had been when she first saw
+Henry of Anjou. The Pale had been restricted within ever-narrowing bounds;
+generations of colonising 'Englishry' had entered the country, and had
+left it in angry despair; the 'Irishry' had encroached on their
+conqueror's domain; the work of Strongbow and Fitzstephen appeared to be
+undone. Especially it was observed that nothing like a middle class, even
+then the best element in the social life of England, had been able to
+develop itself in Ireland, and that the humbler classes were always in a
+state of wretchedness, ground down by exaction, and exposed to incessant
+wrongs of all kinds. 'What common folk of all the world'--these were the
+words of a State paper of the age--'is so poor, so feeble, so evil be seen
+in town and field, so greatly oppressed and trodden underfoot, fares so
+evil, with so great misery, and with so wretched a life, as the common
+folk of Ireland?'
+
+Henry VII. strengthened the authority of the Crown in Ireland; the
+Viceroyalty of Poynings marks an epoch in her chequered annals; but the
+conduct of the king was shifting and weak; the land fell under the control
+of the great House of Kildare; the Irishry were driven back, but in no
+sense subdued. Surrey, the victor of Flodden, intreated Henry VIII. to
+make the country his own by sheer force of arms; but his master refused in
+striking language; and proposed a scheme for bringing Ireland under the
+control of the Monarchy, for encouraging civilisation and promoting order,
+the wisest that has ever suggested itself to a British statesman. He made
+several of 'the degenerate' Norman _noblesse_ peers; he extended the same
+dignity to several Irish chiefs; he assembled representatives of Ireland
+in a Parliament composed of both races; he appointed commissioners to go
+through the country and to punish crime; above all--and this deserves
+special notice--he tried to conciliate the Celtic community by bringing
+their usages within the cognisance of the law, and giving them effectual
+legal sanction; and he condemned the attempts being already made to force
+laws on them peculiar to England. Had this enlightened policy been
+steadily pursued, the history of Ireland would have run a wholly different
+course; but destiny, that has played so sinister a part in Irish affairs,
+interfered to thwart the admirable designs of the king. The great
+Geraldine rebellion broke out, supported by irregular Celtic risings; from
+this time forward, during five generations of man, the era of cruel but
+intermittent conquest, accompanied by wholesale confiscation, set in. The
+powerful tribe of the O'Connors of Offaly, closely associated with the
+fallen House of Kildare, was the first to feel the weight of the arm of
+England; its territories were forcibly overrun and annexed, given the name
+of the King's and the Queen's Counties, and peopled with a colony of
+settlers from England. Celtic Ireland ere long was brought into the
+conflict between Elizabeth and Philip II., the representatives of the
+faiths that were dividing Christendom; the princely chief, Shane O'Neill,
+fell a victim to the English conquerors, though their quarrel with him was
+not wholly one of seeking the assistance of a foreign enemy; his vast
+domains were, also, in part forfeited, in part handed over to a puppet of
+English power. The frightful Desmond rebellion followed; it was directly
+encouraged by the Pope and by Spain; after a protracted struggle
+approaching a real civil war, the immense lordships of the great Geraldine
+House were confiscated, and granted to a colony of English blood. Tyrone,
+the real successor of his kinsman, Shane O'Neill, a soldier and statesman
+of no ordinary parts, seeing, as he bitterly said, that his 'lands were
+marked down by the spoiler,' endeavoured, not without partial success, to
+combine a great Irish League against England; he entered into an alliance
+with Spain; a Spanish army landed on the southern coast of Munster; after
+a long and sanguinary contest, Tyrone yielded, but his resistance had been
+so formidable that he was allowed to retain his possessions.
+
+The subjugation of a large part of Ireland, in the Elizabethan wars, was
+marked by incidents of a most atrocious character. The Government had no
+regular army to act in the field; it was compelled largely to rely on
+armed levies of the Englishry, and on bodies of the Irishry attached to
+the conqueror's standards; for in this, as in nearly all instances
+throughout their history, the Irish Celts were at feud with each other;
+Celtic Ireland was a house divided against itself. The queen, it has been
+written, 'ruled over blood and ashes,' when Mountjoy sheathed his
+victorious sword; the memory of this period still lives in Irish
+tradition. A season of exhaustion and repose ensued after James I. had
+ascended the throne; but the time, in the phrase of Tacitus, had an evil
+aspect in peace itself. The Pale had long before this been effaced;
+conquest and confiscation had spread over nearly the whole island; the
+domination of England was felt almost everywhere. As the result, the whole
+of Ireland was made shire land; the old Celtic land system, which still
+widely prevailed, was swept away by decisions of the Anglican Courts of
+Justice; it was declared to be 'a lewd and not law-worthy thing;' all the
+Irish land was subjected to English modes of tenure; they were imposed on
+a people which detested these gifts of the stranger; innumerable tribal
+rights were destroyed. Ere long the work of confiscation began again; the
+domains of Tyrone and of his kinsman O'Donnell were pronounced forfeited
+for reasons that have never been ascertained; the Crown was placed in
+possession of nearly six counties of Ulster. Up to this time the
+settlements of English colonists, which had been made in Ireland by Tudor
+conquest, had failed; the colonists had been almost lost in the midst of
+the Irishry, who hemmed them around. This immense confiscation was,
+however, in part successful; it was carried out on comparatively
+enlightened principles; it has produced the famous Plantation of Ulster;
+and this, with other settlements in the counties of Antrim and Down, has
+established, in a large part of the northern province of Ireland, a hardy
+and thriving community, in the main, of Scottish blood. Confiscation,
+nevertheless, did not stop here; 'the ravages of war,' in Burke's
+language, were 'carried on amidst seeming peace;' enormous tracts were
+torn from their former owners on pretexts usually of the flimsiest kind,
+and were flung to Court favourites, to jobbing speculators, to greedy
+adventurers of the baser sort. By this time three-fourths probably of the
+soil of Ireland had passed into the hands of a new race of possessors; the
+descendants of Anglo-Norman nobles and of the Celtic princes had been
+sufferers well-nigh in the same proportion. At last Strafford marked out
+the whole province of Connaught, for what has been called 'his majestic
+rapine;' this and other innumerable acts of spoliation and wrong
+unquestionably were the paramount cause of the great Celtic rising of
+1641. Another and soon to be a most potent element of evils and troubles
+had already begun to make its sinister presence felt in Ireland. In the
+great religious schism of the sixteenth century, England had become
+Protestant, Ireland had remained Catholic, and each had taken opposite
+sides in the conflict that followed; though the Elizabethan wars were
+rather struggles of race than of faith. But as conquest and confiscation
+progressed in Ireland, the Anglican Church, a scion of the Norman Church
+of the Pale, was erected on the ruins of its Celtic Catholic rival; the
+land more and more became possessed by settlers alien in creed from the
+old owners, and from the vanquished children of the soil; and harsh laws
+had begun to deepen the distinctions between them. Nevertheless, though
+its signs had in some measure appeared, the era of Protestant ascendency
+and Catholic subjection had not been developed in Ireland, as yet, in its
+worst aspects.
+
+The wild Celtic rising of 1641 was followed by a rising of the old
+Englishry of the Pale--the descendants of the first Anglo-Norman settlers;
+both movements were probably encouraged from France; though widely
+different, they ran into each other. The great Civil War was now running
+its course in England; Ireland, for the most part, took the side of the
+king; the majority of Englishmen were certainly on the side of the
+Parliament. I cannot retrace the scenes of the contest in Ireland; after a
+fierce and protracted struggle, in which an envoy of the Pope became the
+representative of an ill-united Irish League; in which Preston and Ormond
+led the forces of the Pale, and Owen Roe O'Neill was at the head of the
+Irish Celts,--the whole island was subjugated by the sword of Cromwell, as
+it never had been subjugated before. Drogheda and Wexford are names of woe
+in the annals of Ireland; but the conquest of the Protector, ruthless as
+it was, was not so cruel as that of the Elizabethan soldiers; if deeply
+stained with blood, it was rapid and completely decisive. The colony in
+Ulster had begun to flourish; Cromwell designed a scheme for the
+colonisation of the vanquished country more thorough and extensive than
+any which had been designed before. Three-fourths of Ireland had been in
+arms against the Parliament; that assembly had made grants by
+anticipation of Irish forfeited lands to 'adventurers' who had advanced it
+moneys; an opportunity for immense confiscations had arisen; the Protector
+was not slow to take advantage of it; his Puritan fanaticism, his hatred
+of the Irish people, especially of its 'idolatrous Papists,' his strong
+English and religious sympathies, united to confirm him in his purpose.
+The forfeited lands in four of the Irish counties were appropriated to the
+Commonwealth and its uses; those in eighteen were to be granted to the
+'adventurers' and the soldiery of the late conquest; those in seven were
+to be allotted to the army in England. The grants were to be either free,
+or to be purchased at nominal prices; the owners, who had lost their
+lands, were to be deported to Connaught--'Hell' was the alternative, the
+tradition runs--and 'Courts of Claims,' as they were called, were to be
+set up, to adjudicate on the conduct of those who were to be
+dispossessed--they were to be subjected to a test which scarcely one could
+satisfy--and practically to measure confiscation out under the pretence of
+law. By these means Cromwell calculated that some forty thousand
+colonists, of English blood and of the Puritan faith, would be poured into
+the millions of acres which the sword had placed in the hands of his
+Government; these would form a prosperous settlement loyal to England;
+would keep rebellion in Ireland for ever down; and would regenerate a land
+taken from a race akin to the Amalekites of old. As a foretaste of the new
+and glorious order of things, Sir William Petty, a very able man,
+remarkably skilful in feathering his own nest, made a cadastral survey of
+Ireland, which still remains.
+
+Cromwell's scheme of confiscation was thoroughly carried out, spite of
+much angry wrangling between the Puritan warriors. The remains of the
+defeated Irish armies went, in thousands, into exile in foreign lands;
+they were the heralds of the renowned soldiery who, for a century and a
+half, were deadly, but honourable foes of the British name. The rule of
+the Protector in Ireland was stern but enforced peace; Ireland was
+prostrate in the exhaustion of despair; there is much proof that, under
+the Cromwellian settlement, the country made a kind of material progress.
+But Cromwell's great scheme of colonisation failed, as such schemes had
+failed in many instances before; a large majority of the 'adventurers' and
+the soldiers sold their possessions, usually for a mere nothing: many
+'degenerated' like the old Norman families, and, won over by the spells
+'of the daughters of Heth,' had, in one or two generations, become 'mere
+Irish.' The ultimate result of the Cromwellian conquest was to establish
+in Ireland three or four thousand owners of the soil, of English blood and
+Puritan leanings, without the support of inferior dependents, in the midst
+of a vanquished population hostile in race and faith; the sentiments thus
+engendered have never died out; to this day 'a Cromwellian landlord' is a
+name of reproach in Catholic Ireland. At the Restoration hope for a moment
+revived in the hearts of the ruined owners, who had been dispossessed by
+Cromwell, and of whom hundreds had fought for the Crown; but this was
+dashed by the perfidy of Charles II. and his courtiers; the Cromwellian
+forfeitures were, in the main, confirmed; large tracts were given back to
+favourites of the Stuarts, but thousands of beggared families lost their
+estates for ever through a policy of cruel baseness and wrong. Ireland
+remained quiescent for nearly thirty years; she even prospered under the
+wise rule of Ormond--one of the noblest figures in her unhappy history;
+but the bitter memories of the past lived in the conquered people, though,
+as has repeatedly been seen in a Celtic race, they were treasured in
+silence, and caused little apparent trouble. James II. ascended the throne
+in 1685; he had a great opportunity to mitigate many of the wrongs of
+Ireland; he might have removed some of the evils of the Cromwellian
+conquest, and have effected changes in the settlement of the land, which,
+at least, would have done partial justice. But the unfortunate king was a
+bigot, and, in no sense, a statesman; like his father he tried the
+desperate policy of making use of Ireland in his designs against English
+liberties; he sent Tyrconnell to Dublin, and, in a few months, revolution
+had broken out through the country; English and Protestant Ireland was
+well-nigh trampled underfoot; Catholic and Celtic Ireland rose up in a
+wild hope of revenge. I cannot even glance at the stirring events that
+followed; the descendants of ruined barons of the Pale and of Celtic
+princes driven from their lands and their homes, joined in a great effort
+to raise a large armed force; the rising almost assumed a national aspect;
+but after the Boyne and the fall of Limerick, it was finally quelled by
+William III. The process of confiscation was once more renewed; thousands
+of acres were taken forcibly from those who had resisted in the field, and
+were handed over to a new race of colonists belonging to the blood and the
+creed of the victors; and the shameful violation of a solemn Treaty made
+all that was cruel in spoliation worse.
+
+The era of conquest in Ireland and of confiscation by force--an agony
+prolonged for a century and a half--was brought to an end in the reign of
+William III. This is not the place to examine the question on which side,
+as between England and Ireland, the balance of the wrongs that were done
+inclines; but if much that is cruel and shameful is to be laid to the
+charge of England, Ireland, it cannot be forgotten, crossed her path
+repeatedly in an age of grave national perils and troubles, and, moreover,
+wrecked her own cause by her wretched dissensions. The Irish land had now
+nearly all fallen into the hands of a caste of owners, of English and
+Scottish descent, and in faith Protestant, divided from a people of
+Catholic occupiers for the most part of the Irish race; wide lines of
+demarcation had been drawn between them; and there was no middle class to
+bridge over the gulf. In a part of Ulster alone where the proprietors and
+the holders of the soil were largely of the same religion and blood, was
+there the promise of a more auspicious order of things; even here causes
+of disunion were not wanting. Nor were these the only vices and dangers of
+a land system which has scarcely had a parallel. Enormous tracts had been
+bestowed on owners who never saw their estates; absenteeism existed to an
+immense extent; their lands, too, had, in thousands of instances, been
+underlet to a class of intermediate owners, who were to form a body of
+most oppressive landlords. In addition, the representatives of numbers of
+ruined families still vegetated on the domains which had been their own;
+the few families which had escaped from the spoilers, were held in
+reverence by the peasantry around; elements of disorder and trouble
+continued to fester. The destruction, too, of the old Celtic modes of land
+tenure, and the substitution of the English system, had unjustly
+annihilated tribal rights wholesale; the free, and other dependents of the
+Irish chiefs, had sunk into the position of mere tenants at will, that is,
+at the mercy of foreign and often unknown masters. One of the worst, if
+not the most apparent evil, of the gigantic confiscations which had taken
+place, and on which the land system had, so to speak, been founded, was
+that the respect which attaches to the ancient ownership of land, and
+which forms, perhaps, its surest support, could hardly exist in any part
+of Ireland; the disastrous consequences may be traced to the present hour.
+Landlords, with titles of yesterday, won by the sword, could not feel the
+interest in their estates and in the inhabitants on them, naturally felt
+by owners of gentle and ancient descent; the land which, as has been said,
+had been flung like a fox to ravening hounds, could not attract to it
+happy and peaceful memories; the very Government had learned to think it
+could deal with the land as it pleased, and treated the rights gained by
+confiscation with contempt. Prescription, the strongest cement of
+property, had no place in this ill-compacted land system.[37]
+
+The era of Protestant ascendency bringing Catholic subjection with it, had
+now set in for many years in Ireland; its evils were aggravated by harsh
+divisions of race, and by more than a century of bitter memories; its
+effects were more conspicuous in the land than in other social relations.
+This unnatural and calamitous position of affairs might, however, have
+been replaced ere long by a better order of things, had it not been
+artificially maintained and made enduring by legislation unexampled for
+its far-reaching cruelty. I cannot attempt to describe the Penal Code of
+Ireland; in the emphatic words of Burke, 'it was a complete system, full
+of coherence and consistency; well digested and well composed in all its
+parts; it was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance; and as well
+fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people,
+and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from
+the perverted ingenuity of man.'[38] The objects of these execrable laws
+were threefold: to exclude the Irish Catholic whether of Anglo-Irish or
+Celtic descent--misfortune had well-nigh effaced the distinction--from
+every office of trust in the State, from every profession, almost from
+every walk of life; to persecute and proscribe the Catholic Church of
+Ireland, and to place its priesthood under a humiliating ban, and finally
+to ruin and degrade the few remaining Catholic owners of the soil; to
+prevent the Irish Catholic from acquiring any real interest in it; and,
+above all, to keep the Catholic peasantry in a condition of thraldom.[39]
+The Code was only too successful in compassing its ends; I pass from its
+operation as regards the two first, to point out how it sought to attain
+the third, and how its provisions affected the Irish land and the manifold
+relations connected with it. The estate of the Irish Catholic owner was
+not to follow the ordinary courses of descent; it was 'to gavel,' and to
+be divided among many persons; this was for the avowed purpose of making
+'the landed property of Papists crumble away, and disappear.' The Irish
+Catholic owner was subjected to cruel enactments that literally set his
+household against him; his wife and children were bribed to become his
+foes; law sate at his hearth to make his existence wretched. The Irish
+Catholic, too, was forbidden to acquire land by purchase or even to
+possess an incumbrance on it; as far as possible the ownership of land was
+strictly confined to the Protestant caste. But the wrong that, in its
+consequences at least, was perhaps the worst, was that the Catholic
+occupier of the Irish soil could not obtain anything like an advantageous
+tenure; he could not have a lease for a period beyond thirty-one years,
+and this, too, at an excessive rent; and, in the great mass of instances,
+he was a serf holding merely at will.
+
+The forty years that succeeded the death of William III. are certainly the
+most mournful period in Irish history. The memories of conquest and
+confiscation were still fresh; the Penal Code kept Catholic Ireland in its
+chains; society was fashioned on the type of the domination of a class,
+separated from a whole community in race and faith. Nothing was left
+undone to perpetuate this evil order of things; the Irish Parliament was a
+mere oligarchy of the sons of the colonists of Elizabeth, Cromwell, and
+William, apart from a few leading men in Ulster; its legislation for the
+vanquished race was barbarous; Lords-Lieutenant spoke of the Irish
+Catholics as of 'the common enemy;' a 'Papist was presumed not to exist'
+in the Irish Courts of Justice. Meanwhile the penal laws were relentlessly
+carried out for years; the Irish Catholic was placed under a universal
+ban; the Catholic Church of Ireland lay, as it were, in the valley of the
+shadow of death. But the direst consequences appeared in the land, and in
+the social life of the landed classes; these were most calamitous and have
+still left their traces. Many of the few Catholic owners abandoned their
+estates, and carried their swords into foreign lands, where some rose to
+well-deserved eminence; a small number conformed to the dominant faith in
+order to exist in comparative peace at home; the majority clung to their
+lands and bowed their heads to oppression. The Protestant lords of the
+soil were what their antecedents and the law had made them; they were long
+a harsh and exacting order of men, filled with bigotry and the pride of a
+conquering race; they regarded the inferiors they ruled as pariahs and
+helots. But, as usually happens, when society is in an unnatural state,
+they did not prosper amidst the ruins around them; their lands were kept
+on a kind of pernicious mortmain, as they could not mortgage or sell them
+freely; absenteeism with all its mischiefs greatly increased; and
+middleman tenures largely multiplied, subjecting the peasantry to a
+detestable breed of landlords, Protestants and of English descent, like
+their superiors, but much worse tyrants. As for the mass of the Catholic
+occupiers of the soil, they were kept down in the lowest state of serfdom;
+but multitudes found their way into foreign armies; 'the wild geese,' as
+they were pathetically called, flew to Austria and, above all, to France,
+where, in the ranks of the celebrated Irish Brigade--'ever and everywhere'
+true to the Bourbon lilies--they won renown at Dettingen, Fontenoy, and
+other fields of fame. The aspect of Ireland bore too faithful witness to
+the misery engendered in this evil order of things. The country was still
+covered with the wrecks of the late wars; the habitations, even of the
+Protestant gentry, were squalid and mean; the towns were, in many
+instances, sinking into decay; the peasantry were huddled together into
+villages of huts; the traveller roamed through vast wastes of unfenced
+pasturage, evidences of a land almost left in a state of nature. Hideous
+famines were of repeated occurrence; one, that of 1739-41, swept the
+population away in tens of thousands; the Irish Parliament
+characteristically did nothing to help the sufferers; it met the emergency
+by strengthening the means to enforce the payment of rent. The miserable
+condition of Ireland was made worse by the legislation of the British
+Parliament, which treated the country as a conquered colony; and, true to
+the principles of the mercantile system, impeded or prevented the growth
+of several Irish industries. This was, of course, most injurious to the
+Protestant settlers; but these were held down by the ruling power; as was
+finely said, 'they knelt to England on the necks of their countrymen.' The
+state of things in the colonised parts of Ulster was somewhat better; but
+the Scottish and Presbyterian population of this corner of Ireland had not
+a few causes of serious complaint.[40]
+
+In the next generation a great but gradual change passed over the state of
+the Irish community. The Penal Code was not in letter relaxed; but the
+evil spirit which had conceived it lost much of its force. The men who had
+fought at the Boyne and at Aghrim had passed away; the human conscience,
+moved by the influences of the eighteenth century, revolted from the
+barbarous legislation of a half-fanatical age. The Irish Catholics slowly
+began to make themselves felt in the State; many amassed large fortunes in
+foreign commerce; shut out as they still were by law from almost every
+profession and office, they made their way into the medical calling, and
+especially at the Bar, where their disabilities were evaded or ignored.
+The Catholic Church was no longer proscribed; its worship, indeed, was
+still carried on under degrading conditions; but its priesthood were
+permitted to perform their sacred functions in peace; its dignitaries were
+even countenanced by the men in power at the Castle. This great social
+change was conspicuously seen in the land; landed relations were markedly
+improved, and partly transformed. The Catholic owners were permitted to
+hold their estates free from the cruel vexations of the past; they began
+to live on terms of friendship with the Protestant caste; legal fictions
+annulled the laws which had made their lives wretched; their lands were,
+in many instances, held by the Protestant gentry on secret trusts; and
+these, though contrary to law, were, as a rule, most honourably fulfilled.
+The principal, however, and most decisive change appeared in the position
+and the sentiments of the Protestant lords of the soil. As time rolled on,
+and threw its kindly growths over the settlement of confiscation and the
+sword, these men began to feel that Ireland was their country and home;
+they became, to a certain extent, Irishmen; they felt sympathy, by
+degrees, with the conquered serfs in their midst. This feeling was
+strengthened by the tyrannous selfishness of the British Parliament, which
+treated Ireland as if she were its footstool, and of the official class,
+nearly all Englishmen, who lorded it over the land they despised; an
+'Irish interest' grew up in the Parliament at College Green, composed very
+largely of the Protestant landlords; this became patriotic, in a certain
+sense, and a protector of the scanty rights of Ireland. As social order,
+too, was seldom disturbed, the wealth of the country had considerably
+increased; the gentry acquired a greater interest in their estates, and
+became more and more attached to them; absenteeism, as the result,
+perceptibly lessened; and middleman tenures, though still prevalent,
+diminished remarkably in the more progressive counties. The deep lines of
+demarcation which kept apart the owners and the occupiers of the soil were
+thus to a certain extent bridged over; the Irish landlord, especially if
+resident, became a kindlier superior than his fathers had been; the Irish
+peasant became less a stranger to him.
+
+The evidences of this better order of things became manifest on the face
+of the country. Agriculture, though still backward, made real progress;
+the breeds of farming animals greatly improved; the huge breadths of
+pasturage had a less deserted aspect. The country towns had generally
+advanced; the land had been opened by good roads; the means of locomotion
+had been largely multiplied. The rental of Ireland had doubled within
+living memory; in some counties, indeed, it was nearly as high as it is
+now; the land was at a price of more years' purchase than it is at the
+close of the nineteenth century. It was at this period that the great
+country houses of Ireland were built, and their vast demesnes laid out;
+the wages of labour were low, but had distinctly risen; the peasant hind,
+Arthur Young tells us, in point of food and clothing, was as well off as
+his fellow in England. The land was largely parcelled out into
+considerable farms; but small holdings were on the increase; and the
+cottar system, in the course of time to become a source of manifold evils,
+was not yet a cause of much mischief; the pressure of population on the
+soil was not severely felt. Many of the great landlords, too, were
+excellent men; they ruled the country well, and greatly improved their
+estates; in numberless instances they had won the hearts of dependents,
+who regarded them as kind masters. Yet the picture was not without a dark
+side; this land system still had evil, nay, repulsive, features. Except in
+the best part of Ulster the deep divisions of race and faith continued to
+be profoundly marked; the Penal Code had made these, to a great extent,
+indelible. There was still much oppression and exaction in landed
+relations; the class of small landlords and the class of middlemen were
+too generally tyrannical and harsh; complaints of over-renting were not
+infrequent; and if the great landlords, as a rule, were not severe
+superiors, many were extravagant, addicted to excess, and reckless
+duellists; they bore a strong resemblance to the seigneurie of the old
+French Monarchy. The peasantry, too, remained serfs, illiterate,
+ignorant, and superstitious; the good feelings they often had for their
+lords had too much of the submissiveness of the slave; and virtuous as
+their women ordinarily were, they too generally yielded to the lusts of
+their masters. The habitations, besides, of this population were still
+wretched; if their lot had assuredly become better, it was often hard,
+above all, degraded. They had begun to feel more acutely the ills they
+suffered; in many counties they had banded themselves together into
+lawless leagues, to protect themselves and to resist authority. These
+associations, known by the general name of Whiteboys--perhaps taken from
+the Camisards of the Cevennes--had as their objects the preservation of
+rights of commonage, the extinction of tithes, and the reduction of rents;
+they may be traced back to the great confiscations of the past; they were
+held together by secret leaders and passwords; and they often kept whole
+districts in a state of terror. A Draconic Code was directed against them;
+though often put down they have risen to life again; Ireland has never
+since been completely free from them; their influence still is distinctly
+apparent. Associations of somewhat a similar kind, known as Steelboys and
+Oakboys, were formed even in the good parts of Ulster; but they were much
+less dangerous and were not permanent. It is a characteristic of
+Whiteboyism, as it has ever since been called, that it has always had a
+political side, and lends itself to revolutionary movements against
+government itself.[41]
+
+Though Protestant ascendency was still supreme at this period, the
+confiscations of the past had not been forgotten; they were treasured in
+the minds of the descendants of the old Catholic families, and of the
+population among which they lived. The extinction, too, of the tribal
+Irish tenures, had, we have seen, been a cause of grievous wrongs; this
+was a tradition, also, handed down from father to son, and was still fresh
+in the remembrance of a whole race. The land system, though to outward
+seeming secure, nevertheless rested on unstable foundations, as was to
+appear in the course of time; another element of disturbance was being
+formed, which ultimately was to have immense force. Under the modes of
+land tenure, which prevailed in England, since the system of small
+holdings had been broken up, the land had generally been laid out in large
+farms; partly from this circumstance, and partly owing to custom, the
+charge of making permanent improvements of the land had almost everywhere
+devolved on the owner of the soil; a tenant, who rented a farm, took it,
+so to speak, equipped with the buildings and other things of the kind that
+were suitable to it. But in Ireland, partly because small farms were
+numerous, and partly because the custom had never grown up--the history of
+the past fully accounts for this--the permanent improvements were very
+seldom made by the landlord; the tenant, who held land, had to add, as it
+were, its plant to it; he had to do much that gave it any real value. As
+the inevitable result, the Irish occupier of the soil felt that he had
+acquired a concurrent right in it; this, if the improvements were solid
+and lasting, might almost amount to a partial joint-ownership, at least
+give him, in equity, a real hold on the land. But a right of this kind was
+not recognised by the law, founded as this was upon notions of English
+tenure; it was liable to be destroyed should the tenant be dispossessed;
+and as the tenure of the immense majority of the occupiers of the soil in
+Ireland was either at will, or for a short term at a high rent, this
+right, essentially of a quasi-proprietary kind, was made precarious, and
+had no legal protection. With the prescience of genius, Burke perceived
+the evils that might grow out of this state of things, though, as yet,
+these were not much felt; he saw that it discouraged improvement of almost
+every kind; especially he saw that the denial of legal sanction to the
+rights in the land a tenant might have, and the fact that his tenure was
+short and uncertain, might become a source of grave wrong, and of
+far-reaching discontent. In a word, he detected an economic vice in the
+land system of Ireland which, in the long run, was to do great mischief;
+and curiously enough he indicated the remedies that ought to be applied,
+and pointed out the true principles of a reform of Irish land tenure. It
+would have been well had British statesmen adopted these; his simple,
+just, and statesmanlike plan puts to shame the ill-designed and
+unsuccessful attempts that have been made to recast the Irish land system
+of late years, and the false, reckless, and socialistic theories at
+present current on this important subject.[42]
+
+I must pass over even the main events of the history of Ireland, after
+this period, up to the close of the eighteenth century. The 'Irish
+interest,' mainly composed of the great landed gentry, and turning to
+account the American War, compelled the Parliament at Westminster to relax
+many of the commercial restraints on Ireland, and to concede her a partial
+free trade; under the guidance of the illustrious Grattan it obtained
+legislative independence for the Irish Parliament. At the same time the
+Penal Code was largely repealed; the Irish Catholic was permitted to
+acquire the ownership of the soil; before long he received the electoral
+franchise, though he was still excluded from the Irish Houses of Lords and
+Commons. In these circumstances, Ireland made real material and social
+progress; the wealth of the country rapidly increased; the Protestant and
+Catholic upper classes began to unite in marriage; a commercial middle
+class, if still very weak, grew up. Ireland seemed about to enter a
+happier era; yet there were drawbacks to this partial welfare, especially
+as regards the land system. Middleman tenures were becoming much less
+frequent; absenteeism was markedly on the decline; but partly owing to
+their contact with the Parliament in College Green, and to the brilliant
+social life it created in Dublin, the landed gentry became more
+extravagant than their fathers had been; they began to raise their rents
+and to encumber their estates; over-renting became more common than
+before; Whiteboy movements and agrarian disorder prevailed in many
+districts. Ireland, however, probably would have made a great advance but
+for the evil passions which the French Revolution engendered in the frame
+of a society still deeply diseased. I cannot dwell on the unhappy years
+that followed, leading to the Rebellion of 1798; I must confine myself to
+their influence on the Irish land system. The object of Tone and of the
+United Irish leaders was to combine Scottish and Presbyterian Ulster, and
+the great mass of the Irish Catholics, into a league against British rule
+and for 'Irish freedom;' unhappily, they were but too successful. They
+appealed, not in vain, to thousands of farmers and traders in the Northern
+Province, who had long had solid grounds of discontent, and had been
+deeply stirred by the Revolution in France; they laid hold on the elements
+of disorder and of division of race and faith, abounding in Catholic
+Ireland, but largely concealed, and called on the peasantry to overthrow
+their Protestant tyrants, and to strike a decisive blow in 'the cause of
+Ireland.' Evil incentives were recklessly employed to arouse popular
+passions; maps of the old confiscated lands were made; and active
+emissaries went through the country, reviving dangerous traditions of the
+past, and stimulating the worst sentiments of hatred, greed, and revenge.
+As the result, sedition ran riot in Ulster; in the Southern Provinces
+there was a great outburst of Whiteboy crime, and a widespread rising
+against the payment of rent; and thousands of the occupiers of the soil
+were swept into the United Irish ranks, scarcely conscious of the perils
+to which they were exposed. How the movement led to the bloody rebellion
+of 1798, and how this was put down after a desperate struggle, it is
+unnecessary to consider here; the consequences in Irish landed relations
+were most unfortunate. It is untrue that the large majority of the owners
+of the Irish soil were guilty of the crimes that have been laid to their
+charge; but they bitterly resented the allusions to the confiscations of a
+bygone past; they became more estranged from their inferiors than they had
+been for years.[43]
+
+This terrible outbreak shook society in Ireland to its base, revived the
+old divisions of race and faith which had been disappearing to a
+considerable extent, and left memories behind which have not been
+forgotten. Its inevitable result was to lead to the Union, a measure long
+in the contemplation of British statesmen, and especially of Pitt, and
+perhaps necessary in the most critical circumstances of the time. I cannot
+even refer to the events attending this great constitutional change; a
+large majority of the leading Irish landlords disliked it at heart; but a
+minority, alarmed for their possessions, gave it support; how strong this
+feeling was may be seen in a famous speech of Lord Clare, who described
+the whole order of men as 'the heirs of confiscation hemmed in by enemies
+brooding on their wrongs.' The Union greatly weakened the influence of
+the Irish landed gentry, which had been very powerful in the defunct
+Parliament; the 'Irish interest,' for many years a real force, was almost
+subverted; English officials became again supreme at the Castle; a
+bureaucracy gradually began to supplant the aristocracy of landlords in
+every sphere of government. As respects the land and landed relations, the
+class of Catholic owners slowly augmented; but the consequences were
+trivial and not marked; middleman tenures continued steadily to disappear;
+but absenteeism certainly increased, though absentee estates were usually
+better managed than before. Meanwhile causes of grave importance, tending
+to momentous social results, were profoundly affecting the whole land
+system, and the position of the classes dependent on it. Partly owing to
+the corn laws of the Irish Parliament, partly to the extension of the
+Parliamentary franchise, in 1793, to the great mass of the Catholic
+peasantry, but principally to the effects of the long war with France,
+Ireland, it may be said, was well-nigh changed from a pastoral to an
+agricultural country; large farms were generally replaced by small; the
+land in most districts was divided into little tillage holdings; the
+cottar system multiplied apace; the population, about three millions of
+souls in the day of Arthur Young, increased to more than six millions at
+the Peace of 1815; and this population becoming every year more dense, for
+the most part eked existence out on a precarious root. The economic and
+social consequences were very great, and continued in operation during a
+long series of years. The competition for the possession of land became
+intensely keen; rents were unnaturally forced up in thousands of cases;
+the value of landed property enormously rose; all this encouraged
+extravagance among the landed gentry, and especially induced them largely
+to encumber their estates. At the same time the wages of labour distinctly
+declined; the condition of the Irish labouring peasant, when Edward
+Wakefield, a very industrious and able observer, wrote on the state of
+Ireland in 1812, was markedly worse than it had been in the time of Arthur
+Young. Yet these were not the most serious, at least, the most lasting,
+effects of the revolution taking place in landed relations. As the large
+farm system was being broken up, as the small farm system had come in its
+stead, and as population had rapidly grown, the occupiers of the soil had
+more and more made the permanent additions to their holdings; they had
+built, fenced, and reclaimed land, more and more; and in the general
+eagerness to obtain the possession of land, considerable sums were often
+paid for farms on their transfer. The concurrent rights of the tenant
+classes in Ireland had thus become enormously increased; they often
+amounted, equitably, to a real joint-ownership; yet these rights were
+without the support of law, and were liable to be extinguished often at
+the mere will of the landlord. In Ulster alone, in its Presbyterian and
+Scottish parts, where the landed classes had been less disunited than in
+the South, a custom, now of considerable strength, had for a long time
+made the tenure of the peasant comparatively secure; yet even this was not
+under the aegis of law.[44]
+
+Made wise, after the event, we now clearly perceive what ought to have
+been done for Ireland in this position of affairs. There never had been an
+Irish poor law; Protestant property was not to be charged for Catholic
+want; but the population was fast increasing; a mass of wretched poverty
+was being formed; this should have been supported, and yet checked, by a
+poor law. At the same time legislation, as Burke had contended, should
+have vindicated the moral rights of the occupier of the soil, should have
+made what really was his property his own, should have rendered his tenure
+profitable and secure. Nothing of the kind, however, came into the minds
+of British statesmen, or even, it must be said, of the best Irishmen of
+the day--the age was one of Toryism harsh and unfeeling; the abuses of the
+poor law in England were great; it was not contemplated to apply it to
+Ireland; above all, the equitable claims of the Irish tenant were not
+understood or deemed worthy of notice; English tenure, utterly unfitted to
+his true position, was good enough for him. The land system, nevertheless,
+was not much disturbed while the high prices of the war prevailed; there
+was a good deal indeed of disorder connected with the land, but society
+was not deeply affected. And it is only just to observe that the
+landlords, as a class, did respect the concurrent rights of their tenants
+in the soil; the conclusive proof is that these could not have grown up
+had they been generally, or even largely, set at nought. But a great and
+calamitous change passed over Ireland when the comparative wealth caused
+by the war collapsed, and when the return to cash payments made the
+effects worse. Rents suddenly fell greatly, and even disappeared; the
+wages of labour, which had usually been paid through what may be called a
+wretched truck system, were reduced to a remarkable degree; hundreds of
+thousands of the cottar peasantry sank to the lowest depths of indigence.
+A great social convulsion, in a word, took place; this culminated in
+famine in several counties; a miserable population was deprived of the
+means of subsistence. In these circumstances the owners of the soil acted
+as a class would ordinarily act; many, impoverished themselves, let things
+drift; many made themselves conspicuous for good works of charity; a
+minority had recourse to severe measures, like the English landlords of
+the sixteenth century, to get rid of a mass of poverty clinging in despair
+to the land. The old divisions of race and faith unquestionably
+aggravated this state of things; but the Government of the day showed
+little forethought, and, in fact, was infinitely the most to blame; it met
+the emergency, not by wise and healing measures, but by legislation, which
+made the eviction of the peasant from his holding easy and cheap, and by
+having recourse to repression unjust and severe in the extreme. In too
+many instances, 'clearances' of estates, an evil word, were witnessed;
+hundreds of families were driven from their homes and cast on the world;
+as the necessary result, in numberless cases, the equitable rights of the
+Irish tenant were ruthlessly destroyed. As a matter of course,
+Whiteboyism, never completely suppressed, broke out in formidable agrarian
+disorder; the peasantry, deprived of the protection of law, leagued
+themselves together to enforce a law of their own; crime multiplied to an
+immense extent; all the machinery of coercion could not wholly keep it
+under.[45]
+
+I must pass rapidly over the next twenty years, though a very important
+period in Irish history. Catholic emancipation was wrung by O'Connell,
+from a reluctant Ministry, through violent agitation, which distracted
+Ireland for years; the Irish Catholic was admitted into Parliament at
+last. This great event was followed by the savage Tithe War, a movement
+against the Anglican Church in Ireland stained with detestable deeds of
+blood; the representation of Ireland passed largely into O'Connell's
+hands, the head of what was called 'his Catholic Tail.' Protestant
+ascendency in Ireland received a mortal blow; the influence of the Irish
+landed gentry still further declined; that of the bureaucracy at the
+Castle increased. From this time forward the Irish landlord began to feel
+his position really insecure; it is remarkable how few large mansions and
+demesnes have ever since been designed or completed by this order of men.
+After the disastrous period which came to an end about 1826, the wealth of
+Ireland perceptibly grew; a kind of prosperity existed in many parts of
+the country. The age, too, had become more liberal and humane; the
+middleman was got rid of in not a few districts; the absentee landlords
+devoted more attention to their estates than they had ever devoted before.
+The process of eviction, moreover, became much less frequent, though too
+frequent for social order and peace; a considerable number of Irish
+landlords expended large sums in improving their lands; farms were
+consolidated, with good results, in many parts of the country. But the
+essential features of the land system were not much changed; its economic
+conditions became, in important respects, worse. The landed gentry, if
+much less extravagant than their fathers had been, were, nevertheless, as
+a class, much involved in debt; and, as usually has been seen in cases of
+the kind, they became less really prosperous, as their authority declined.
+Meanwhile, the population had continued rapidly to increase; by the close
+of this period it exceeded eight millions of souls, a total far too great
+for the resources of the land. The phenomena, already critical, became
+more sinister; rents were again forced up as the wealth of the country
+augmented, and reached the highest level they have ever attained; the
+wages of labour did not fall, indeed, they could hardly fall lower; but
+the cottar population had become more than ever dense; the competition for
+the possession of the soil grew fierce; as necessarily followed, the
+quasi-proprietary rights of the tenant in his holding had been enlarged,
+and yet these were still outside the pale of the law. A Report, made in
+1837-38, disclosed the appalling fact that two millions and a half of the
+Irish community were for months in every year on the verge of starvation,
+and always in a condition of extreme misery. Though Ireland had made, in a
+sense, progress, her economic state had thus become dangerous, and very
+bad; and a poor law, enacted at last in 1838, was utterly unable to cope
+with the evil. Whiteboy crime and disorders continued to abound; in 1844,
+an average year, there were more than a thousand instances of offences in
+landed relations.
+
+The year 1843 was that of the great Repeal movement, of which O'Connell
+was the master spirit. Peel had been Prime Minister for two years; his
+attention had been already turned to the vices and the perils of the Irish
+land system. He had been Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1812 to 1818;
+but he had been identified with the Tory misrule of that time; and though,
+like Chesterfield in another age, he had been too sagacious not to see
+that poverty made the social ills of Ireland more acute and worse, he had
+been the ablest opponent of the Catholic cause, had supported Protestant
+ascendency in many ways; and had not been in any sense an Irish reformer.
+A strong Conservative of the great middle class in England, he looked on
+Ireland as an almost foreign land, and had scarcely any knowledge of her
+real needs; and though his severe administration at the Castle had been
+wise and just, he carried out coercion with a steady hand, and is supposed
+to have been the author of the code of cheap ejectment, a cause of a great
+deal of evil and wrong. But his mind, if slow in moving, was moved at
+last; he saw that Ireland largely required the amending hand; the conduct
+of O'Connell, no doubt, had quickened his purpose. I cannot dwell on
+Peel's other Irish measures; at the close of 1843 he appointed a
+Commission charged to inquire into the state of Irish landed relations;
+had he continued long at the head of the State, he would probably have
+done much to improve the Irish land system. The Commission had, as
+President, the chief of the great House of Courtenay; it was almost wholly
+composed of Englishmen, more or less associated with land in England; it
+was, therefore, ill constituted to deal with what may be called the Irish
+Land Question. But it investigated the subject it treated with most
+praiseworthy care; entering into every detail of Irish landed relations,
+their history in the past, the state of land tenure, the condition of the
+different classes seated on the land, the working of the law with respect
+to tenant's improvements, the means of diminishing the wretched millions
+squatting on the soil, agrarian crime and all that it involved; the mass
+of evidence it collected is still of the greatest value. The Report it
+made, if somewhat over-cautious and timid, was very instructive in many
+respects; especially it showed how the Irish land system grew out of the
+conquests and confiscations of the past, and still bore the marks of its
+ill-omened origin, notably in the lines drawn between the owners and the
+occupiers of the soil marked by a profound division of race and faith; and
+many of the suggestions it made were wise, nay, excellent. But on the
+capital subject of land tenure, by many degrees the most important, the
+Report only too clearly revealed the ignorance of Englishmen as regards
+Ireland, and, above all, as regards her landed relations. The Commission
+ought to have fully recognised the concurrent rights in the soil, which
+the Irish occupier had acquired in tens of thousands of instances, rights
+often equivalent to more or less joint-ownership; it ought to have
+insisted that the Tenant Right, as it was now called, of the Ulster
+Custom, and the claims arising from improvements, the work of the tenant,
+and from sums paid on the transfer of farms, should be made law-worthy,
+and effectually secured. With a want of insight which would have made
+Burke gnash his teeth, it took exactly an opposite course; it warned the
+Irish landlord that these concurrent rights were creating against him 'an
+embryo copyhold,' and eating away his freehold ownership; it plainly
+hinted that he would do well to get rid of them. It even refused to
+acknowledge that the tenant had a claim to any improvements if made in the
+past; but it proposed a scheme for compensating him for improvements made
+in the future, so limited and fenced round with restrictions, that it was
+quite illusory, and indeed deceptive. The Report caused intense
+indignation in Ulster, and was not well received in any part of
+Ireland.[46]
+
+Bills, founded on the Report of the Devon Commission, as it was called,
+were brought into Parliament, but never became law. Within a few months
+Ireland was in the throes of an agony, the most terrible, perhaps, that
+has befallen any land in the nineteenth century. In the autumn of 1845,
+the potato, which formed the only food of the indigent multitudes fastened
+on the land, failed, to a considerable extent, in many districts; in the
+following year the crop was all but completely destroyed. Famine, far more
+general and appalling than that of twenty-five years before, had soon held
+a wretched population in its grasp; the results may almost be compared to
+those of the Black Death, and of the famines of the Middle Ages. The land
+system went to wreck in whole counties, especially in the west and along
+the seaboard; hundreds of the landed gentry were involved in ruin;
+thousands of farmers of the better class became bankrupt; the dense cottar
+multitudes were literally lifted up from the soil, and cast adrift, the
+waifs and strays of a far-reaching tempest. This is not the place to
+review the measures adopted to meet the dread visitation; if not free from
+errors, inevitable in a situation of the kind, they were, essentially,
+and, in the main, successful. Peel was still in office in 1845; well
+knowing what poverty in Ireland was, he introduced supplies of food into
+the remote and backward districts, which the energies of commerce could
+hardly reach; this wise policy saved tens of thousands of lives; as is
+notorious, he repealed the corn laws in the interest of the afflicted
+country. The Government of Lord John Russell had succeeded him in 1846; it
+had to confront an emergency infinitely worse; it followed, in many
+respects, the example of Peel, who had established 'relief works' in many
+counties; but it did not assist the most impoverished parts of Ireland
+with food through the agency of the State; this possibly was a real
+mistake. Nevertheless, it manfully and humanely met the tremendous crisis;
+it is easy to censure some of its acts, for instance, the wasteful and
+useless public works it set on foot, and the gigantic outdoor relief it
+was compelled to lavish; but millions in starvation were thrown on its
+hands; and the poor law, only lately in operation, could not cope with
+universal distress. On the whole, the statesmen in power did their duty
+wisely and well; thousands of unhappy victims succumbed, indeed, to
+famine, and to dire diseases following in its train; but Ireland as a
+people was saved; assuredly she could not have saved herself. A word, too,
+must be said on the magnificent charity which flowed in from many lands
+into the community in its woe. England had turned in sympathy towards
+Ireland in the season of distress which had followed the Peace; she
+bestowed great sums on her, in 1845-46, through private subscription. The
+United States, France, Germany, and Italy joined in the good work; even
+the Ottoman Empire was not behindhand.
+
+I must dwell for a moment on the conduct and the position of the classes
+connected with the land during this appalling trial. The attitude of the
+landed gentry was much the same as it had been at an infinitely less
+disastrous crisis; but, on the whole, it was marked by nobler and more
+attractive features. The charity of the great landlords of Ireland was
+most praiseworthy; many devoted large sums for the support of the poor on
+their lands by instituting fine works of enclosure and drainage; some, I
+know, even mortgaged their estates for this very purpose. Hundreds of the
+lesser gentry, stricken down as they were, imitated their superiors as
+well as they could; old divisions were forgotten in the common misfortune;
+spite of the interested lies of a calumnious faction, as an order of men
+they acted extremely well. One of their bitterest enemies, who wrote at
+the time, has placed it on record, 'that the resident landlords and their
+families did, in many cases, devote themselves to the task of saving these
+poor people alive. Many remitted their rents or half their rents; and
+ladies kept their servants busy and their kitchens smoking with continual
+preparation of food for the poor.'[47] Many, however, of the Irish
+landlords, as was to be expected, looked hopelessly on at the misery
+around them; this was the case with feeble and incapable men, and the
+sight has always been seen in grave social crises; it was but in
+conformity with our frail and imperfect nature. A certain number,
+moreover, of the class had recourse to severe measures to remove from
+their lands the masses of wretchedness crowded upon them; the process of
+eviction became too frequent; hundreds of families were in this way
+dispossessed of their holdings. These acts of harshness were certainly to
+be deplored; but it was almost universally believed that the cottar in
+Ireland could not live from the land after the failure of almost his only
+means of subsistence; it must be added that, in this very matter, the
+conduct of Parliament and the Government was by many degrees more severe.
+A strict test of destitution had to be applied; a law was passed that, as
+a condition of obtaining relief, no person possessing more than a quarter
+of an acre of land should be entitled to support from the State; thousands
+of families abandoned their homes, through the effects of this measure;
+for one evicted by a landlord, fifty perhaps were practically evicted by
+this stern policy. The law was possibly required in the terrible
+circumstances of the time; but it was condemned by the Lord-Lieutenant,
+Lord Bessborough, a great Irish peer, and an able man; at all events, it
+justified, to a considerable extent, all that could be laid to the charge
+of a few Irish landlords whose acts were most unfairly denounced by many
+writers, and were falsely described as common to the great body of the
+class. For the rest, as I have said, the land system was broken up in many
+districts; and not only the owners but the occupiers of the soil suffered
+cruelly from the highest to the lowest grade.
+
+After the first months of the famine, the immense exodus of the Irish
+race, as it has fitly been called, began. The population fled from the
+country in hundreds of thousands; some found a home in England and in our
+Australian colonies; nine-tenths, probably, in the great Republic of the
+West. The sufferings of numbers of the emigrants were terribly severe;
+huddled together in the ill-found vessels of the time, hundreds perished
+before they beheld the lands they were seeking; that some check was not
+placed on the greed of the merchants, who subjected these victims to
+horrors like those of the Middle Passage, was certainly the worst mistake
+of the Government of the day. During the agony of the famine there was
+comparatively little crime; the minds of men were engrossed by a dire
+calamity; but in a few months Whiteboyism had been again aroused; there
+was a widespread outbreak of agrarian disorder followed by the abortive
+rising of 1848. The time was now ripe, in the judgment of even leading
+statesmen, for making another of the great experiments on the Irish land,
+which had been their policy since the age of the Tudors. Many of the Irish
+landed gentry had been ruined; the estates of many were heavily charged
+with debt, in part caused by extravagance in the past, but chiefly by
+large provisions made for their families in more prosperous times,
+especially during the period of the high prices of the war.[48] The
+object of the Government--and Peel concurred--was to make a clean sweep of
+the embarrassed owners, and to transfer their lands to a new order of men;
+'English and Scottish capital was to be attracted to the Irish soil;' the
+Irish landlord was to be 'sold out cheap;' his successor was to be a
+person fit 'to discharge the duties of property;' the 'regeneration of
+Ireland' was to be the magnificent result.[49] The sale of encumbered
+estates in Ireland had from various causes been a slow and a costly
+process, an Act was run through Parliament with scarcely an expression of
+dissent,[50] making the process as rapid and inexpensive as the wit of man
+could devise; a Commission was appointed to carry the law into effect; and
+intending purchasers were to be given an indefeasible title to any lands
+they might acquire. This was a strong measure, but it was not nearly all;
+the concurrent rights of the tenants in the estates to be sold were
+absolutely ignored, and left without protection; the new possessors were
+empowered to destroy them if they pleased. The results were such as might
+have been looked for when lands were forced into the market wholesale,
+when Ireland was still reeling from the strokes of a terrible famine, and
+agricultural ruin was seen everywhere. The Commission acted as such
+tribunals invariably act when skilfully selected to carry out a policy; it
+addressed itself to its task of 'selling land cheap;' it was egged on by
+the Lord-Lieutenant of the day; and it sacrificed estates, in scores of
+instances, at less than half their value. This iniquitous proceeding went
+on for years, until the market for land in Ireland righted itself at last;
+but the Encumbered Estates Act was often renewed; about a sixth part of
+the lands of Ireland has been transferred by these means. As the result
+many of the Irish gentry, who might have tided over the crisis, were
+beggared and cast on the world penniless; and confiscation from above had
+its counterpart in confiscation from below; the partial joint-ownership of
+thousands of the occupiers of the soil was ruthlessly annihilated in
+numbers of cases. And what were the consequences of this scheme of
+spoliation and wrong, which English politicians would never have thought
+of but for their traditional contempt of the rights of property in land in
+Ireland? English and Scottish capital, indeed, reached the Irish soil; but
+it reached it in the form of large mortgages, a heavy drain on the
+country's resources; the English and Scottish purchasers of the Irish land
+were a mere handful of men. The estates, in fact, transferred under the
+Encumbered Estates Acts, as a rule, passed into the ownership of jobbers,
+speculators, and mortgagees, people without the associations old
+possession ensures; they have formed, as a class, harsh and exacting
+landlords, the true successors of the almost defunct middleman; they are
+responsible for much that is bad in Irish landed relations of late years.
+A huge confiscation, in a word, failed, as those of Elizabeth and Cromwell
+failed before; the fact ought to be a warning to public men, who have been
+parading theories about the Irish land--strewn as this has been with
+monuments of misdeeds and errors--as false and more dangerous than those
+which produced the Encumbered Estates Acts.[51]
+
+The exodus had, by 1851, reduced the population of Ireland by nearly two
+millions of souls; this decline has continued ever since; the population
+which, in 1846, was considerably more than eight millions, is now, we
+have seen, only about four and a half millions. In 1852 an agitation
+sprang up, which might have wrought a great change in Irish landed
+relations, had it not been brought by mere accident to an untimely end.
+The Report of the Devon Commission, I have said, had troubled Ulster; the
+Famine had driven peasants, in tens of thousands, from their homes; the
+operation of the Encumbered Estates Act was destroying their concurrent
+rights in their holdings. At the General Election of 1852 Ireland returned
+a large party of representatives to the House of Commons pledged to
+vindicate the claims of the tenant farmers; these were expressed in a
+demand that has been called the 'Three F's,' 'Fair Rent,' 'Fixity of
+Tenure,' and 'Free Sale,' a mode of occupation which had been largely
+secured by the Custom of Ulster, and to which O'Connell had given his
+sanction. The Government of Lord Derby was now in office; it had brought
+in measures which, in some degree, would have legalised the rights of the
+Irish tenant; but the Ministry was defeated, partly through an
+intrigue;[52] the cause of the Irish farmer was baffled and kept in
+suspense for years, largely owing to dissensions and treachery on the part
+of some of the Irish members. By this time the country had begun to
+revive, and to throw off the worst effects of the Famine; vast depopulated
+tracts had been opened to new husbandry; the land had been set free, over
+an immense area, from the incubus of a mass of wretchedness which had
+preyed on it, and had completely disorganised the land system, unnaturally
+forcing up rent and cutting down wages. Under these conditions the
+statesmen in power, already expecting great things from the Encumbered
+Estates Act, believed that the Irish land system would right itself, and
+that it was unnecessary to consider or to protect the rights of the
+tenant classes; these would either disappear, or would be fairly adjusted
+in the improved landed relations that were being formed. At all events,
+there was no legislation to secure these claims; the scanty legislation,
+that dealt with the Irish land, was unfavourable, in many ways, to these,
+and endeavoured to assimilate Irish to English tenures, as Tudor lawyers
+had done three centuries before; and Lord Palmerston, for a long time the
+head of the State, discouraged Irish tenant right, in more than one
+speech, and declared that it only meant landlord wrong, unwise utterances
+that showed he did not understand the subject. At the same time, the
+policy of clearing the land for cultivators of a capitalist class, able to
+occupy and do justice to large farms, was generally advocated in high
+places; more than one Lord-Lieutenant announced that nature had made
+Ireland a great grazing tract, and that her petty occupiers were little
+better than a social nuisance.[53]
+
+For some time it seemed as though the forecasts made by the great majority
+of our statesmen would prove correct. The immense emigration from Ireland
+to the United States had important results, unfortunate in many respects;
+but the uplifting of redundant millions from the soil greatly contributed
+to the country's welfare. Holdings were consolidated over very large
+areas, a beneficent process, if humanely carried out; a certain number of
+Englishmen and Scotsmen rented large farms; the progress of husbandry of
+all kinds was distinct; a vast field for agriculture, really worthy of the
+name, was opened. A new standard for the management of land was, in fact,
+set up; at the same time a few purchasers, under the Encumbered Estates
+Acts, laid out considerable sums in improving their estates; the Treasury
+made large advances to many Irish landlords; these did much in works of
+enclosure, draining, planting, and the like. Ireland began to wear a new
+aspect in several counties, especially in the more thriving parts of the
+southern provinces; the ruins made by the Famine, indeed, caused hideous
+eyesores, in wrecks of villages and the remains of peasant dwellings; but
+the mud hovels of the cottar population had largely disappeared, and the
+habitations of farmers of the better class very markedly improved. The
+economic conditions of landed relations became more conducive to
+prosperity than they had ever been before; rents fell considerably during
+a series of years, as the intense competition for land diminished; though
+they gradually rose in the course of time, they never reached the
+excessive rates of 1840-45; and the wages of labour greatly increased, and
+attained a level that, happily, has since been preserved. Many
+circumstances concurred to quicken and augment this unquestionable social
+and material progress. Agricultural prices were high from about 1852
+onward; Free Trade was as yet adding to the wealth of Ireland; and there
+was a long succession of good harvests, the most important element in her
+general welfare. The railway system, too, introduced of late years, opened
+a number of new markets to her products, and greatly facilitated their
+access to British markets. At the same time the turnip replaced the potato
+over hundreds of thousands of acres; farm machinery greatly improved in
+Ireland; the importation of the best stock from England and Scotland had
+excellent results, and almost transformed the old breeds of Irish farming
+animals. An era of prosperity, in a word, had seemed to dawn on Ireland;
+and though agrarian disorder had not disappeared, the Whiteboy secret
+societies were greatly broken up, and political agitation well-nigh
+ceased.
+
+In these circumstances, it was a common belief in England that 'the Irish
+difficulty,' as it was called, was passing away, and that the 'Hibernia
+Pacata' had at last become a happy reality. Yet the progress and
+tranquillity of this brief period were largely superficial and even
+deceptive; fires were still alive beneath the smouldering ashes. The
+partial prosperity of Ireland mainly depended on good harvests and high
+prices; it was interrupted, even in these years, by two or three seasons
+of distress. Notwithstanding the widespread consolidation of farms, and
+the removal from the soil of indigent millions, the land still, for the
+most part, remained in the possession of a mere peasantry; very few of the
+English and Scottish capitalist farmers settled in Ireland, and really
+throve; the great majority left the country, like the 'Englishry' of a
+bygone age. And though things wore a serene aspect, the inherent vices of
+the land system continued to exist; in some respects they increased, or
+were more painfully felt. The old divisions of race and faith between the
+owners and the occupiers of the soil remained; they had but little changed
+and even had perhaps widened; much had happened to keep the landed classes
+more apart than before. The new purchasers, under the Encumbered Estates
+Acts, were, we have seen, often hard-fisted and grasping landlords; they
+raised their rents, without scruple, in too many instances; standing on
+the letter of the law, they too often ignored the partial joint-ownership
+in their farms of their tenants; they had sometimes recourse to unjust and
+severe evictions. The old landlords, too, never recovered from the effects
+of the Famine; they were overshadowed by the bureaucracy of the Castle,
+which, for many years, had been growing in power; they thus became an
+order of men with privileges, but without authority, in the midst of
+inferiors, who had little sympathy with them, a dangerous position like
+that of the French seigneurie in the later years of the eighteenth
+century--a position described by Tocqueville in very striking language. At
+the same time the peasantry stood aloof from them more than in the days of
+their fathers; and though they remained quiescent for years, as has often
+happened in Irish history, there were causes for this increasing
+estrangement. They were no longer the grossly ignorant multitude of fifty
+years before; education had made some way among them, though in this
+respect they were still backward; they felt more acutely all that was hard
+in their lot, like the French peasantry before the great Revolution of
+1789-94. This sentiment, however, owed its principal force to sentiments
+engendered in far distant lands. The thousands of the exodus had left
+their country with memories embittered against some Irish landlords, and,
+notably, against the British Government; a new Ireland was rising across
+the Atlantic; the emigrants and their sons were in constant communication
+with the old Ireland once their home; socialistic ideas as regards the
+land, blending with dislike of the superiors and the rulers, under whom
+they lived, were gradually diffused among the Irish peasantry. The
+economic conditions, too, of landed relations by degrees made these
+feelings more general and intense. Rents were rising as the wealth of the
+country increased, though, except in the cases of the new landlords, and
+of a very few surviving middlemen, they were, as a rule, by no means
+excessive. Simultaneously a concurrence of causes had extinguished
+leasehold tenures in most parts of Ireland, and had reduced the status of
+the Irish farmer to that of a mere tenant at will, liable to be
+dispossessed by a notice to quit, at the mercy, in fact, of the lord of
+the soil. And, meanwhile, the equitable rights of the occupiers as a
+class, due to improvements, and to sums paid for the goodwill of farms,
+had been increasing to an immense extent; and yet a grievous wrong--they
+were not even recognised by law. Law and fact had long been sharply
+clashing in landed relations; there was much that was essentially bad in
+the land system; and agrarian trouble and crime was on the increase.
+
+The mind of England had turned away from Ireland after the petty outbreak
+of 1848; it charged the Irish community with ungrateful folly, as it
+recollected the charity lavished during the Famine. This sentiment was
+replaced by what was worse, indifference; throughout this period--from
+1850 to 1868--Parliament gave little attention to the affairs of Ireland.
+British statesmen continued to pin their faith to their policy; they
+disregarded ominous symptoms on the increase; Ireland was rapidly becoming
+more prosperous; the claims of the Irish tenant farmer were a delusion, or
+worse. This apathy was augmented by the state of the representation of
+Ireland in these years; this was in a feeble, even a degraded condition;
+and largely owing to the authority of Cardinal Cullen, who prohibited the
+Irish priesthood from taking any part in politics, agitation, I have said,
+had become a mere tradition of the past. Yet the causes I have glanced at
+were silently at work, which ultimately were to lead to grave social
+troubles. The first sign of disturbance was seen in a little outbreak, the
+result of a conspiracy hatched by one of the rebels of 1848, and supported
+to some extent from America: but the 'Phoenix plot,' as it was called,
+almost at once collapsed; the Government thought it hardly worthy of
+notice. Another and much more formidable conspiracy was matured in
+1864-65; and though it was put down with little difficulty in time, it
+showed that there was much that was peccant in the state of Ireland; and
+it deeply affected the minds of Englishmen, aroused as it were out of a
+fool's paradise. The millions of the Irish race in the Far West were
+passionately appealed to by leaders, not without parts, to assist in a
+crusade against 'landlordism,' and British rule in Ireland; they gave the
+movement very general support; they found numerous allies in thousands of
+Irishmen disbanded after the great conflict between the North and the
+South. The Fenian conspiracy was launched on its course; its directors
+made skilful attempts to debauch whole regiments, and to stir up the
+passions of the mob in many of the towns of Ireland; and they especially
+turned their attention to the mass of the peasantry. Here, however, their
+policy was injudicious and ill-conceived; they promised the Irish land as
+a spoil to those who would join the ranks of the 'patriot Irish army;' but
+all this alarmed the occupiers of the soil, whose only object was to
+acquire a better mode of tenure for their farms, and who rightly thought
+the Fenian movement made their possessions insecure, a belief generally
+encouraged by the Catholic priesthood. A short-lived rising, conducted by
+a few American soldiers, and backed by the rabble of a few villages and
+towns, found no real support in Ireland, and was finally quelled in 1867;
+but in England there was a spurt of Fenian disorder, and this, though
+easily quenched, made a profound impression. It was generally felt in
+England and Scotland that, notwithstanding the optimism of a generation of
+public men, there was still much that was rotten in the state of Ireland,
+and that this should be removed by large and searching reforms. The chief
+sign of this change in British opinion was seen in the result of the
+General Election of 1868; Mr. Gladstone, who, hitherto, had taken
+comparatively little part in Irish affairs, but who, with his keen
+instinct of every turn in the public mind, had been vehemently enlarging
+on the wrongs of Ireland, was placed in power with a great majority, and
+at once addressed himself to the task of Irish reform.[54]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (_continued_)--THE IRISH LAND ACT OF
+1870--THE LAND LEAGUE AND THE NATIONAL LEAGUE--THE LAND OF
+1881--SUBSEQUENT LEGISLATION AS REGARDS THE LAND SYSTEM OF IRELAND
+
+    State of landed relations in Ireland in 1869-70--Mr. Gladstone Prime
+    Minister--The Land Act of 1870--Its merits and defects--A short period
+    of prosperity in Ireland--Ominous symptoms--Michael Davitt--The
+    teaching of John Finton Lalor in 1848--The 'New Departure' in
+    Fenianism arranged in America--Foundation of the Land League--It was a
+    foreign rebellious conspiracy, with an agrarian side, under a
+    constitutional mask--Parnell the master spirit of the League--His
+    visit to America and the results--A short period of distress in
+    Ireland--Conduct of the Irish landlords--Progress of the Land
+    League--Mr. Gladstone again Prime Minister in 1880--The Compensation
+    for Disturbance Bill rejected by the House of Lords--Outburst of
+    agrarian crime, as the Land League increases in power--Rents at
+    Griffith's valuation--Boycotting--Frightful state of Ireland in
+    1881--After a short attempt to repress it, Mr. Gladstone surrenders to
+    the Land League--The Land Act of 1881--Mr. Gladstone breaks the
+    pledges he had made in 1870--His promise of compensating the Irish
+    landlords--The Land Act of 1881 a bad and unjust measure directly
+    inconsistent with that of 1870--The 'No Rent Manifesto'--The
+    Kilmainham Treaty--The Phoenix Park tragedy--Coercion--Parnell
+    founds the National League, the successor of the Land League--Renewal
+    of agitation in 1886--Struggle with law and the Government--Subsequent
+    agrarian legislation for Ireland--This is really a concession to
+    agitation, for the benefit of Irish tenants, and to the injury of
+    Irish landlords.
+
+
+Mr. Gladstone, after his conversion to Home Rule, more than once declared
+that, almost from early manhood he had given special attention to
+Ireland; either his memory was at fault, or he had kept the fact to
+himself. He had been a conspicuous figure in politics, for many years
+before 1868; but until he had been placed at the helm of the State, he had
+shown little acquaintance with Irish questions, and, indeed, had expressed
+few opinions on them. In 1866 he had said in the House of Commons, that
+the existence of the Anglican Irish Church would be probably long; he had
+been in high office almost since 1853, and, as a colleague of Lord
+Palmerston, had acquiesced in the philippics of that statesman against
+Irish tenant right, conduct that revealed ignorance of the land system of
+Ireland. But, in 1868, when the Fenian outbreak had caused the nation to
+demand large reforms in Ireland, he suddenly abandoned his attitude of
+reserve; he threw himself into Irish affairs; his zeal, it may be
+remarked, as often happened, fell in with his interests, and with those of
+the Liberal party, and gave him a leverage to drive Disraeli from office.
+During months before the General Election that ensued, the orator
+thundered on Irish grievances, and on the manifold ills of Ireland; in
+figurative and impassioned language, he said that the island was blighted
+by a huge upas tree, the Church, the land, and education being the three
+main branches. These harangues, addressed to the new democracy,
+contributed powerfully to the fall of the Conservative Ministry; it was
+little noticed, at the time, that one of the results was ere long to
+compel Mr. Gladstone himself to subject Ireland to severe repressive
+measures, for Whiteboy and agrarian outrages became frequent In 1869, the
+Minister addressed himself to the task of hewing down the first branch of
+the poisonous upas; he disestablished and disendowed the Protestant Church
+of Ireland. This is not the place to comment upon that great measure; it
+was well designed upon its professed principles; it dealt liberally, nay,
+generously, with the voluntary Church, which replaced the Church of the
+State it overthrew. But essentially it was a scheme of destruction, formed
+in Nonconformist not in Irish interests, and opposed to the views of
+generations of statesmen; it made no provision for the clergy of the Irish
+Catholic Church, a policy which Pitt, Castlereagh, and Lord John Russell
+had had at heart, which had been all but a condition of the Union, and
+which, if carried into effect, would have done much to strengthen and
+maintain that fundamental law, and to promote tranquillity in Ireland and
+her general welfare.
+
+Mr. Gladstone now turned to the second branch of the upas, the land system
+of Ireland and her landed relations. His whole career, especially in its
+Home Rule phase, proves that his knowledge of Ireland was not exact or
+profound; at this time he had had little experience of the Irish land
+question. But the mind of England was still attracted to Irish affairs; a
+number of distinguished Englishmen and Scotchmen went to Ireland, to
+investigate the state of the country on the spot; the British Press sent
+some of its best contributors; the time was singularly opportune for a
+fair and complete inquiry; no Minister has had, before or since, such
+assistance in dealing with Irish problems. I must glance at the state of
+the Irish land system in 1869-70, as this was fully explored and made
+manifest.[55] The material progress being made, since about 1854, had
+been largely developed in by far the greatest part of the island. The
+population was being still diminished by emigration and other causes; the
+area for real husbandry had been greatly extended; the rural community, at
+least in its lower grades, was infinitely better off than it had been
+before the Famine. The look of the country, in most places, bore witness
+to a change beneficent in the main; it had been almost transformed since
+1844-45. The cottar system, no doubt, was to be found in backward
+counties; but even in these it had been largely effaced; it was all but
+passing away in the more thriving counties; masses of indigence were to be
+seen only in tracts west of the Shannon; and these were aggregated on an
+area comparatively small. The general consolidation of farms had,
+meanwhile, gone on; and though Ireland remained, on the whole, a land of
+small farms, her land system had, from top to bottom, ceased to depend for
+its support on a perishable root. In every conceivable respect a marked
+improvement was visible in the state of the peasantry; they were by many
+degrees better clothed and fed than their fathers had been; the wages of
+agricultural labour were still rising, and were now paid in money, and not
+in plots of potatoes; and though the habitations of this whole class were,
+as a rule, still mean, the dwellings of the class of substantial farmers
+had shown signs of distinct social progress. At the same time agriculture
+had made a marked advance, owing to the influences I have referred to
+before; fine specimens of extensive farming were very commonly to be seen;
+thousands of acres had been reclaimed and enclosed of late years; at no
+period certainly had the landed gentry, in a great measure through moneys
+borrowed from the State, expended such large sums in improving their
+estates, especially in arterial drainage, and the introduction of the
+best breeds of stock of all kinds. The wealth of Ireland, too, was
+increasing, if not rapidly; and a change for the better might be traced in
+what we may describe as her general social life. Her middle class was
+still weak and small compared to that of England and Scotland; but it had
+been growing in wealth and power; and this, to some extent, had had a good
+effect on a community still mainly dependent on the land.
+
+The material and even the social progress of Ireland, since the Famine,
+had thus been marked; it had been more decided than it has been, at any
+period, except, possibly, that from 1782 to 1800. Her land system, too,
+had become better in important parts; but in many respects it remained
+vicious; some of its vices had been aggravated, or were more sensibly
+felt. The hope that the land would pass generally into the hands of large
+farmers, able to develop its resources, had not been realised, or had been
+realised only to a relatively trivial extent; it was still held in the
+main by a peasantry of small occupiers of the soil, though the
+consolidation of farms had gone on over extensive areas, especially over
+wide tracts of pasturage, in the eastern, midland, and western counties,
+and this, in some instances, through a process of harsh eviction. The
+profound divisions of race and faith, the distinctive feature in the
+organic structure of the whole community, were at least as visible as ever
+in the land system; from causes I have pointed out before, they had, not
+improbably, been widened; this tended to increase the old dissension in
+landed relations, and the long-standing separation between the landed
+classes. Middleman tenures, with their mischievous effects, had, since the
+Famine, well-nigh disappeared; but the new landlord had largely replaced
+the middleman; absenteeism remained what it had been; and though absentee
+estates, as a rule, were under good agents, there was too much of that
+'absenteeism of the heart,' condemned by Tocqueville as a grave social
+danger. The purchasers under the Encumbered Estates Acts, with some
+honourable exceptions, no doubt, were too often oppressive landlords; the
+old landlords, as a class, had, certainly, done much for their estates,
+but they had lost their political and largely their social influence;
+partly owing to apprehensions as regards tenant right, partly to the
+assurances of statesmen that their position was safe, they had become
+perhaps more exacting in their dealings with their dependents; in the
+existing situation, they more and more resembled a weak caste, controlled
+by the central Government, and isolated amidst a community, to a great
+extent, not friendly. All this tended to produce a want of stability and
+insecurity in the land system, which was ominous of social strife and
+trouble; but the most active element of disturbance was to be certainly
+found in the contact with the rebellious movement which Ireland had lately
+witnessed. Fenianism had been scotched, but by no means slain; and though
+the peasantry had held aloof from it, Fenian emissaries were going through
+the country, appealing to the passions and the greed of the occupiers of
+the soil, for different reasons not contented with their lot, hostile, in
+a great degree, to the order of things around them, and more alive to
+their grievances than in the past generation; at this very time a cry
+against the payment of rent, and against 'landlordism,' as it was called,
+was being heard in a few counties. It was significant that agrarian
+crimes--some of the worst type--and agrarian disorder were distinctly
+increasing; and it should be added, that, in spite of Cardinal Cullen, the
+younger Catholic priests, in some districts, were beginning to play the
+part of agitators again.
+
+Passing from the general state of landed relations, the conditions of land
+tenure, briefly noticed before, had not improved of late years, and were,
+in some respects, worse. Rents had been rising for a considerable time:
+but except in comparatively few instances, they were not excessive, as
+affairs stood; whatever mendacious calumny has since maintained, Ireland,
+on the whole, was in no sense an over-rented land.[56] But the modes of
+occupation were essentially bad; they were open to the gravest objections;
+their vices had become more than ever apparent. The tenant right, under
+the Ulster custom, had, I have remarked, largely secured the tenant
+farmer, in parts of the province, what was generally known as the 'Three
+F's,' Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure, the power of a Free Sale of the
+holding;[57] though it should be especially borne in mind that the fair
+rent was never adjusted by an external agency, but was settled by what
+Adam Smith would have called 'higgling' between the owner and occupier of
+the soil. The custom, however, had been very powerful; its violation, on
+anything like a great scale, would have certainly caused a fierce war of
+classes; and it gave the Ulster tenant, in tens of thousands of cases, a
+real proprietary right in the land, whatever might be the terms of his
+contract; a right equivalent to more or less joint-ownership, and that
+might be described as a precious _peculium_, subject to conditions that
+long had made it practically secure. But this most important right,
+involving property worth many millions, still remained wholly unprotected
+by law; and though its value had enormously increased, as the wealth of
+Ulster had been developed, of late years, it was being 'nibbled away' on
+not a few estates, and restricted by limitations of many kinds that had
+greatly impaired it. An analogous right, like seed scattered by the
+winds, had partially spread into the southern provinces, as the natural
+result of the equitable claims, the occupiers of farms had repeatedly
+acquired, though this had not been recognised on many estates, and its
+efficacy was not as yet great; but this right, such as it was, like its
+fellow, was not law-worthy, and depended wholly on the will of the lord of
+the soil. In addition to the tenant right in the north and the south, the
+concurrent claims of the tenant farmers, throughout the country, in
+respect of improvements and of sums paid on the transfer of farms, for
+'good-will,' had been greatly increasing of late years, especially as
+prosperity was advancing; and yet tenures had continued to become more
+precarious; leaseholds were being almost everywhere replaced by tenancies
+at will. These claims were never so extensive before; often equivalent to
+joint-ownership, in no doubtful sense, and, in almost all cases, of some
+value, they were, nevertheless, still outside the aegis of the law, a fact
+that must ever be borne in mind; they could be destroyed or greatly
+reduced by the raising of rent, they could be annihilated by a notice to
+quit, if eviction followed. Unquestionably in the great mass of instances,
+these rights, whatever their nature, were not invaded; but they certainly
+had been in a certain number; a single case of invasion created alarm and
+distrust, and had a bad effect on landed relations; throw a stone into a
+pond, and it makes a ripple; it has a disturbing influence far beyond the
+surface it strikes. No wonder, then, that complaints of these modes of
+tenure had become very general, and were loudly expressed, not only by
+those who might suffer from them, but by intelligent minds which had
+mastered the subject. It was an exaggeration to assert, as was said at the
+time, that the peasant in Ireland lived under a sword of Damocles; but he
+lived under a system in which law and right were very plainly opposed.
+
+Only a revolution, which Parliament would not have sanctioned, could have
+effaced the inveterate ills of the Irish land system, running up to the
+conquests and the confiscations of the past, and the divisions of race and
+faith in the Irish land; the remark is as true now as it was thirty years
+ago; and a revolution of the kind, I am firmly convinced, would, even
+under the best conditions, make infinitely worse whatever was already bad.
+But it was possible for legislation to remove or mitigate the essential
+vices in the modes of Irish land tenure; Mr. Gladstone rightly confined
+himself to this object. He brought in his first Irish Land Bill in the
+early spring of 1870; he had to address a House of Commons not much in
+sympathy with a project of the kind. Many of the members were ignorant of
+the subject; many thought English land tenure perfect, and could not
+understand why it would not do for Ireland, a prejudice at least three
+centuries old; some believed Irish tenant right to be a violation of Free
+Trade, then in the ascendant in every phase of commerce. The Minister's
+speech was adapted to those who heard it; it was tentative, moderate, not
+striking; he drew, indeed, very plain distinctions between British and
+Irish land tenure, and showed how the first could be no rule of right for
+the second; but if he enlarged on the just claims of the occupier of the
+Irish soil, he did not venture to maintain, what he probably felt, that
+these were often equivalent to a joint-ownership more or less developed.
+He was, in short, dexterous, but not profound; very inferior to Burke,
+who, a century before, had grasped the essential facts in this province,
+though the question was still in the remote future. The most important
+parts of Mr. Gladstone's speech, and indeed, of those of his leading
+followers, regard being had to events by no means distant, were those in
+which he repudiated, with no doubtful censure, the whole theory of the
+'Three F's,' the extreme demand, at this time, of the tenant class in
+Ireland. 'Fair Rent' he argued, especially if adjusted by the State,
+deprives a landlord of his first proprietary right, and involves his
+expropriation in the long run; 'Fixity of Tenure' means a perpetuity for
+the tenant, to which he has no just claim, and involves confiscation
+hardly disguised; 'Free Sale' was but a corollary to legislation on these
+principles.[58] At the same time, Mr. Gladstone protested, with marked
+emphasis, that the Bill he was introducing was to be absolutely a final
+measure; it was to effect a permanent settlement of the Irish land; Irish
+landlords would have nothing more to apprehend, Irish tenants to expect.
+In this instance, as in that of Home Rule, the orator was to belie
+himself, and to be a curious example of the irony of Fate; within a few
+years he was to legislate on the lines he had denounced as dangerous and
+false; to carry into effect a scheme for dealing with the Irish land,
+infinitely worse than that of the 'Three F's;' to scatter the 'finality,'
+to which he had pledged his word, to the winds.
+
+The Bill thus launched was a comprehensive and wise measure, if not free
+from real, even grave, defects; it remains the only statesmanlike scheme
+for the settlement of Irish landed relations that hitherto has received
+the assent of Parliament.[59] It made the tenant right of Ulster, in its
+various forms, as these existed in different estates, law-worthy, and
+protected to the fullest extent; it gave the same sanction to the inchoate
+tenant right of the southern provinces. This was, in itself, an immense
+reform; but the Bill properly had a far wider sweep; it extended, with the
+exception of certain kinds of lands, such as demesnes, town parks,
+holdings of a residential type, and, in most cases, large pastoral
+holdings, to nearly all the occupiers of the Irish soil; even the excepted
+lands were partially within its scope. The first great object of the
+measure was to secure to the Irish tenant the rights he had acquired to
+improvements he may have made on his farm, a right hitherto not within the
+pale of the law; its provisions, in this respect, were, I think,
+excellent. With a true perception of the unquestionable fact that, though
+the Irish landlords, especially of late years, had expended considerable
+sums on their estates, still, as is inevitable under the small-farm
+system, the Irish tenant, as a general rule, had made the greatest part of
+the additions to the land, Mr. Gladstone provided that, subject to
+limitations by no means severe, in order that the law should not run wild,
+improvements made on farms, in the absence of proof to the contrary,
+should be deemed to be the tenant's property, thus reversing the
+presumption of English law, iniquitous when applied to Irish tenures, that
+what is annexed to the soil belongs to the owner, and not to its occupant.
+The ground being, so to speak, cleared, the Bill declared that, in almost
+all cases, a tenant should have a right, when leaving his farm, even
+though dispossessed for the failure to pay his rent, to claim
+compensation, from his landlord, for his improvements; and facilities were
+offered to landlords to discharge these claims through loans from the
+State. In order, however, reasonably to secure right being done, in a
+complex and very difficult matter, the Bill proceeded to define
+improvements, and to impose restrictions on claims, to which objection
+could fairly be made. Apart from unexhausted tillages and manures, an
+improvement was to be a work 'suitable to a holding, and adding to its
+letting value,' a description as equitable and precise as could well be
+desired. And, speaking generally, claims in respect of improvements were
+not to be preferred were the improvement twenty years old, except in the
+case of buildings and the reclamation of waste land; nor if the
+improvement were prohibited by the landlord, under the conditions laid
+down; nor if it were made under a contract for value; nor if it were
+forbidden by a special contract; nor if, in certain cases, the landlord
+had agreed to make it; nor if the claim was barred by express written
+contract, in the case of improvements made before the Bill became law;
+nor, in the case, with some exceptions, of certain classes of leases; nor
+if the landlord, under certain conditions, permitted a tenant to dispose
+of his interest in his farm.
+
+This measure, therefore, gave the Irish tenant farmer complete property in
+his improvements, within reasonable bounds, and yet did not here invade
+the just rights of the landlord; it was only to be regretted that it had
+not been proposed many years before. It proceeded, however, a great deal
+further, and asserted a principle, for the behoof of the tenant, which has
+since been very generally condemned,[60] though in my judgment, it was
+essentially right, if carried somewhat beyond proper and safe limits.
+Except in the case of leases granted before the Bill, and of a class of
+leases granted when it was to become law, Mr. Gladstone engrafted on the
+great mass of Irish tenancies what really was a new tenant right; he was
+probably convinced, though he did not say so, that this was to be an
+equivalent for the joint-ownership, more or less manifest, which, in
+innumerable instances, the Irish occupier had acquired in the soil. This
+tenant right was given the rather ambiguous name of 'Compensation,' in the
+event of 'Disturbance;' a sum varying in amount from seven to one year's
+rent, according to the size of the holding, but in no case to exceed L250,
+was to be paid to a tenant when dispossessed by a notice to quit, and, in
+some circumstances, by other means; this was to be over and above any sum
+due in respect of improvements; but this, too, as in the case of the
+last-named sum, was to be paid only when the tenant was 'quitting' the
+land. Obviously this was a potential tenant right, if to be realised only
+in one way; it practically gave a quasi-proprietary right in the fee, as,
+when commenting on the Bill, I pointed out at the time; and I certainly
+thought that the compensation was very large, and introduced a principle
+into the Bill which might be abused. Two other provisions of the measure,
+with respect to the position of the Irish tenant, may be briefly noticed.
+No attempt was made to adjust rents, through the agency of the State, Mr.
+Gladstone having expressly denounced the idea; but in the case of petty
+occupiers, subjected to 'exorbitant rents,' compensation for disturbance
+might be adjudged to them, even if evicted for not paying the rent, that
+is, the landlord might be mulcted in very heavy penalties. In nearly all
+instances, too, the tenant was declared to be entitled to 'his away-going
+crops,' another privilege, sometimes of no little value, and analogous to
+that secured by usage in many parts of England. So far the Bill dealt with
+the Irish land on the side of occupation; but it dealt with it, also, on
+the side of ownership. John Bright had urged the expediency, during
+several years, of facilitating the transfer of the fee simple, in his
+holding, to the Irish tenant; this policy had been carried out, to some
+extent, by the Act disestablishing the Anglican Church in Ireland. The
+Bill of 1870 extended the principle; it provided that the State might
+advance moneys to Irish tenants, to enable them to become owners of their
+farms; but--and this should especially be kept in mind--the tenant was to
+supply a third part of the purchase money at least; and the transaction
+was to be effected by free contract, that is, by the voluntary act of the
+landlord disposing of his land. It remains to add, that the administration
+of the measure, was, for the most part--subject to an appeal to the
+Superior Courts--entrusted to the County Courts of Ireland, that is, to
+long-established tribunals of repute.
+
+The Bill passed through both Houses with little change; it has long been
+known as the Irish Land Act of 1870. It was, in the main, I repeat, a
+great reforming measure; it effected a far-reaching improvement in the
+tenure of land in Ireland, and that without any marked infringement of the
+just rights of property. No impartial mind can fairly object to the
+protection given to the tenant right of the north and the south, or to the
+compensation secured for tenants' improvements; if 'Compensation for
+Disturbance' was a bold experiment, still this Parliamentary tenant right,
+as it may be called, was in harmony with fact in nearly all instances.
+Nevertheless, the Act had three marked defects; these largely detracted
+from its practical value. It bristled with such exceptions and limitations
+that it was difficult even for the learned to understand; it seemed to the
+unlettered peasant a dangerous puzzle, involving him, perhaps, in lawsuits
+and costs; it did not strike his imagination as a substantial boon.
+Though, too, it annexed a real tenant right to nearly all farms, and thus
+secured to the Irish tenant, in almost all cases, any joint-ownership he
+may have acquired in the land, still this was intelligible only to
+educated men; 'Compensation for Disturbance' was to be given only when an
+occupier was about to leave his holding; but this was exactly what he
+could not bear to do; he was, therefore, ready to accept almost any terms,
+rather than face consequences he dreaded to think of. Mr. Gladstone,
+again, had, in this measure, shown that he wished to assimilate Irish to
+English land tenure in the long run; he sought to vindicate the just
+claims of the Irish tenant; but he desired ultimately to give him the
+status of his fellow in England, a long-standing, false conception of
+British statesmen. The Land Act, therefore, provided that most of the
+rights it conferred on the tenant might be commuted by the grant of a
+lease for thirty-one years or upwards; and it further enacted that tenants
+of the larger kind might 'contract themselves out' of the privileges it
+gave, by voluntary agreements made with their landlords. The object of
+this was to place the Irish land, by degrees, no doubt, under rather long
+leases, discharged from the tenant right and other claims; but in the
+circumstances of Ireland this was a mistake. This part of the Act was a
+temptation to landlords, to persuade or even to force tenants to accept
+leases under conditions which might be too severe, with respect to rent
+and many other things, and to forego rights they would otherwise have
+enjoyed, by a process which might not be a free contract; it encouraged,
+in a word, unfair evasion of the law. This flaw in the measure was pointed
+out from the first; Mr. Gladstone, however, denied its existence, and
+characteristically shut his ears to other schemes of reform, notably to an
+ingenious proposal of the late Judge Longfield to extend the Ulster tenant
+right to all Irish tenancies by a very simple and self-acting process, and
+to a proposal of Butt to convert tenancies at will into long leaseholds,
+at the rents then current. These projects certainly deserved attention;
+and, whatever their shortcomings, were easy to understand.
+
+The Act of 1870, like the Act dealing with the Protestant Church, was
+followed by a short-lived outbreak of agrarian crime put down only by
+severe coercive measures. This phenomenon has been common in Irish
+history, from the days of Tyrconnell to the present time; disorder has
+been the immediate result of concessions; peccant humours discharge
+themselves if you touch the head of an ulcer. There is some reason, too,
+to believe that in a few instances--and they were very few--wrongheaded
+landlords, alarmed at the prospect before them, began to harass and even
+to dispossess tenants; they aimed at 'clearing' their estates, in order to
+evade the law; conduct of this kind naturally provoked indignation in some
+places.[61] Nevertheless, the Land Act of 1870 was generally well received
+in Ireland, though it fell short of the popular demand, and it was ill
+understood by the tenant classes;[62] many farmers availed themselves of
+its benefits, especially those holding under the Ulster custom. Five or
+six years of prosperity followed, the brightest perhaps ever seen in
+Ireland; agricultural prices were high, harvests extremely good; the
+material progress of the country was decided; the peasantry seemed, as a
+rule, contented; agitation abandoned, as it were, the land, and
+concentrated itself on the Home Rule movement. Mr. Gladstone, always
+optimistic, and proud of his own offspring, boasted, towards the close of
+his first Ministry, that his recent legislation had done wonders; the Land
+Act had reconciled Irish landlords and tenants, and had greatly increased
+the selling price of land; he refused to see how much of all this was due
+to a cause wholly independent of himself, the comparative well-being of
+nearly all Ireland. As had happened in the period from 1854 to 1870, this
+tranquillity was not deeply founded or complete; as then, it was, in a
+great degree, deceptive. The peasantry were living fast in a good time;
+banks and traders had made large advances to them on the security of
+tenure the law had created; their position became such, in some districts,
+that a season of distress might reduce many to sudden poverty, and be
+productive of the necessarily resulting evils. Rents, again, were rising
+as the country grew in wealth, though except in comparatively few cases--a
+fact that should be steadily kept in view--they were still, as a rule, by
+no means excessive; they were far below the rents of thirty years before;
+but this gradual rise was of course not popular. In some instances,
+too--but these were very rare, as was conclusively proved at a subsequent
+time--tenants, under more or less pressure on the part of their landlords,
+had accepted leases excluding them from the advantages of the law, and not
+equitable in some respects, or had wholly 'contracted themselves out' of
+the Act; this naturally caused alarm and distrust in many peasant
+dwellings. But the principal reasons that content was really less than it
+seemed to be in landed relations were altogether of a different nature.
+Like too many even excellent reforms in Ireland, the Land Act of 1870
+became law too late; twenty years before it would have been hailed as an
+extraordinary boon; it was now regarded as almost a half measure, in view
+of the socialistic ideas about the land afloat. At the same time,
+Fenianism continued to make its influence felt; Irish-Americans continued
+to flit through the country denouncing British rule and Irish landlords,
+and calling upon the peasantry, as in 1798, to rise. Even in these years
+of prosperity, though rents were well paid, there was a secret movement
+against rent beneath the surface of things, so well concealed that it was
+absolutely unknown by the Government.
+
+Meanwhile, in the midst of apparent peace, the elements of trouble in
+Ireland still quiescent were to come to a head and to give rise to a
+movement. The most formidable to British rule though skilfully masked,
+which had been seen since the rebellion of 1798. Revolutionary schemes in
+Ireland have always fastened on the land as the chief source from which
+they could derive strength; the United Irish movement as I have pointed
+out, was connected with a peasant movement against the payment of rent.
+This idea had been brought into marked prominence by John Finton Lalor,
+one of the rebels of 1848, a comparatively unknown but a sagacious man;
+'You must associate' he wrote, 'the cause of Irish liberty, for which the
+people really care little with a cause for which they care a great deal;
+an inert mass must be yoked to a powerful engine; the Irish landlord must
+be driven from the land and the peasant masses be made its owners; and the
+fall of English power will follow that of its landlord garrison.' These
+words fell for the moment on unheeding ears; but the tradition has
+continued from that day to this the destruction of Irish 'landlordism' was
+one of the objects of the Fenian leaders of 1865-67, and they denounced
+the Irish gentry in atrocious language, though they did not know how to
+carry out their policy. This teaching was eagerly adopted by Michael
+Davitt, a Fenian, who had been convicted of a crime against the State;
+during a long imprisonment at Dartmoor, he brooded 'on his country's
+wrongs,' but satisfied himself that if the independence of Ireland was a
+patriot's first object, this could be attained only by uprooting the
+existing land system, by hounding on the occupiers of the soil against its
+owners, and by handing it over as spoil to the peasantry. Davitt was
+released from Dartmoor at the close of 1877; he attended a meeting in
+Dublin at which Parnell was present, and two of the assassins of the
+Phoenix Park tragedy; and he became supreme in the ranks of the Fenian
+societies, known as 'the Irish Republican Brotherhood,' which still
+retained a feeble life in Ireland, and even in England and Scotland. A
+short time afterwards he made his way to the United States, where he found
+the Fenians divided into two parties, known under the general name of the
+Clan na Gael, but having different objects, though with a common purpose.
+Both parties were for liberating Ireland 'from the Saxon yoke;' but the
+most violent and the most active sought to attain this end by expedients
+of desperate force; a 'skirmishing fund' had been established; 'England
+was to be invaded' by small bodies of 'resolute men;' her capital and
+chief towns were to be destroyed by dynamite. The other party, more
+prudent, but with similar aims, had been struck by Parnell's attitude in
+the House of Commons, and by the success of his unscrupulous tactics; its
+leaders began to think that something might be done by 'constitutional
+means;' they gradually came to an agreement with Davitt, that 'the
+overthrow of English domination' was to be their ultimate end; but that
+efforts in this direction were to be linked with energetic efforts to
+subvert 'the landlord system, a disgrace to humanity and to the
+civilisation of the present century;' to banish the Irish landed gentry
+from their country, and to secure their estates for their tenantry. This
+movement, though rebellious in no doubtful sense, was nevertheless to have
+a legal disguise; the wolf was to wear sheep's clothing; the 'formation of
+a peasant proprietary, and the abolition of arbitrary evictions,' were to
+be its proposed objects.[63]
+
+Treason, seeking support from socialistic greed, was thus the origin of
+the Land League conspiracy, for this was its only legitimate name. I have
+glanced at this movement, on its political side, as it was associated with
+the cause of Home Rule; I must here consider it on its agrarian side, the
+most prominent, if not the most dangerous, to the State.[64] The compact
+between Davitt and the moderates of the Clan na Gael was called the 'New
+Departure;' Davitt returned to Ireland to stir up what became known as the
+'Land War;' Fenian emissaries went to Ireland, about the same time, in
+order to collect arms and to drill peasants, with a view to a possible
+rising should the occasion be found. Meanwhile, Davitt had addressed
+himself to what was more immediately at hand; in the spring of 1879 he got
+a meeting together, in his native county, Mayo, at which 'landlordism' and
+all its works were savagely denounced; during the following months other
+meetings of the same sort were held, but as yet only in the western
+province of Connaught. At these gatherings the crusade against the landed
+gentry went on; rebellious utterances were blended with ferocious
+diatribes against[65] landlords sometimes marked out for vengeance by
+name; and the peasantry were called on to keep 'a firm grip on their
+lands;' these would become their own should they only be steadfast. The
+Land League movement was now launched on its course; but it was known to
+be an essentially Fenian movement; it was subsidised from Clan na Gael
+funds; it was supported by a murderous Clan na Gael print; it was
+condemned in the severest language by an aged Catholic prelate, one of the
+few of O'Connell's surviving friends. The movement, however, as yet was
+not of much strength; Davitt had opinions about the 'nationalisation of
+the land,' which, like those of the Fenian leaders of 1865-67, were not to
+the mind of the peasantry; his efforts, hitherto, had not had much
+success. In this position of affairs he addressed himself to Parnell, who
+had had Fenian sympathies and associations for years, and had, we have
+seen, attracted Fenian admiration abroad; what passed between the two men
+has not transpired; but Parnell, if with reluctance, consented at last to
+become the head of the Land League and to direct the movement. The
+measures he adopted were skilfully designed, in harmony with the 'New
+Departure,' and with the double-dealing nature of a true conspirator. A
+Central Land League was established in Dublin; it was to have 'branches'
+extending through the country; it was to make a steady attack on the land
+system. Its professed objects, however, were constitutional, nay, fair; it
+was 'to agitate against rack-rents and unjust evictions,' and to
+'facilitate the ownership of the soil by its occupants.' The ultimate
+purpose of the League, nevertheless, was that of the Fenian chiefs; of its
+seven high officers four were Fenians; it was wholly supported by Fenian
+moneys; its most prominent members made a boast of their Fenian
+sentiments.[66] It was, in a word, a rebellious organisation in a
+constitutional garb; it was the embodiment of what Parnell avowed
+afterwards: 'A true revolutionary movement in Ireland should, in my
+opinion, partake both of a constitutional and an illegal character. It
+should be both an open and a secret organisation, using the Constitution
+for its own purposes, but also taking advantage of its secret
+combination.'[67]
+
+The Land League established, under these auspices, gradually made some
+progress in the western parts of Ireland, always centres of poverty more
+or less developed. It had not, however, as yet, become a power in the
+land; Parnell went to the United States, as I have mentioned before, in
+order to obtain support for the 'New Departure.' He was the grandson of a
+distinguished American; the elections for a President were near; it was
+necessary to bid for the Irish vote; the chief of the League was invited
+to say what his Irish policy was in the Representative House of the
+people; and this he did in moderate and carefully chosen language. His
+real attitude, however, was very different; he associated with well-known
+Fenian leaders, became acquainted with a contributor to the _Irish World_,
+the worst journal of the Clan na Gael press; and more than once gave
+utterance to what was plain treason, notably to the 'last-link' speech
+already referred to. He obtained considerable funds for the League in
+Ireland, and before long founded a similar League in America, which became
+a Fenian organisation of the very worst type. Meanwhile a season of
+distress had visited Ireland; this quickened the elements of disorder
+being already let loose. The harvest of 1878 was not good; that of 1879
+was the worst known since the Great Famine; the prosperity of the country
+suddenly came to an end. There was a universal calling in of demands,
+especially from tenant farmers, who, I have said, had been rather
+extravagant, and had become involved in debt;[68] the whole class suffered
+more or less, though there was very little extreme indigence, and Lord
+Beaconsfield's Government was not slow in providing relief, which private
+charity largely increased. In these circumstances the landed gentry acted
+as any class would naturally act; a considerable number made remissions of
+rent; if a large majority, as certainly was the case, insisted upon their
+legal rights--conduct which must be pronounced unfortunate--it must be
+recollected that an agitation of extreme violence had been directed
+against the whole order; and that Mr. Gladstone had declared that, after
+the Land Act, there were to be no more concessions. The League now
+acquired new power; its branches spread over large parts of the west; its
+directors, from members in the House of Commons, to its avowed agents, and
+to the 'village ruffians,' who carried out its bidding in many places,
+rioted in atrocious threats against landlords whether good or bad; and a
+movement against the payment of rent began. The teaching which had been
+spread abroad during many months, bore the fruits which were to be
+expected from it; there was a sudden outbreak of agrarian crime, and of
+Whiteboyism in its worst aspect; it deserves special notice that this was
+confined to the counties where the League was in real force. The
+landlords, under these conditions, were often driven to enforce their
+claims; attempts were made to show that the evictions that followed were
+the sole causes of this social disorder. But it is absolutely certain that
+this was not the case; it was the Land League which provoked the
+evictions, and was responsible for the incidental crime.[69]
+
+The spring of 1880 had come; Lord Beaconsfield had been driven from
+office, in an evil day for the renown of England; Mr. Gladstone had been
+returned again to power, on the flood of a tide of democratic sympathy.
+Lord Beaconsfield was not an author of any very large Irish reform, but he
+understood Ireland much better than his impetuous rival; he had seen from
+the first the real nature of the Land League movement; in his address to
+the nation, when he dissolved Parliament, he declared that an 'attempt
+scarcely less dangerous than famine and pestilence' was being made to
+separate Ireland from Great Britain, words treated by Mr. Gladstone with
+scornful ridicule, but words of real truth. The incoming Minister had of
+late taken little heed of Irish affairs; he had been engaged in his
+crusade in Midlothian, and in stirring up the multitude on the Eastern
+question; but he had clung to his optimistic Irish faith; he had solemnly
+announced that Ireland was 'contented and happy,' when the country was
+suffering from unquestionable distress; he had even refused to renew a
+measure for the repression of agrarian crime, when agrarian crime was
+formidably on the increase, and the Land League was rapidly growing in
+strength. At last, however, partly opening his eyes to the facts, he
+appointed a Commission charged to report on Irish land tenure; and he
+introduced a Bill slightly to amend the Land Act of 1870, showing thus
+from the outset that he choose to regard a conspiracy against the State on
+its economic side mainly, and not in its far more grave political aspect.
+A word must be said on this measure, which had its origin, to a great
+extent, in sheer and audacious falsehood. By this time Parnell was at the
+head of some sixty adherents in the House of Commons; he had linked the
+Home Rule and the Land League movements; his followers were, in many
+instances, chiefs of the League; they induced Mr. Gladstone to listen to
+them, on representations characteristically untrue. Evictions were on the
+increase in Ireland, owing to the onslaught made by the League on the
+landed gentry; Parnell and his band unscrupulously exaggerated the number,
+perhaps twenty-fold, by confounding ejectment decrees of the Courts with
+evictions actually carried out; Mr. Gladstone appears to have accepted
+this shameful statement. The new 'Compensation for Disturbance' Bill, as
+it was called, provided that in the case of certain classes of tenants,
+although they had failed to pay their rents, compensation, withheld, we
+have seen, under the Act of 1870, might be afforded them, under rather
+strict conditions; this was certainly an innovation of a startling kind,
+but something was to be said for it, in the existing position of affairs.
+The House of Commons, however, disliked a measure nicknamed 'payment by
+reason of non-payment,' and limited its application in many ways; and the
+House of Lords, unfortunately, I think, threw it out.
+
+This Bill, closely circumscribed as it was, would not have extended,
+perhaps, to many tenants; it was condemned by Parnell and his satellites
+as a sham. Its rejection, however, gave an opportunity to the League; its
+leaders proclaimed at meetings, never so frequent before, that Ireland
+had nothing to expect from a foreign Parliament; the attack on
+'landlordism' became more intense; treasonable and predatory harangues
+increased in vehemence. The influence of the conspiracy spread beyond
+Connaught, over nearly all Munster, and parts of Leinster; wherever it was
+felt it was attended with agrarian crime; 'crime,' as Mr. Gladstone
+exclaimed, 'always dogged its footsteps.' Offences of this kind
+portentously multiplied; they had been eight hundred and sixty-three at
+the close of 1879; they were two thousand five hundred and eighty-nine at
+the close of 1880;[70] and these included a number of barbarous murders,
+and of other atrocious deeds of outrage and blood, especially of the
+mutilation of the cattle of those opposed to the League. A kind of servile
+war springing from the land had set in; and during this whole period the
+spokesmen of the League, whether in the highest or the lowest grades,
+continued to denounce the landed gentry, though they knew that their
+utterances were the direct incentive to far-spreading crime. Parnell,
+however, infinitely the ablest of the conspirators, perceived that this
+brutal disorder would incense Parliament, and, besides, could not have
+decisive results; the cool, calculating schemer laid down a plan of
+operations for the League, which he hoped would be less openly detestable,
+and much more effective. Orders were issued that tenants should, in every
+part of Ireland, repudiate the rents they had agreed to pay, and should
+pay only such sums as had been assessed on land by a valuation made by the
+State for rates, a standard long acknowledged to be much too low; every
+landlord who should reject these terms was to incur the vengeance of the
+League. By these means Parnell expected, and not without reason, that a
+great combination for the forcible reduction of rent would be formed, and
+that numbers of farmers would flock in to the League, but he knew that
+his proposal was simply a defiance of the law, and that it would be
+resisted by many of the landed gentry; he hit on an expedient through
+which he believed he would attain his end. Should any landlord refuse to
+accept the sum offered instead of the proper rent, and should proceed to
+dispossess the defaulting tenant--and practically he could have no other
+remedy--the evicted farm was to be left derelict; it was to be smitten, as
+it were, by the interdict of the League; and any wretch who should dare to
+take it was to be banned by the whole neighbourhood; he and his, and those
+who dealt with him, 'were to be shunned as lepers,' and 'treated as
+traitors to the cause.'[71] In this way, the crime of 'boycotting,' as it
+has ever since been called--its origin may be traced to the great Tithe
+War in Ireland--was made part of 'the unwritten law' of the League; and
+Parnell professed, whether sincerely or not, that through this device the
+League would baffle the law, and the landlords, as a class, as unhappily
+it did, in too many instances. Having thus armed the conspiracy with
+increased power, he cynically began to deprecate crimes of violence: the
+device of 'boycotting' was a more excellent way; it would before long
+'bring landlords to their knees,' and would ultimately 'plant the tenant
+in his farm to be held at a nominal rent,' should he only be true to the
+League. At the same time the astute plotter found other means to extend
+his authority and that of the conspiracy he ruled. He appealed to the
+elective Local Boards in each county, composed for the most part of tenant
+farmers, to join the League, and to carry out his policy; and continuously
+but steadily he brought the force of the League to bear upon the
+administration of the law, by the intimidation of juries, magistrates, and
+even judicial persons.
+
+The teaching of Parnell was disseminated by the League and its agencies,
+especially at gatherings of peasant mobs; it was largely followed wherever
+the League prevailed. In hundreds of instances tenant farmers were
+compelled or induced to tender sums, 'at Griffith's valuation,' as it was
+called, in lieu of the rents they were bound to pay; and on the rejection
+of the offer, refused to pay anything. A widespread combination against
+rent was thus set on foot, sustained by a principle of greed which held it
+together; the League was more completely organised than it had been
+before; it made its way into ten or eleven counties, the only centres in
+which it was formidably strong. In these circumstances the landed gentry
+acted, as an order of men so assailed would act; not a few accepted the
+terms imposed on them, and took their rents at the reduced scale, the
+majority resisted the mandates of the League, and appealed to the law to
+enforce their rights. The terrors of the League were at once directed
+against those who had dared to defy it; in a certain number of instances
+landlords and agents were brutally murdered, for popular passions had been
+let loose for years; in many more 'boycotting' was carried out with such
+fatal effect that scores of families were driven out of Ireland, banned,
+persecuted, deprived even of the necessaries of life; in many others the
+demesnes of gentlemen were ravaged by 'Land League hunts,' overrun and
+half destroyed by savage mob gatherings. Evictions of course increased as
+the law was being trampled under foot; it is hardly necessary to say that
+Parnell's doctrine was here ruthlessly applied; evicted farms were left
+deserted and waste over thousands of acres; the fears caused by
+'boycotting' had become so intense, that no 'land-grabber,' as the name
+was, would dare to take them; the success of the League was in this
+respect remarkable. The vengeance of the conspiracy, too, was extended
+universally to another class of persons. Tenants in numbers of instances
+paid their rents, either from an honest motive, or through dread of
+eviction; the payment was often made at night, and under a pledge of
+secrecy; but wherever they were discovered the League marked 'the
+traitor's doom;' they were sometimes 'boycotted' almost to death;
+sometimes murdered, often visited by gangs of ruffians--significantly
+known as Parnell's police; the victims were shot in the legs, or the hair
+of their women was cut off, or their cattle were cruelly mutilated and
+maimed. It deserves special notice that, as was to be expected, Parnell's
+warning against open crime was but little heeded; 'boycotting,' as Mr.
+Gladstone said, truly 'was but a passive thing;' it 'required
+assassination as its sanction;' the peasantry had been stirred up, in
+places, to frenzy; although Parnell made few violent speeches at the time,
+his satellites still gave a free rein to their wicked licence. Agrarian
+crime increased to an appalling extent; it had reached in 1881 a total of
+four thousand four hundred and thirty-nine cases, nearly two thousand more
+than those of the preceding year.[72]
+
+In the spring and summer of 1881, the power of the League was at its
+height; in its organisation and working it bore a strong resemblance to
+the Jacobin societies of the Revolution in France. It was directed by a
+council from a central office in Dublin; its orders were sent thence to
+the bodies connected with it; these, scattered over many parts of the
+country, enforced its decrees through 'boycotting' crime, and terror.
+'Obnoxious' persons, landlords, agents, 'land-grabbers,' and tenants who
+had paid their rents, were denounced and exposed to the League's
+vengeance; officers of the law and of justice were especially banned; even
+those thought to be 'luke-warm' in the cause were declared 'suspected.' In
+some districts the regular government was practically superseded by the
+government of the league, described by Mr. Gladstone as 'a scheme of
+anarchic oppression;' in these a Reign of Terror was really supreme. It
+will never be known to what extent the League made use of Whiteboyism and
+its secret conclaves in order to carry out its purposes; the central body,
+controlled by Parnell, probably did not, but the affiliated bodies
+certainly did; it is impossible to account otherwise for the enormous
+increase of agrarian crime; the branches of the League, it is generally
+supposed, overshadowed, so to speak, the Whiteboy societies; these were
+active agents in the atrocious deeds that were done. It is scarcely
+necessary to refer to what the condition of social life was wherever the
+influence of the League was great; despair settled on the hearts of
+thousands, who felt themselves exposed to unseen perils, and existed, as
+it were, in an atmosphere of crime; and it must be borne in mind that for
+one member of the better class, fifty probably of the humbler, who had
+transgressed the law of the League, were kept in a state of moral dread
+and torture. By this time the Fenian League in the United States, formed
+by Parnell, but ruled by the Clan na Gael, had completely joined hands
+with the League at home; its emissaries were found in many parts of
+Ireland; its organ, the _Irish World_, 'spread what it called the light,'
+the teaching of treason, murder, and dynamite; and it supplied the parent
+League with, probably, nine-tenths of its funds, for it is a significant
+fact, deserving special notice, that the contributions of the peasantry to
+the League were, from first to last, small. Large parts of Ireland were
+thus in a deplorable state; but it is a complete mistake to suppose, as
+has been asserted, that the authority of the League was general throughout
+the whole island. Protestant Ulster, with a true instinct of what the
+conspiracy was, a movement against British rule in Ireland, kept aloof
+from the League, in angry contempt; and though its influence was more
+widely diffused, it was confined, I have said, to comparatively few
+counties if regarded as a dangerous and formidable power. It is also
+absolutely untrue that the movement was the uprising of an injured
+peasantry against oppressive landlords. There was little distress in 1880
+and 1881, when the League was rapidly growing in strength, for the
+harvests of those years were above the average; and the Commission lately
+appointed by Mr. Gladstone had reported that over-renting in Ireland was
+not common, though instances of over-renting were of course to be
+found.[73]
+
+The centre of disturbance formed by the Land League was, I have said,
+comparatively small; and it was, for the most part, limited to backward
+and poor districts; its wicked and sordid teaching did not command the
+sympathies of the more intelligent and better parts of Ireland. Its
+influence, however, spread, in different degrees of strength, over nearly
+the whole of Catholic Ireland, and it was more or less supported by the
+Catholic priesthood, in many instances yielding to the pressure of their
+flocks. Within the bounds where it did not create a Reign of Terror, it
+was joined by thousands who thought it a constitutional movement,
+especially by peasants only seeking an improved tenure; and it is not
+pretended that even a majority of those who took part in it had
+treasonable or rebellious objects in view. But it was not the less a
+conspiracy hatched abroad, and aiming at the subversion of British power
+in Ireland; this was the policy its leaders avowed; and a conspiracy must
+be judged by the acts and words of those who direct it. The state of
+anarchy in Ireland had become such, in the spring of 1881, that the
+Government was compelled to try to put it down; a prosecution against
+Parnell and his chief lieutenants had failed; a Bill, resisted by
+obstruction, more persistent than had been ever known before, passed
+through Parliament with the object of repressing the Land League. The
+measure, however, was not well designed; minor agents of the League,
+'village ruffians,' 'Parnell's police,' and the like, were imprisoned in
+large numbers, no real punishment; but the chiefs of the conspiracy were
+not brought within the law; the funds of the League were removed to Paris;
+the movement went on in its destructive course. 'Coercion,' nevertheless,
+was beginning to produce its effects, as it has always done in Irish
+disorders, when Mr. Gladstone made a sudden change in his policy, never
+made before by a Minister at the head of the State. He had denounced the
+conspiracy in passionate language; he had partly at least seen what its
+objects were; 'it aimed at dismemberment through rapine;' but always a man
+of phrases and not of action, he had shrunk in every passage of his career
+from facing difficulties where popular feelings were involved; and while
+Ireland was still in a terrible state, he resolved to make a great
+concession to the League, and to effect a complete revolution in the Irish
+land. It was a surrender akin to that of Majuba, made with little
+information, and without mature reflection; whether its author believed,
+as I have remarked, that the conspiracy was most dangerous on its agrarian
+side, or was willing to propitiate Parnell, at the expense of the Irish
+landed gentry, he inaugurated the legislation, ever since pursued, which
+has resulted in destroying the property of the Irish landlord, without
+gaining the sympathy of the occupier of the Irish soil, has reduced the
+land system of Ireland to a ruinous chaos, and has, in essential respects,
+been an absolute failure.
+
+Mr. Gladstone's position was difficult when he introduced his new Irish
+Land Bill; his speech in the House of Commons, lucid as regards details,
+was apologetic, ambiguous, often beside the subject. He went out of his
+way to praise Irish landlords, 'acquitted,' he declared, by the late
+Commission; he deeply regretted a new experiment on the Irish land. He
+retained his admiration for the Act of 1870, but insinuated that it had
+been injured in the House of Lords; had this not been the case, it would
+have settled the Irish land question. He passed over his solemn pledges,
+on the faith of which millions had been lent on Irish estates, that the
+legislation of eleven years before was final; here he took refuge in
+appeals to 'Divine Justice,' in the 'light of which' a statesman must
+walk, as if Divine Justice was an excuse for a gross breach of faith. He
+then unfolded his plan of reform; he endeavoured, with an ingenuity all
+his own, to distinguish it from the schemes he had emphatically condemned
+in 1870; but in this respect mystification was at fault; the measure was a
+clumsy imitation of the 'Three F's,' and where it differed, it differed
+greatly for the worse. Anticipating objections certain to be made, the
+orator dismissed 'political economy to Saturn' with a confident gesture;
+for some untold reason the philosophy of Adam Smith could not possibly
+apply to the order of things in Ireland. But by many degrees the most
+important part of the speech, in view of events which have since happened,
+was that in which Mr. Gladstone announced that should the measure really
+injure the Irish landlord, the State was bound to provide an indemnity. He
+denied, indeed, that the Bill could have any such effect; it would be a
+boon, he gravely said, to the Irish landed gentry; but should the contrary
+be the case, 'compensation' would be clearly their right. 'I do not
+hesitate to say'--these were his very words spoken after the Bill had made
+much progress--'that if it can be shown, on clear and definite experience,
+at the present time, that there is a probability, or if after experience
+shall prove that, in fact, ruin and heavy loss has been brought on any
+class in Ireland by the direct effect of this legislation, that is a
+question which we ought to look very directly in the face.' The same
+meaning was even more clearly expressed: 'I should certainly be very slow
+to deny that where confiscation could be proved, compensation ought to
+follow,' and several of Mr. Gladstone's lieutenants spoke in the same
+sense.[74]
+
+The Bill, I have said, applied the principle of the 'Three F's' to the
+relation of landlord and tenant in by far the greatest part of Ireland. As
+in the case of the Land Act of 1870, it excluded certain classes of lands
+from its scope, demesnes, residential holdings, town parks, and large
+pastoral farms; it extended also only to tenants at will, that is, subject
+to a notice to quit; it left tenants under leases outside its purview. It
+was confined, too, to 'present tenants in occupation,' at or near the
+existing time; it had no reference to 'future tenants,' that is, to
+tenants holding by contracts made after the Bill should pass, or a few
+months afterwards. Subject, however, to these exceptions, on the whole not
+large, the measure placed tenancies in Ireland under the 'Three F's,' but
+with conditions of tenure peculiar to itself, and hitherto unknown in
+Ireland, or in any part of Europe. 'Fair Rent,' which, under the Ulster
+Custom, was settled by a bargain between landlord and tenant, was to be
+adjusted through the intervention of the State, legislation akin to the
+mediaeval statutes regulating the price of bread, and the wages of labour.
+'Fixity of Tenure' was not to be a perpetuity in name; Mr. Gladstone
+feared that the speeches would be thrown in his teeth, in which he had
+declaimed against the idea; it was to be a lease for fifteen years, but
+capable of being renewed for ever, as a rule, through a periodical and
+costly lawsuit. 'Free Sale' was to be conceded under somewhat strict
+conditions; and the landlord was to be afforded a right of pre-emption in
+the case of such sales, in accordance with the analogy of the Ulster
+Custom. An estate virtually perpetual, at a State-settled rent, was thus
+to be carved out of the landlord's fee, and given to tenants actually in
+possession of the land; it was created in absolute derogation from the
+landlord's rights; it was a large if partial expropriation, in no doubtful
+sense. As to the interest of landlords in what was left of their property,
+they were to retain what are usually known as 'royalties'--timber,
+minerals, mines, and privileges of sport; they were to have the ordinary
+remedies for enforcing payment of rent; and the statutory leases were to
+be subject to certain conditions, taken, for the most part, from the
+Ulster Custom, the violation of which might lead to their forfeiture. A
+tribunal, called the Land Commission, was to be set up to carry the law
+into effect, that is, to 'fix fair rents,' and to make tenures 'fixed;' it
+was to be assisted by dependent agencies, known as Sub-Commissions, which,
+Mr. Gladstone intimated, were to be quite subordinate, and from which
+appeals to the Land Commission were to run; but a sinister feature of an
+untried revolutionary scheme--the decision of the Land Commission as
+respects 'fair rent'--was to be final. Subject to an appeal to the Land
+Commission, the Irish County Courts were empowered to administer the law;
+but it was foreseen that they would not do much in this province. The new
+modes of tenure might be applied to lands, by agreements between landlords
+and tenants carefully guarded; and Mr. Gladstone believed that this would
+be the ordinary course of dealing. The Bill, he thought, would not cause
+litigation to any great extent; it would operate as a self-acting force to
+lead to friendly contracts.[75]
+
+So much for the scope of the Bill and the classes of tenants to which its
+benefits were to extend. A most important change was made in the measure,
+which contained, originally, nothing of the kind; this has been attended
+with far-reaching results. As we have seen, tenants were to be compensated
+for their improvements, under the Act of 1870; but the compensation was
+to be paid only when they were leaving the land; Mr. Healy, one of the
+ablest of Parnell's lieutenants, induced Parliament to accept a provision
+exempting tenants' improvements from rent, when the adjustment of 'fair
+rent' was to be made. However equitable in principle this might appear to
+be, it was, in the peculiar state of Irish land tenure, unjust in the
+extreme to landlords, as I shall endeavour to point out afterwards; and it
+has been a source of litigation, as mischievous and demoralising as can
+well be conceived. The Bill, like the Act of 1870, prohibited the
+subdivision and subletting of farms--an inveterate evil practice of the
+Irish peasant--under conditions possibly rather too strict; and it made
+changes, in that statute, which require attention. It added weight, so to
+speak, to the law, in the tenant's interest; it increased the amount of
+compensation in respect of disturbance; it limited the power of
+'contracting out,' to a smaller class of tenants than had been the case
+before, in fact, to large capitalist farmers; and it provided that
+tenants, who had accepted leases excluding them from the benefits of the
+Act of 1870, through illegitimate conduct on the part of their landlords,
+should be exonerated from such unfair contracts. It thus greatly amended
+the original Land Act; but it left many of its defects untouched; it is
+only right here to add that despite the lying clamour raised by the
+subsidised Press of Parnell--lying has ever since been part of its
+stock-in-trade--the instances were exceedingly few in which 'forced
+leases,' as they were called, were set aside by the Courts. A remarkable
+feature of the Bill has yet to be noticed: Mr. Gladstone, as was the case
+eleven years before, had still the wish, so characteristic of British
+statesmen, to assimilate Irish to English land tenure; for this reason, as
+I said, he deprived 'future tenants' of the advantages of the Bill; these
+were to hold their farms on the footing of pure contract. This was a
+shortsighted and bad arrangement; it tempted directly ill-conditioned
+landlords to dispossess tenants, whenever a chance offered, and to create
+'future' tenants so as to discharge their estates from a burden; it
+revealed marked ignorance of the affairs of Ireland. The Bill dealt, also,
+with the land on the side of ownership; it gave additional facilities to
+tenants to purchase their holdings; the State was empowered to advance
+three-fourths of the moneys; but the tenants were to find the remaining
+fourth; the transaction was to be still a purchase, and not in the nature
+of a gift.[76]
+
+The Bill became law, with very little change; the House of Lords, though
+fully alive to its evils, did not amend it in any important respect; the
+Peers had in mind, perhaps too much, what had followed the rejection of
+the Bill of the year before. Mr. Gladstone and his followers maintained at
+the time, and the statement has been ever since repeated, that the Land
+Act of 1881, its popular title, was but a natural development of the
+original Act of 1870; but this assertion is not only untrue, but
+absolutely contrary to the truth. The Act of 1870, no doubt, considered as
+a whole, annexed a large tenant right to the estate of the landlord, and
+to that extent placed a burden on it; but it preserved for the landlord
+the ownership of the land; it did not interfere with his rent, his first
+proprietary right; above all, it was, in the main, in accord with fact,
+and just. The Act of 1881 was almost the exact opposite; it deprived the
+landlord of the ownership of his land, and nearly converted him into a
+mere rent-charger; it created against him a perpetuity at a State-settled
+rent; it really all but made the tenant the owner of the land; it was, in
+short, inconsistent with fact, and essentially unjust. The Act of 1881,
+too, established a principle, never heard of before in civilised
+countries, that tribunals of the State were to fix the rate of rent; this
+not only annihilated the most important of landed contracts, entirely to
+the landlord's detriment, it inevitably tended to cut down rents
+wholesale, as Judge Longfield had predicted would be the case. 'It is
+probable,' wrote that great authority, 'that the value of land, as fixed
+by any tenant-right measure, would be less than half the rent, which a
+solvent tenant would be willing to pay;'[77] the prediction has been too
+well verified. The Act of 1870, in a word, was a remedial law, fairly
+adjusting the rights of landlord and tenant; the Act of 1881 was a
+socialistic law, despoiling the landlord of his property wholesale, and
+handing it over to a dependent who had no claim to it; it was sheer
+confiscation hardly disguised; and it should be added that the exemption
+of tenants' improvements from rent, as affairs stood in Ireland, was a
+grave wrong to the landlord. The Act of 1881, to speak plainly,
+transformed the Irish land system iniquitously for the benefit of a single
+class; and it directly promoted litigation of the very worst kind, on an
+enormous scale, embittering, and still further dividing, the classes
+connected with the land. The evils of this legislation, a monument of
+reckless unwisdom, were at once manifest to well-informed persons; the
+Duke of Argyll and Lord Lansdowne resigned office rather than take part in
+a measure of the kind; Lord Ashbourne, the present holder of the Great
+Seal in Ireland, caustically remarked that Parliament would do much better
+should it deprive Irish landlords of a fourth part of their rents on the
+spot. The verdict of enlightened and impartial opinion in Ireland was very
+much the same.
+
+I shall comment on the administration of this law in another chapter;
+enough to say here that what was bad was made, by many degrees, worse. The
+conduct of Parnell, as regards the measure, was characteristic; he assumed
+an attitude of moderation, and proposed to make 'a trial of the Act by
+test cases;' he wrote to his Fenian friends in the Far West that the Act
+was a mockery; he allowed the Land League to riot in lawlessness as
+before. Mr. Gladstone, always incensed when his will was crossed, shut him
+up in prison under the recent statute, with several prominent leaders of
+the League; the reply was a manifesto against the payment of any rent,
+unhappily obeyed in some districts, though every symptom of exceptional
+distress had passed away. A brief but violent struggle was the result; the
+peasantry refused to pay a shilling in several counties; and as the
+principal agents of the League were within four walls, flights of
+viragoes, like those of the French Revolution, were let loose to preach,
+far and near, the evangel of 'no rent.' This conflict, however, was not
+lasting; agrarian crime and disorder, indeed, still continued frequent;
+but the Government was too strong for the 'Ladies' Land League;' by the
+spring of 1882 its triumph appeared to be certain. But Mr. Gladstone,
+'unstable as water' in view of what he deemed popular movements, would not
+steadily persist in vindicating the law; the imprisonment of the chiefs of
+the conspiracy and their subordinates, in large numbers, seems to have
+made him feel sore if unworthy misgivings; he surrendered to the enemies
+of the State, for the second time, and entered with Parnell into the
+famous 'Kilmainham Treaty,' as shameful as the Glamorgan Treaty which cost
+Charles I. his head. The 'Suspects,' as they were called, were set free in
+scores; the Lord-Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary indignantly left their
+posts; a new Government for Ireland was formed, charged to carry
+'conciliation,' as the phrase was, out, that is, to make fresh concessions
+to Parnell and his creatures. But the auspicious prospect was suddenly
+darkened by the frightful assassinations of the Phoenix Park; these
+cannot be justly laid to the charge of the League, indeed were against
+Parnell's interest, for it was generally expected he would obtain high
+office; but two agents of the League were implicated in the crime; and the
+Press of the League began soon to plead for the murderers. The mind of
+England was now thoroughly roused; Mr. Gladstone, bowing at once to
+England's will, carried through Parliament the severest repressive measure
+that has ever, perhaps, been applied to Ireland. The battle with the
+League was soon brought to a close; the conspiracy indeed resisted for a
+time, and crime, as always, was attendant on it; and the Clan na Gael gave
+it all the assistance it could, in large subsidies which had never ceased,
+in the dissemination in Ireland of its incendiary journals, and especially
+by 'carrying the war into England,' and fulfilling its threats to attack
+her chief towns by fire and dynamite, outrages, however, that really came
+to nothing. But 'coercion,' as has been invariably the case in Ireland,
+produced its effects; agrarian crimes, which, in 1882, if less than those
+of the year before, were, nevertheless, three thousand four hundred and
+thirty-two in number, had fallen to eight hundred and seventy in 1883.[78]
+
+The Land League was paralysed, if not destroyed; its organisation was, in
+name, suppressed by its framers. It reappeared, however, at once, in a new
+form; the skill of Parnell in masking a conspiracy was never more fully
+displayed. He felt that the Land League could not cope with the law; that
+the crimes of violence and blood, which attended its course, gave the
+Government opportunities to put it down; that its openly avowed purposes
+were a danger to it. He set up, therefore, the 'National League' in its
+stead; the professed object of the association was to promote 'Home Rule,'
+while it upheld the rights of the occupiers of the Irish soil, and kept
+the Irish land, so to speak, in view; it was thus apparently a mere centre
+of a constitutional movement. Through these means, and under these
+pretences, the astute and able plotter swept into his net thousands who
+had held aloof from the Land League; many of the middle classes joined the
+National League, notably hundreds of the clergy of the Catholic Church in
+Ireland; the peasantry gave it increased support; its influence spread
+beyond its predecessor's limits. The National League, however, was only
+the Land League under another name;[79] its leaders and officials were the
+same men; its 'branches' were those of the League it replaced; its real
+objects were exactly the same, the overthrow of British rule in Ireland,
+and the annihilation of the Irish landed gentry. But the methods it
+employed to work out its ends were, to a great extent, different; open
+agitation was kept down; public meetings, likely to be violent, were not
+held; the perpetration of agrarian crime was not encouraged. The movement,
+in a word, was comparatively secret and below the surface; but it was
+essentially the successor of the Land League in its aims; we may say of
+it, with a slight change, in the words of the poet--
+
+          'Facies non una sororum,
+  Nec diversa tamen.'
+
+'Boycotting' was now made the chief weapon of the reformed conspiracy;
+'National League Courts' were held regularly in many districts, at which
+this barbarous interdict was systematically pronounced on persons
+violating 'the unwritten law' of the old League; the persecution against
+landlords, agents, 'land-grabbing' peasants who were 'disloyal and
+traitors,' and traders suspected of dealing with 'rotten sheep,' was
+carried on with a pertinacity and ingenuity hardly known before; the
+number of derelict farms augmented; and the Government found it far from
+easy to deal with these crimes. At the same time, 'the Nationalist Press,'
+as it had been named, fully revealed the purpose of the conspirators;
+trusting to impunity, under the law of libel, which depended upon the will
+of juries, it was even more treasonable and seditious than before; and it
+gave infamous license to defamation of personages in high places, worthy
+of the abominations of the Pere Duchesne.[80] Ireland, however, remained
+in comparative peace while the recent measure of repression continued in
+force; but this was injudiciously allowed to expire in 1885--a strange act
+on the part of a Conservative Ministry; and in a short time agrarian
+disorder broke out afresh. Crimes of this class had fallen, in 1884, to
+seven hundred and sixty-two in number; they were one thousand and
+fifty-six in 1886; and 'boycotting' had increased fourfold.[81]
+
+The National League remained quiescent, while Mr. Gladstone was making
+another surrender, and endeavouring to carry Home Rule through Parliament.
+Upon the rejection of the measure of 1886, its activity was renewed; and
+it found considerable support from the American Fenians, who, from first
+to last, had been its chief paymasters. I have referred to the Convention
+at Chicago graced by Parnell's envoys, and to the wild boast that the
+English 'government of Ireland was to be made impossible;' the treasonable
+aspect of the conspiracy became at once manifest. The League was assisted
+by another season of distress, from 1886 to 1888; the number of its
+adherents greatly increased; it began, like its predecessor, to defy the
+authority of the State. I have already dealt with this movement on its
+political side; I shall not repeat what I have already written: how the
+League endeavoured to stir up disorder in Ireland; how it declared open
+war against the Castle; how it tried to terrorise the ministers of the
+law; how it made 'boycotting' more effective than it had ever been; how,
+if responsible for many grave deeds of blood, it mainly relied on this
+malign influence, which tortured hundreds of victims in many districts,
+and was fitly compared to 'the pestilence that walks in darkness;' how Mr.
+Gladstone and the Opposition, to the disgrace of both, gave the conspiracy
+their support and excused its crimes; and how it was ere long put down by
+Mr. Balfour strongly seconded by Rome. But I must say a word on the
+agrarian side of the movement; for this illustrated the increased
+ingenuity of the League. Some of its leaders issued a mandate against the
+payment of rent, except upon reductions to an enormous extent; should the
+landlords refuse, the tenants, on every estate, were to lodge their rents
+into what was called the 'War chest,' a common fund to be held in trust;
+the object of this being to prevent the secret payment of rent, which had
+repeatedly, we have seen, taken place, and to put a stop to 'defection
+from the cause.' The 'Plan of Campaign' as was its name, was thus ushered
+on; it was a criminal plot of the very basest kind; but though it proved
+successful in some instances, and it caused much agrarian disorder and
+crime, it was, on the whole, a comparative failure. The peasantry,
+close-fisted and shrewd, distrusted the so-called 'trustees of the War
+chest;' they generally declined to put their money in it; the 'Plan' was
+only carried out on few estates, though it compelled many landlords to
+make reductions of rent; it is remarkable that Parnell did not approve of
+the swindle. Long, however, before the defeat of the League, there had
+been a thousand instances of agrarian crime: five thousand miserable
+beings had been 'boycotted,' in many cases with frightful results; a
+thousand had been placed under the protection of the police. As had
+happened during the _regime_ of the Land League, these victims were nearly
+all of the humble classes.
+
+In 1887 another change was made in the Irish land system, essentially a
+development of the Land Act of 1881. That measure, I have said, applied to
+tenants at will only, that is, liable to be dispossessed by a notice to
+quit; it did not apply to tenants under leasehold tenures. A sharp
+distinction, therefore, was drawn between the two classes; a farmer, with
+land on one side of a ditch, could secure the advantages of the 'Three
+F's;' his neighbour, on the other side, could not; the distinction was so
+palpably harsh, that many landlords in Ireland saw its injustice, and
+enabled leasehold tenants to obtain the benefits of the law. An Act,
+prepared by Lord Salisbury's Government, brought ordinary Irish
+leaseholders within the Land Act of 1881; these were given a right to have
+'fair rents' fixed, and 'fixity of tenure' and 'free sale' under certain
+conditions. The Act of 1887, also, empowered the Courts to set aside
+perpetual leases unfairly obtained; and it relaxed the restrictions of the
+Act of 1881 with respect to subletting and subdivision, and the exclusion
+of 'town parks.' It improved, moreover, the law of ejectment,
+facilitating the vindication of the rights of the landlord; and--a strange
+provision--it enabled a middleman, in certain events, to creep out of his
+contract, and to free himself from the rent due to his superior landlord.
+In consequence of the fall of prices that had lately occurred, and the
+depression of agriculture that had been the result, the Act, too, reduced,
+for a short period of time, 'fair rents' that had been already fixed; and
+it contained other enactments wholly in the interest of the occupier of
+the Irish soil. Regarded as a whole, something was to be said for the
+measure, on the principles of the legislation of 1881; but the liberation
+of the middleman from the payment of a debt has been attended with grave
+wrong, and was an ominous precedent leading to others of the kind. The new
+law was, of course, another inroad on the rights of the Irish landlord,
+another innovation made against his interests; it has certainly
+strengthened his claim to compensation for the loss of his property,
+acknowledged by Mr. Gladstone to be unquestionable, should it be
+reasonably made out. For the rest, the National League made a boast that
+the Act had been wrung by its efforts from a foreign Parliament; the Act
+certainly, like that of 1881, was a concession, derogating from the rights
+of a powerless class, in the hope of weakening a conspiracy against the
+State, by detaching from it large classes supported by it, and handing
+over to these what had belonged to the Irish landed gentry.[82]
+
+The Land Act of 1887, it has been alleged, was the principal cause that
+disorder in Ireland was suppressed, and that comparative peace was
+restored. The measure may have had effects in this direction; but these
+assuredly were not great; the number of leaseholders was not large; the
+reductions made in 'fair rents' were temporary and small. In truth, as
+agrarian war, stirred up by the Land League, did not diminish when the Act
+of 1881 was passed, but was brought to an end by what is called coercion,
+the agrarian war, stirred up by the National League, was quelled, not by
+the Act of 1887, but by resolute government, assisted by a repressive
+measure infinitely less stringent than that of 1882, and, in some degree,
+I have said, by Rome. It is worse than unwise to ignore plain facts; grave
+outbreaks of disorder and crime in Ireland can only be put down by severe
+means, and invariably have been put down by these; that 'force is no
+remedy' is mere false sentiment. The violence, nay, the power, of the
+National League decreased rapidly and greatly after about 1889; the
+conspiracy seemed well-nigh to have dwindled away. This was partly because
+Parnell, negotiating with Mr. Gladstone, in the hope of obtaining Home
+Rule, discouraged agitation of every kind in Ireland, and in order to
+hoodwink the English people, and to bring about the 'Union of Hearts,'
+represented, with his followers, that Ireland was at perfect peace, and
+only awaited 'self-government' to be completely happy. But infinitely the
+most potent reason was that the fall of Parnell almost broke up the
+League; his creatures split into angry factions, exasperated against each
+other by furious discord; as the result the organisation of the League was
+shattered; the peasantry and the Catholic priesthood fell away from it. At
+the same time the Fenians in the United States, much its best supporters,
+withdrew the subsidies they had hitherto lavished; the League became
+penniless and almost powerless. By 1895 the conspiracy showed scarcely a
+sign of life; agrarian crime had sunk to a very low ebb; there was no sign
+of a movement against the payment of rent; order prevailed, it may be
+said, throughout the community. The conspiracy, nevertheless, was not
+dead; its leaders, if quiescent, had not disappeared; well-informed
+observers knew that the end had not come. I have described in another
+chapter, by what means, and through what conditions, it revived gradually
+under Lord Salisbury's third Government, and acquired strength that may be
+on the increase; it is not yet formidable, in any real sense, and its
+leaders are not to be named with Parnell; it is not receiving funds as yet
+from America; but the United Irish League is its true successor; and this
+commands eighty votes in the House of Commons. Time only can show if a
+period of agrarian strife and crime may not be about to open again for
+Ireland; it is foolish optimism to assert that this is impossible, or to
+contend that the agrarian legislation of the last twenty years, as regards
+the Irish land, will necessarily, or even probably, produce this fortunate
+result.
+
+In 1891 another change was effected in Irish landed relations, as usual in
+the interest of the tenant, and against his landlord. Middleman tenures
+had well-nigh been extinguished; but some hundreds, probably, were still
+to be found; and as a middleman, through the legislation of 1887, was
+enabled to repudiate his contract, in certain cases, and to escape the
+payment of rent to his superior landlord, he was now to obtain an
+advantage in other instances. The large majority of this class of
+intermediate owners, originally created in the eighteenth century, held,
+at least, in present times, by perpetual leases, which had long ago, as a
+rule, been converted into estates in fee farm, that is, estates in fee,
+subject to a perpetual rent; Parliament passed an Act in 1891, enlarged
+and amended five years afterwards, declaring that, in cases in which
+tenants of this kind were 'in _bona fide_ occupation' of lands, under
+rents which, in the judgment of the Land Commission, should be 'a full
+agricultural rent,' they might either agree with their landlords to redeem
+the rent at a price to be determined by that tribunal, or, should the
+landlords refuse their consent, might have 'fair rents' fixed as in the
+instance of common farming tenants.[83] The application of this law could
+not extend far, for tenants of this description were very few; but it
+asserted a strange, and, I think, a most vicious principle. The Act
+practically forced a superior landlord, often a poor man, either to accept
+a price assessed by a Court over which he had no control, in lieu of a
+rent, in all probability reasonably well secured, or, as an alternative,
+to submit to have a 'fair rent' fixed on the land, the rent to be
+discharged from improvements made by the tenant. If, therefore, a tenant
+of this kind had built, say, a valuable house, on his holding, which would
+thus largely add to the security for the rent, this--at least, so it is
+generally believed--was not to be taken into account in fixing 'the fair
+rent;' and this principle, it may confidently be predicted, will be
+extended further. Should a tenant, at a 'fair rent,' in this predicament,
+be evicted for the failure to pay the rent, a law, in all human
+probability, will be made, to obtain for him compensation, under the Act
+of 1870, from the benefits of which he would be, as affairs stand,
+excluded. The result might be that if, as would often happen, the
+improvements he had made were of great value--his interest, in the land,
+being a perpetual interest--the sum the landlord would be adjudged to pay,
+might swallow up the whole value of the rent, and practically confiscate
+his whole property.[84]
+
+In 1896 another inroad was made on the rights of Irish landlords, and
+another dole given to the tenant class in Ireland; the descent to Avernus
+had proved easy; a Conservative Government had followed it since 1887.
+This fresh legislation was mainly in the interest of the Presbyterian
+farmers of Ulster, who had supported the Union almost to a man, and
+possessed no little political weight; but who, always separated more or
+less from their landlords, had shown dissatisfaction with the fixing of
+'fair rents,' and had begun to cry out for what is called 'the compulsory
+purchase' of the estates of their landlords, a policy on which I shall
+comment afterwards. The Bill contained just and well-devised provisions;
+it improved the procedure for fixing 'fair rents,' if not nearly as
+thoroughly as it ought to have done; it protected the leases creating
+'fixity,' under the new tenure--Mr. Gladstone, flying in the face of the
+ablest lawyers, had passionately declared that these were sacrosanct--in
+instances in which these might have been annulled; it proposed, what I had
+always considered right, that old arrears of rent ought not to be allowed
+to hang over the heads of tenants, and that rent could not be recovered on
+eviction, if due for upward of two years.[85] But the Bill abounded in
+principles dangerous and false; it was, taken as a whole, a mischievous
+measure; it was another mine sprung upon the Irish landed gentry. Lands
+hitherto excluded from the benefits of the 'Three F's,' under the Acts of
+1881 and 1887--that is, demesnes, town parks, residential, and pastoral
+holdings--were largely brought within the scope of the Bill, that is, they
+were made subject to 'fair rents,' and, if held by tenants, were
+practically taken away from the landlords; the provisions of the Bill, as
+to demesnes, were especially harsh; many a mansion and demesne, which
+might happen to be let, would really become the property of the tenant,
+the owner being put off with a rent-charge. The worst proposals of this
+measure, however, were those relating to improvements made by tenants,
+exempted from rent, we have seen, by the Act of 1881. The Courts of
+Justice in Ireland had rightly declared with one voice, that improvements
+of this kind were not to be discharged from rent, unless they were the
+improvements treated by the Act of 1870, that is, rents might be charged
+on tenants' improvements, if these did not fall within the definition laid
+down by that law, or if they were outside the limitations it had imposed,
+in order to shut out obsolete and unjust claims, which might harass and do
+grievous wrong to landlords. All this was completely changed by the new
+measure; the definition of improvements was wholly altered, in order to
+secure their being exempted from rent; the restrictions in point of time,
+and many other matters, as regards claims for improvements, were largely
+swept away, and the power of 'contracting out' of such claims was still
+further abridged. The whole law, in a word, as to tenants' improvements,
+as these were to create exemption from rent, was placed on altogether a
+new basis; this was detrimental in every respect to the landlord, and gave
+advantages to the tenant, in my judgment, utterly unjust.[86]
+
+The Bill contained other provisions, all in the same direction, that is,
+for the advantage of the Irish tenant, and to his landlord's loss,
+especially one relaxing the law as to the subdivision and subletting of
+farms, an inveterate and very pernicious practice. It introduced, also, a
+new principle, on which I shall say some words afterwards, with respect to
+another experiment on the Irish land, that is, what is called Land
+Purchase, under conditions, not thought of before, until they were laid
+down by a Conservative Government. The measure was hustled through the
+House of Commons with such indecorous haste, that Sir Edward Carson, now a
+law-officer of the Crown, walked out of that Assembly to express his
+disgust; it narrowly escaped defeat in the House of Lords, loyal as the
+Peers to Lord Salisbury are; indeed, though hardly debated, its vices were
+soon made manifest. It is unnecessary to point out what the general
+character of the Act is; it enlarged very considerably the sphere of the
+'Three F's,' greatly increasing the wrong done to the Irish landlord, by
+doing away with the restrictions, placed by Mr. Gladstone, in 1870, on
+illegitimate claims in respect of improvements; its direct tendency was to
+reduce rents wholesale, and to promote more litigation between landlord
+and tenant; and if it encouraged tenants to make improvements on their
+farms, its plain effect, I will not say its purpose, was to 'improve the
+Irish landlords out of their estates,' the contemptuous phrase of a great
+master of Equity. Its mischief, however, went a great deal further;
+tenants making improvements are only exempted from rent, in respect of
+these, by this Act; they are not within the protection of the Act of 1870,
+if improvements of any kind are excluded by it; if a tenant, therefore,
+makes an improvement on his farm, which is not 'suitable' to it in a real
+sense, say, builds a mansion upon a petty holding, he will not be entitled
+to compensation, should he quit it, even though dispossessed for
+non-payment of his rent. But tenants, in these circumstances, like those I
+have referred to before, would assuredly proclaim that they had here a
+great and real grievance; and they would be relieved from it, doubtless,
+by another law, giving them compensation, perhaps, to their landlord's
+ruin. A dangerous principle is thus hidden within the Act; this will
+probably be asserted against the owners of ground rents, not only in
+Ireland, but in England and Scotland; and the law, taken as a whole, has
+strengthened the claim of the Irish landed gentry to be indemnified, as
+was solemnly promised, for what they have suffered from the legislation
+begun in 1881.
+
+While the Irish land system was thus being dealt with, on the side of
+occupation, during many years, experiments were made on it, likewise on
+the side of ownership. Resenting the legislation that had produced the
+'Three F's,' Conservative politicians took it into their heads that Mr.
+Gladstone had 'created' 'dual ownership,' as they gave it the name, in
+Ireland; they insisted that this was simply an intolerable thing.
+Unfortunately Mr. Gladstone had no more 'created dual ownership' than he
+had created the mountains and lakes of Ireland; he had only developed the
+joint ownership, which the Irish tenant possessed in his holding, in
+thousands of instances, if he had developed it under the very worst
+conditions. This theory, however, at which Burke would have laughed with
+contempt, and which revealed the incapacity to understand Irish land
+tenure, ingrained, it would appear, in the English mind, was eagerly taken
+up and found much support; it was resolved to extend the process of
+converting tenants in Ireland into owners of their farms, by a method
+hitherto untried, and unknown in any part of Europe. Under the Church
+Disestablishment Act, and the Land Acts of 1870 and 1881, the State had
+advanced money to the occupier of the Irish soil, in order to enable him
+to acquire his farm; but it had made it incumbent on him to contribute
+part of the price; the transaction, therefore, was, in a real sense, a
+purchase. This, the only security for honesty and thrift, was taken away
+in 1885; Parliament passed an Act enabling the Irish tenant to become
+owner of his holding without paying down a shilling; the State was to
+advance the whole price; and the State was to be repaid by a terminable
+annuity, charged on the land, and extinguished at the end of less than
+half a century. This terminable annuity was to be much less than a true
+rent, or even than a 'fair rent' adjusted by the State; the transaction,
+therefore, was not a purchase, but a gift, akin to a bribe, another
+largess bestowed on the tenant class in Ireland, and another injury, as I
+shall prove, inflicted on the Irish landed gentry. This 'Land Purchase,'
+as it was falsely called, was to be voluntary on the part of landlord and
+tenant; it was to be conducted on the footing of free contract, as had
+been the case under the preceding statutes; the State was to obtain a
+guarantee from the landlord; and Parliament voted L5,000,000 to carry out
+this policy.
+
+Exactly as had happened in the case of the Encumbered Estates Act, this
+scheme of 'Land Purchase' was pronounced successful; some scores of
+landlords sold land, some hundreds of tenants bought it; the real nature
+of the proceeding and its inevitable results were ignored; it was even
+boasted that 'dual ownership' would be got rid of, nay, that the Irish
+Land Question was being finally 'settled.' But when the first sum of
+L5,000,000 had been expended, and Parliament was asked to vote a second
+sum, it began to hesitate as to this dealing with the Irish land; the
+British taxpayer demurred and growled; with a true instinct he disliked
+the security; it was found very difficult to procure the funds required,
+large as the majority was of Lord Salisbury's Government. His Ministry,
+however, adhered to the new policy; and Parliament enacted a measure in
+1891, which I have always thought unconstitutional in the highest degree,
+not to speak of the evils it was certain to produce. By this Act a sum of
+about L30,000,000 was made forthcoming to facilitate 'Land Purchase,' to
+abolish 'dual ownership,' and to change Irish tenants into owners of land;
+this sum was to be secured by the methods before referred to, that is, by
+terminable annuities less than any equitable rent, and by guarantees on
+the part of selling landlords; but, furthermore, a whole series of funds,
+devoted to Ireland, for Irish purposes, and absolutely essential to her
+most important needs, were appropriated to make good any default on the
+part of 'purchasing' tenants, in the payment of annuities charged on their
+farms; and even the Irish counties were rendered liable in the last
+resort. Should, therefore, tenants in Ireland, who had acquired the
+ownership of their farms, refuse to pay those annuities on any pretence,
+say, through an appeal made by a Land League conspiracy--the manifesto
+against all rent cannot be forgotten--this extraordinary spectacle would
+then be seen: the State would have a right to seize upon the grants made
+for National schools and lunatic asylums throughout Ireland; these
+institutions would be shut up; children and madmen would be let loose
+through the country; and the owner of an Irish estate would have to pay
+for the dishonesty perhaps of his former tenants. The late Lord Randolph
+Churchill severely condemned this scheme; I agree with him it was utterly
+unjust, and but too characteristic of the contempt of the rights of
+Ireland, unhappily often displayed by British statesmen.
+
+Only a sum, it will be observed, of about L40,000,000, that is, two of
+L5,000,000, and some L30,000,000 more, has thus been made available for
+'Land Purchase;' this obviously could not transfer even a fourth part of
+the Irish land, valued, we have seen, by Mr. Gladstone at L300,000,000--in
+a remarkable speech in reply to Lord George Hamilton--and almost certainly
+worth from L150,000,000 to L200,000,000. The process of doing away with
+'dual ownership' and making tenants in Ireland owners of their farms,
+having been pronounced by its authors slow, the Act of 1896, referred to
+before, enabled the landlord's guarantee to be dispensed with, and
+provided that, in the case of hopelessly embarrassed landlords, whose
+estates were being offered for sale in the Courts, the tenants should
+virtually have a right of pre-emption, thus asserting a principle, on
+which I shall dwell afterwards, and known as the 'Compulsory Purchase' of
+the Irish land. I shall point out, in another chapter, the present and the
+inevitable future results of this policy of so-styled 'Land Purchase;'
+suffice it to say here, that, in my judgment, it betrays utter ignorance
+of the Irish land system, and of the customs and inclinations of the Irish
+peasant; that it proceeds on an essentially immoral principle, the bribery
+of a class to promote its welfare; that, from the very nature of the case,
+it cannot abolish 'dual ownership;' that, human creatures being what they
+are, it cannot, as is being already proved, establish a thriving body of
+occupying owners on the Irish soil; that it must create sharp and unjust
+distinctions in Irish land tenure, iniquitous to the landlord and to every
+tenant, who may be excluded from its benefits; that it must directly tend,
+as it is even now tending, to arouse a cry for a wholesale confiscation of
+Irish estates, the most shameful and wrongful Ireland has yet witnessed;
+and that so far from settling the Irish Land Question, it must necessarily
+unsettle it from top to bottom. As respects the legislation I have briefly
+described, on the side of the occupation of the Irish land--by many
+degrees the most important--I shall also comment upon its results in a
+subsequent chapter, after examining its administration by the tribunal it
+has set up. But a word may be said, in this place, on its essential
+character: from 1881 to the present time, it is absolutely without a
+precedent in civilised lands; it has trampled on economic science and the
+truths it teaches, as, indeed, its chief author made his boast; it has
+created a mode of land tenure in Ireland not in accord with fact, which
+has virtually deprived the Irish landlord of real ownership in his estate,
+has turned him into a kind of annuitant, and has virtually changed the
+Irish tenant into a kind of owner, but under conditions absolutely bad;
+its inevitable tendency was to cut down rents wholesale, without regard to
+the simplest justice; it established a system of mischievous litigation
+between landlord and tenant, demoralising and increasing the division of
+classes; it exhibited, on an enormous scale, characteristic contempt of
+Irish rights of property; and finally, if Parliamentary pledges are to be
+fulfilled, and gross wrong is not to be consecrated by law, it has given
+the Irish landlord a great and legitimate claim to compensation from the
+State. As we survey this unwise and destructive medley of law, we are
+forcibly reminded of the words of Burke:--'I am unalterably persuaded that
+the attempt to oppress, degrade, impoverish, confiscate, and extinguish
+the original gentlemen, and landed property of a whole nation, cannot be
+justified under any form it may assume.'[87]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (_continued_)--THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE
+IRISH LAND ACTS
+
+    The administration of the Land Act of 1870 in the main
+    good--Difficulty about claims for tenants' improvements--The
+    administration of the Land Act of 1881, and of its supplements--The
+    Land Commission and its Sub-Commissions--Allowances to be made for
+    these tribunals--Principles which the Land Commission should have
+    adopted in fixing 'fair rents'--The procedure and practice it ought to
+    have established--It made mistakes as to both--The nature of the
+    Sub-Commission Courts--This was objectionable in the highest
+    degree--These Courts have, however unconsciously, done grave wrong to
+    Irish landlords--Causes of this--Characteristics of their
+    proceedings--They disregarded the principles they ought to have
+    followed, and adopted faulty and erroneous methods--Different
+    illustrations of these grave mistakes--The Land Commission and appeals
+    as to 'fair rent'--Importance of this subject--Faulty procedure of the
+    Land Commission in appeals--Valuers--The second Land Commission--Its
+    procedure worse than that of the first--Theory of occupation
+    right--This another wrong done to landlords--The Fry Commission and
+    its report--Confiscation of the property of Irish landlords--The
+    proofs of this--Apologies made for the Land Commission--The
+    administration of the Land Purchase Acts.
+
+
+I turn to the administration of the new Irish Land Code, of which I have
+described the distinctive features. The County Courts of Ireland, I have
+said, were entrusted with the task of carrying out the Land Act of 1870;
+the principal duty of the judges was to determine rights, under the Ulster
+and analogous Customs in the south, and to declare the sums to be paid to
+tenants, when leaving their holdings, for compensation for improvements,
+and in respect of disturbance. As evictions were by no means frequent, in
+the period between 1870 and 1879, the litigation before these tribunals,
+under these different heads, though by no means trivial, was not
+excessive; the applications on the part of tenants were not very numerous;
+there was ample time to consider the law, whether in the subordinate or
+the appellate Courts; and though there was much difference of opinion as
+to the amount of compensation to be given to suitors, the administration
+of the Act was not seriously impugned,[88] and, on the whole, was
+reasonable and just. The most remarkable circumstance in the inquiries
+held before the Courts was, certainly, the extravagance of the claims put
+forward, on account of tenants' improvements, circumscribed as these were
+by the limitations of the law; everything in the nature of an agricultural
+work was called an improvement, from repairing an old fence to cleaning an
+old drain; hours and days were lost in endeavours to disentangle the
+truth, and to arrive at sound and legal conclusions. I could fill scores
+of pages with descriptions of demands of this kind, usually pressed with
+reckless and hard swearing; they ought to have been a warning, as
+unhappily they were not, not to break down the restrictions contained in
+the Act of 1870, and not to extend legislation, in this direction, against
+the rights of the landlord. I confine myself to a single example: I tried
+a case, in 1895, in which a tenant's claims, under the Act of 1870, were
+L1130; I cut these down to L164; after deducting L155 found due to the
+landlord, I adjudged to the tenant a sum of less than L10; and there was
+no appeal from the decision I pronounced.[89]
+
+The Land Act of 1870 has been well-nigh superseded by the great measure
+of 1881, and by the legislation which has been its supplement. The
+administration of this part of the new Land Code, by many degrees the most
+important, was given, as I have pointed out before, to a wholly new
+tribunal, the Land Commission, and to Sub-Commissions dependent on it; a
+concurrent jurisdiction was given to the Irish County Courts; but they
+have had very little to do in this province. The principal work of the
+Land Commission has been to fix 'fair rents,' and to make statutory
+leases, 'fixity of tenure,' in a word, in a kind of disguise, and thus to
+give effect to the policy adopted by Mr. Gladstone in 1881. The three
+original members of the Land Commission, in all respects its directors,
+were the late Mr. Justice O'Hagan, the late Mr. E. F. Litton, and the late
+Mr. John E. Vernon; Lord Salisbury denounced these appointments in
+emphatic language, as being against the just rights of Irish
+landlords;[90] the charge was not without plausible grounds at least, for
+Mr. Justice O'Hagan had been one of the 'Young Ireland' party, and Mr.
+Litton had been a strong tenant-right advocate. These two gentlemen,
+nevertheless, were most honourable men, and capable, if not very
+distinguished, lawyers; Mr. Vernon was an excellent and experienced
+country gentleman, if, in politics, of the Liberal faith; and as all three
+have long ago passed away, it would be unjust to make charges of
+illegitimate conduct, even if they may not have been wholly free from
+unconscious bias. Great allowance ought to be made, in common justice, for
+the Commissioners in the situation that had been made for them, and regard
+being had to their most arduous duties. To fix 'fair rent,' even
+approximately, was difficult in the extreme; as Judge Longfield predicted
+many years before, and every well-informed Irishman knew, the adjustment
+of rent, through the agency of the State, would inevitably cause a general
+lowering of rents. Again, the Commissioners were, from the outset,
+harassed by a rush of applications to fix 'fair rents;' these came in,
+within a few weeks, in thousands; they were tempted, therefore, to set
+about their work at once, without taking the careful precautions, or
+entering into all the considerations, the nature of their duty required.
+Two circumstances, also, no doubt, had effect on their minds; the Land
+League was creating a Reign of Terror, and destroying the property of the
+Irish landlords; the Commissioners probably hoped that they would weaken
+the power of the League, by, so to speak, bidding against it, and cutting
+rents down. Above all, the Land Commission, like the Encumbered Estates
+Commission, was a tribunal set up to carry out a policy, that is, in word,
+to abate rents; and all experience, Irish experience notably, proves that
+such a body of men usually fulfils its mission.
+
+Mr. Gladstone, we have seen, had expressed a belief that 'fair rents,' as
+a rule, would be fixed by contract; that the Act of 1881 would produce
+this result; and that this part of the work of the Land Commission,
+accordingly, would not be very great. Unquestionably, too, with his
+leading followers, he was convinced that rents in Ireland would not be
+largely reduced;[91] it is important to bear this distinctly in mind,
+regard being had to subsequent events. These anticipations were to prove
+vain; but the Land Commissioners possibly may have shared his views, and
+may have resolved to act upon them, before they first addressed themselves
+to the task of 'fixing fair rents.' After experience, it is easy to be
+wise; but we can now clearly discern what they ought to have done,
+considering the heavy work they were soon to find imposed on them. Their
+first duty should have been to establish some standard, which would make a
+reasonable criterion of rent; the means to accomplish this end were not
+wanting. Mr. Law, the Irish Attorney-General of Mr. Gladstone, one of the
+most distinguished lawyers of his day, and afterwards a holder of the
+Great Seal of Ireland, had made a definition of 'fair rent' in the House
+of Commons; 'a fair rent was to be a competition rent minus the yearly
+value of the tenant's interest in the holding; that was what was intended,
+and anything else would be monstrously unjust.'[92] For some reason that
+has not transpired, this definition did not find a place in the Act; but
+the authority of its framer was great; it must have been known to the Land
+Commissioners; had they adopted it, and based their decisions upon it,
+things would have been very different from what they are at the present
+time. But there were other tests to indicate a standard of rent, to be
+regarded at least, if not conclusive. The valuation of the lands of
+Ireland made for the assessment of rates, Griffith's valuation, as it was
+commonly called, which Parnell had made a measure of 'fair rent,' would
+certainly have been of real use, though it varied greatly in different
+counties; and the Commission appointed by Mr. Gladstone, only a few months
+before, had, I have said, reported, that Ireland, as a whole, was in no
+sense an over-rented land. There was another consideration, as regards
+Irish rents, which the Land Commissioners ought to have borne in mind. The
+rents on the estates of the great landlords, and of the gentry of old
+descent, were, as a rule, low; the rents of the purchasers under the
+Encumbered Estates Acts were high, nay, excessive, in not a few instances.
+
+Other circumstances, moreover, of great importance, ought to have been
+taken into account, with respect to this subject. The rental of Ireland
+was not as high as it had been before the Great Famine; where rents,
+therefore, had not been increased, and had been regularly paid for a long
+series of years, there was the strongest possible presumption that these
+would be 'fair.' Again, the material progress of Ireland had been great
+during the forty preceding years: the wages of labour had, indeed, risen;
+but owing to the introduction of good farm machinery, the cost of
+production, in agriculture, had diminished; the extension of the railway
+system had opened new markets, and had brought even Connaught within a few
+hours of Great Britain; steam navigation had multiplied and improved; the
+modes of husbandry and the breeds of stock of all kinds had become
+infinitely better than they had been; and prices of late had been very
+high. These were all elements to be regarded in the determination of 'fair
+rent;' they ought to have been examined with care; and inquiries on these
+matters should have extended over a long space of time. Moreover, as the
+Land Act of 1881 discharged improvements made by tenants from rent, as
+these were defined and limited by the Act of 1870, the greatest pains
+ought to have been taken that claims for exemption should be strictly
+dealt with, and not permitted to run riot, especially as it was notorious
+that demands of this kind, made under the law already in force, were
+usually excessive, supported by untrue statements, and by no means easy to
+resist and disprove. Another fact, also, of the gravest moment, ought to
+have been thoroughly considered, as regards this question. As improvements
+made by tenants were not to be charged with rent, it was but equitable
+that the lands they might hold should be valued as if in their normal
+state; that if these had been deteriorated, either through wilful
+misconduct, or gross neglect, their occupiers were not to make profit of
+their own wrong; that deterioration, in a word, was not to be allowed to
+work rent down, and was to be taken into account, in adjudicating upon
+'fair rent.' This was the more necessary because it was well known that
+numbers of farms in Ireland had been more or less run out; and especially
+because, as in the case of the ryot of Bengal, under the Permanent
+Settlement of Lord Cornwallis, an Irish tenant would be strongly tempted
+to injure his lands, if he believed that, when 'a fair rent' should be
+fixed on them, he would be permitted to take advantage of his own default.
+It should be added that, in the fixing of 'fair rents,' the large sums
+which, in many instances, Irish landlords had laid out in improving their
+estates, notably since the years that succeeded the Famine, ought, as a
+matter of course, to have been kept in mind.
+
+These were the general principles which should have guided the Land
+Commission in approaching the question of fixing 'fair rent.' There was
+nothing in the Act of 1881 to prevent the Land Commissioners, as a Court
+of first instance, adjudicating directly in cases of this kind, or to
+compel them to refer these to their Sub-Commissions; indeed the plain
+intention of the law was in a contrary sense. Had the Land Commissioners
+adopted this course--and this, I venture to say, was their obvious
+duty--they would, no doubt, have considered the questions before them at
+length, and with close attention; have made their inquiries go back many
+years, and have laid down, in elaborate judgments, the maxims and rules to
+be applied in the fixing of 'fair rent.' The evidence that would have
+come before them would have been of two kinds: that which depended upon
+the statements of valuers, on the side of landlords and tenants alike;
+this, of course, would be of great importance; but it should have been
+borne in mind that it would be biassed evidence; and that, in the existing
+state of Ireland, and of Irish opinion, the statements of tenants' valuers
+would require to be strictly watched. The other head of evidence was of a
+much more trustworthy kind; it was indicated by the circumstances of the
+cases being heard, and was necessarily suggested by the inquiries
+themselves. This class of evidence would be desired from a consideration
+of the rate of rent in the neighbourhood or even of adjoining lands, in a
+word, of what may be called the market price of rent; from an examination
+of what a reasonable rent would be, payable by a solvent tenant to a
+fair-minded landlord; and even from a review of rent fixed by the
+competition of bidders for land, these circumstances, in every given case,
+being, of course, controlled by a due regard being had, in the words of
+the law, for the 'tenant's interest.' There was another and very important
+test; the sums paid in Ulster and elsewhere on the transfer of farms were
+usually large, sometimes not less than a third or even a half of the value
+of the fee simple; and as these sums were always subject to the existing
+rents, the first charges on the lands being sold, this would afford a
+strong presumption that such rents would be 'fair.' No doubt the Act of
+1881 declared that such payments were not to be taken into account, _per
+se_, and apart from other considerations in the actual fixing of rent, so
+far as regards a given farm; but the law certainly allowed--and it has
+always been so held--that payments of this kind might be kept in view in
+forming, generally, an estimate of what a 'fair rent' should be.[93]
+
+The Land Commissioners, but from a different point of view, might have
+learned something from Parnell in this matter. They were, no doubt,
+harassed by the prospect of the task before them; but had they taken a
+certain number of 'test cases,' and investigated them as a Court of first
+instance, they would have laid down principles to be followed in the
+fixing of 'fair rent;' have explained these in well-considered judgments,
+going over the whole field of inquiry; and, so far as in them lay, have
+tried to do justice. Even if they had not adopted this course, one of
+their members, as the Act of 1881 provided, might have taken part for some
+time with their subordinates in the adjustment of rent; this would have
+been in accord with Mr. Gladstone's assertions that the Land Commission
+was to be the real arbiter of rent. Unfortunately the Commissioners acted
+quite otherwise; their conduct, palliate as you may, was an abdication of
+a plain duty, on the plea that they were overwhelmed by the work before
+them. Not one of them ever sat in a Court of first instance to fix 'fair
+rents;' they delegated this the most important of all their functions to
+their Sub-Commissions, to which they thus committed the charge of
+adjusting rent throughout the whole of Ireland. These Sub-Commissions
+formed Courts, each composed of three members, one a legal Commissioner
+and two laymen; the Sub-Commissioners were nominees of the Government,
+whether appointed on the recommendation of the Land Commission or not is
+not certain; the only qualifications for the legal Commissioners were that
+they should be barristers or solicitors of six years' standing, and for
+the lay Commissioners that they should have some knowledge of land. These
+were strange tribunals to deal with property worth hundreds of millions;
+but this was only a part of what must be called a scandal most
+discreditable to those responsible for it. The Sub-Commissioners, one and
+all, were much underpaid; their salaries were inadequate to secure fitting
+men; and, one and all, they were at the sufferance of the men at the
+Castle, liable to be dismissed at a moment's notice, and without the
+independence which is the best guarantee of justice. Some of the
+Sub-Commissioners, indeed, were only paid for the job, by the day; they
+had, therefore, a direct personal interest to reduce rents, in order to
+make work for themselves and to retain their places. Even in Ireland such
+tribunals were never set on foot, since Cromwell assembled his Courts of
+Claims to give their sanction to his huge forfeitures; that they were ever
+thought of is one of the many proofs of the disregard shown to property in
+land in Ireland. No wonder that it was significantly remarked: 'The whole
+spirit of our judicial institutions suggests that officers with such
+extensive powers should be selected with the greatest care and with
+reference to their possession of high qualifications, and that they should
+be placed in a position of independence, and should, so far as possible,
+be lifted above the suspicions that surround them.'[94]
+
+Sixty or seventy officials of this type--the number was afterwards largely
+increased--were thus, in the significant words of one, 'let loose over
+Ireland' to deal with estates; it is very remarkable that they have never
+received instructions from the Land Commission how to perform their
+duties. The procedure of the Courts of the Sub-Commissions was, under
+existing conditions, as well devised as could be fairly expected. The
+three Commissioners, who formed a Court, nearly always sate together, and
+heard the evidence brought before them as to what were 'fair rents;' the
+legal Commissioner decided questions of law; and, this evidence having
+been taken, the two lay Commissioners inspected the farms, the subjects of
+the previous inquiries, and having conferred with their legal colleague,
+determined with him what should be their 'fair rents.' This was the
+ordinary if not the universal practice; if some deviations have been made
+from it, these cannot be deemed of very great importance. Grave complaints
+have been made, in not a few instances, of the lay Commissioners, when
+engaged in examining lands; it has been said that they often neglected and
+'scamped' their work; but these charges have been hardly, if at all,
+sustained; my own experience--and it is tolerably large--is that the
+Commissioners performed their functions with diligence and care, and
+sometimes gave proof of real knowledge of husbandry.[95] But it was
+utterly impossible that tribunals of this kind, not composed of experts of
+a high order, dependent upon the breath of the Castle, without regulations
+to direct their conduct, and acting, without concert, in many districts,
+could adjust rent in a satisfactory way, and in conformity with true
+methods, especially as the work they had to do was excessive; indeed, they
+sometimes fixed 'fair rents' by dozens in a day. It was equally impossible
+that the Sub-Commissions--and to do their members justice they never made
+the attempt--could take into account all the manifold and far-reaching
+elements which enter into the question of 'fair rent,' and could set
+forth, in exhaustive judgments, the principles applicable to a most
+intricate problem. On the contrary, as a rule, and no doubt wisely, they
+avoided topics which might have tasked the highest judicial powers; they
+decided the cases before them summarily, and with little reflection,
+certainly without the protracted examination required to establish settled
+rules and doctrines. And the result has been that they disregarded, and
+even set at nought, a whole series of considerations, of supreme
+importance, with reference to the fixing of 'fair rent;' and, however
+unconsciously and innocently, they have been the authors, in the first
+instance at least, of the gravest injustice, and of wrong, done wholesale,
+to the landed gentry of Ireland.
+
+To make this plain, let us glance back at the principles which assuredly
+ought to have been kept in view, in coming to sound conclusions on the
+subject of 'fair rent.' It will be seen that the Sub-Commissioners either
+gave little or no attention to these, or directly violated them in,
+perhaps, tens of thousands of cases. They have never attempted to
+establish some kind of standard, which would form a general measure of
+'fair rent;' they have completely ignored the definition of Mr. Law,
+precise and most valuable as it was; they have treated 'Griffith's
+valuation' as though it did not exist; they have regarded the Report of
+Mr. Gladstone's Commission, declaring that Ireland was not excessively
+rented, as mere waste paper; they have apparently taken hardly any account
+of the well-known distinction between the low rentals of the great and old
+landlords, and the rack-rents too often exacted by purchasers under the
+Encumbered Estates Acts. So, too, it would seem, they have refused to
+consider the strong presumption that rents would be 'fair' if not raised
+during a long series of years, and if reasonably well paid, within that
+period; and they certainly have given no real weight, as an element in
+adjusting rent, to the agricultural progress made by Ireland since the
+Great Famine. Innumerable complaints have been made against their
+decisions as to the exemption of tenants' improvements from rent; but my
+belief is that they gave great attention to this subject; the wrong that
+has been done was owing to the difficulty of the law, and of its
+application to given cases; and the law, besides, was not, I think, just.
+On the correlative and most important question of the deterioration of
+farms through the default of tenants, they have hardly ever inquired into
+this; they have repeatedly done the landlords wrong; they have made grave
+and palpable mistakes; and in many instances they have made no allowances
+for the expenditure of landlords upon their estates. Having thus refused
+to follow the principles which ought to have been their guide, they have
+widely deviated in the actual fixing of 'fair rents' from rules and
+methods they should have observed and made effective. They have given too
+much weight to the class of evidence that was least important and most
+open to question; they have attached little and sometimes no value to the
+class of evidence by far the most trustworthy, and that ought to possess
+the greatest influence. This has especially been the case, as we shall
+see, with respect to the sums paid on the transfer of farms, the strongest
+possible indication that their rents must be 'fair,' on the ordinary
+principles of human nature, and giving the purchasers credit for the
+simplest common sense.
+
+These are grave charges against quasi-judicial bodies; let us see if they
+are not completely justified. The Sub-Commissioners, I have said, have
+taken no heed of Mr. Law's definition of 'fair rent;' but they have acted
+as though they set it at defiance; they have ignored the principle of
+competition in fixing 'fair' rents. Unquestionably, as Mr. Law pointed
+out, a deduction should be made from a competition rent, regard being had
+to 'the tenant's interest,' that is, to his rights in respect of
+improvements, and perhaps to his rights on account of his tenure, a lease
+renewable every fifteen years, when a 'fair rent' is being fixed on his
+farm; but why the very idea of competition, that is, of market value, was
+to be excluded as an element in estimating 'fair rent,' is what men of
+common sense have never understood. This, in fact, was a portentous
+mistake, with consequences of a far-reaching kind; you might as well argue
+that because two partners had an interest in a fee simple estate, or two
+peasants had each a share in a cow, the price of the land or the cow was
+not to depend on what would be given for it at an auction mart or a county
+fair. Yet this was a position the Sub-Commissions have always taken; they
+have always insisted that competition had nothing to do with 'fair rent.'
+The evidence on this subject is conclusive; I can only take a few samples
+from the statements of a cloud of witnesses, who really seem to make a
+boast of their faith. Colonel Bayley, a Sub-Commissioner of large
+experience, has laid it down that the 'difference between a competition
+rent and the fair rent would be more than 20 per cent.; it would, I
+think, be more than that; there would be between 30 and 75 per cent.
+difference between the fair rent and the competition rent.'[96] Mr.
+Roberts, another Sub-Commissioner, has deposed to much the same effect:
+'Decidedly, I believe that if the land was put in the market it would
+bring 25 per cent. more than the rent I put on.'[97] So, too, Mr. Bailey,
+a legal Sub-Commissioner, very much respected, has alleged: 'It would be
+most misleading to take the evidence of letting value in the
+neighbourhood, thus bringing in competition value, which we rigorously
+exclude in fair-rent cases.'[98] Mr. Bomford, a well-known
+Sub-Commissioner, has said, in much the same sense: 'We do not take the
+competition rent, and cannot take it into consideration, when fixing what
+the fair rent should be. Then you utterly exclude, when you come to the
+fixing of the fair rent, the element of competition?--Yes, except in one
+matter, when we have town parks.'[99]
+
+Let us now see what distinctions, in fixing 'fair rents,' the
+Sub-Commissioners have drawn between landlords whose rentals were low and
+landlords whose rentals were really high; and how they have dealt with
+rents, paid for a long space of time, without having been raised; this is
+a fair index of the equity of their proceedings. It should be remarked, at
+the outset, that it soon appeared that rents had only been increased in
+comparatively few instances, going back over a series of years; yet, as a
+rule, nearly all rents were indiscriminately reduced. No attempt has been
+made, by any official of the Land Commission, to answer this damaging
+charge made, in 1897, at a judicial inquiry held upon the subject: 'The
+result of that calculation, the accuracy of which cannot be challenged,
+shows that, as the result of all the cases that were heard, in only 8 per
+cent. of them was any increase of rent for many years prior to 1881
+proved. But whether the Sub-Commissioners are dealing with an estate on
+which for centuries the rents had remained unchanged, and on which the
+tenants had been fairly treated, or whether they were dealing with estates
+that had come into the hands of speculators by purchase in the Landed
+Estates Court, in all cases the average result was the same. They deducted
+something between 15 and 20 per cent. from the existing rent, no matter
+how long it had existed, and no matter upon what estate it was being
+paid.'[100] This significant evidence, too, points to the same conclusion:
+'There is nothing to justify the reductions that have been made in the
+rents of good landlords, who did not raise their rents in the good years.
+In fact, the landlords who did raise their rents got off a great deal
+better, at the hands of the Sub-Commissioners, than the good landlords who
+did not raise them.'[101] And Mr. Lecky, a calm-minded observer, if there
+ever was one, has added these striking and pregnant remarks: 'The
+landlords who have suffered least have probably been those who simplified
+their properties by the wholesale evictions, the harsh clearances, that
+too often followed the Famine. Next in the scale come those who exacted
+extreme rack-rents from their tenants. These rents had been received for
+many years, and though they were ultimately reduced more than rents which
+had been always low, they still, in innumerable instances, remained higher
+than the others. The large class who regarded land simply as a source of
+revenue, and, without doing anything harsh, or extortionate, or unjust,
+took no part in its management, have suffered very moderately. It is the
+improving landlord, who took a real interest in his estate, who sank large
+sums in draining and other purposes of improvement, who exercised a
+constant and beneficent influence over his tenants, who has suffered most
+from the legislation that reduced him to a mere powerless rent-charger,
+and, in most cases, rendered the sums he had expended an absolute
+loss.'[102]
+
+The Sub-Commissions dealt with the subject of the exemption of tenants'
+improvements from rent, on the whole, as fairly, I think, as could be
+expected; and on the different questions of law that arose, appeals ran
+from them to the Land Commission, which usually investigated these cases
+at length. But this part of the law, really an excrescence on the Act of
+1881, was unfair to the landlords, in the circumstances in which they were
+placed; they were confronted by innumerable and often obsolete and
+worthless claims, which they had only seldom the means of refuting; and if
+the demoralisation and false swearing under the Act of 1870 was bad, they
+were infinitely worse under the Act of 1881. A witty Irishman, indeed,
+once said that he could wish no severer punishment for Mr. Gladstone than
+to see him in a Sub-Commission Court listening to those wrongful
+statements; the mischief has, of course, been aggravated since the Act of
+1896 has made the basis for the exemption larger and more ill-defined. The
+Sub-Commissions, I have said, were gravely in error, almost, as a rule,
+with respect to the deterioration of land, as an element to be considered
+in fixing rent; in this respect gross injustice has been done to
+landlords. There is scarcely any proof that, even in a single instance,
+the Sub-Commissioners valued land 'for fair rent,' as in its normal state;
+and yet, assuredly, this was what ought to have been done, if a premium
+was not to be put on misconduct, and because farms had been injured and
+exhausted in hundreds, throughout Ireland. The deterioration was usually
+of two kinds--wilful waste committed in order to work down rent, and
+passive waste caused by negligence and bad farming. Out of many
+instances, under the first head, I shall refer to one; the
+Sub-Commissioners usually gave little or no attention to wrongs of this
+kind; in this instance they enabled the tenant to make money by his own
+misdeeds; they reduced the rent nearly 30 per cent.: 'The dykes were full
+of stuff and choked, and the sluice-gate, which we had repaired at our own
+expense, was all choked up, and the water had been left on the land as
+long as it could stay on it. I complained and remonstrated with the
+tenant. I sent for Madden, and in Mr. Lyle's presence I stated this to
+him. His answer to me was that he was not such a damned fool as to have
+his land looking well when the Commissioners came to look at it.
+
+'SIR E. FRY: Did that case come before the Sub-commissioner Court?--It
+did.
+
+'Did you give evidence of what the tenant said?--Yes, sir....
+
+'MR. CAMPBELL: I will tell you, sir, what they did.
+
+'How much did they reduce the first judicial rent?--They reduced the first
+judicial rent; they cut it down from L70 10_s._ to L51.'[103]
+
+As for passive waste, that is, the bad cultivation of farms, the proof is
+conclusive that it has been seldom, if ever, considered by the
+Sub-Commissions in fixing 'fair rents.' If we bear in mind that many
+thousands of acres in Ireland have been well-nigh destroyed by the burning
+done by tenants, and that hundreds of thousands have been run out by
+slovenly farming, the injury thus done to landlords has been enormous,
+especially as tenants' improvements have been exempted from rent against
+them; the 'candle,' it has been justly said, 'has been melted down at
+both ends.' I cite two instances, out of hundreds, of the injustice thus
+done; it has been proved over and over again that, in the case of two
+adjoining farms, in all respects of the same natural quality, the rent on
+that which was deteriorated was fixed at a much lower rate than the rent
+on that which was in good heart; in other words, the landlord was
+despoiled of the difference, and the tenant had the benefit of his bad
+husbandry. I take, almost at random, a case in Ulster: 'The Commissioners
+always value the land as they see it. I have two cases on my property in
+one townland. One tenant was an industrious, hard-working man, who had his
+farm in very good order. The second tenant, his wife had died, he was in
+poverty, with a lot of young children, and he himself was not quite "all
+there." These two holdings came at the same time before the
+Sub-Commissioners, and the rents were cut down in each case. When the
+thing was over, I said to Quinn, who was one of the tenants, "Are you
+satisfied with your reduction?" "How can I be satisfied," he said, "when
+my rent is at the same rate as Hurson's rent?" I looked at the return and
+saw he was quite right.... The deteriorated farm was cut down considerably
+more than the cultivated farm.' Another remarkable case occurred in the
+west: 'I had a case, I think decided this year; a farm that was divided
+between two sons fifteen or twenty years ago; the father divided the land
+before I came into the management of the property.
+
+'Did they get an equal portion? was it divided into halves?--Into halves,
+and paid an equal rent.
+
+'Before the Act of 1881?--Before the Act of 1881.
+
+'And was the land of uniform quality?--Yes.
+
+'Had one of these men, before he went into Court, greatly deteriorated the
+land?--Yes.
+
+'Had the other attended to it?--He had attended to it; he looked after the
+land very well indeed.
+
+'What reduction did the man who had deteriorated his half get?--The man
+who had deteriorated his half got 17-1/2 per cent, reduction.
+
+'What did the other get?--The other got 7-1/2 per cent.
+
+'The industrious tenant got 7-1/2?--He got 7-1/2.'[104]
+
+This was obviously gross and crying injustice; but two apologies have been
+made for acts of this kind. It is said that were a deteriorated farm
+rented as if it were in a normal state, the tenant could not afford to pay
+the 'fair rent,' in other words, the landlord is to be despoiled for the
+tenant's neglect. It is said again that the Sub-Commissioners are bound to
+value the land as they find it, and cannot estimate it at its intrinsic
+worth, that is, they are under no obligation to ascertain the truth, and
+do their duty. Yet this sophistry has been gravely put forward as a
+justification for palpable wrong, through which the property of landlords
+has been filched away wholesale: 'The land to this day has suffered a very
+serious deterioration in value; but we did not deal with that as against
+the present tenant ...'[105] 'Have you frequently asked the
+Sub-Commissioners why they do not attach sufficient importance to
+deterioration?--No, but I heard them saying one reason was that if they
+put the rent of the farm as if it had been fairly treated, the tenant
+would not be able to pay that rent now in the deteriorated state.'[106]
+The general result of these proceedings as regards exhausted farms has
+been thus described: 'My view with reference to deterioration is this. Bad
+tenants, who had ill-treated and worn out their land, undoubtedly, in my
+opinion, have obtained larger reductions than they would have got had they
+farmed well. Probably the reason is that were the Land Commissioners to
+put a rent on the land according to its natural capacity, before a
+deterioration, it would be an impossible rent for a broken-down bad
+tenant to pay. This stereotypes the rent in such cases at a figure
+unfairly low to the landlord; tends to lower the standard of fair rent
+generally; is a premium on bad farming; and places tenants under a serious
+temptation to ill-treat their land, so as to secure a larger reduction
+from the Land Court than otherwise could be obtainable.'[107]
+
+The Sub-Commissions appear to have disregarded the just rights of
+landlords in another important respect. Unquestionably, in the great mass
+of instances, as is inevitable when the land is held in small farms, the
+Irish tenant had made the improvements on his holding; but the landed
+gentry, as I have pointed out, had done a good deal since the Great
+Famine. There is nevertheless cogent evidence that, in 'fixing fair
+rents,' the Sub-Commissions took hardly any account of the expenditure of
+landlords under this head. In the case of the estate of the late Mr.
+Talbot Crosbie, one of the best breeders of prize stock in the Three
+Kingdoms, and a country gentleman of parts and intelligence, these
+significant facts were conclusively proved: 'Table E gives the cases of
+eight holdings upon which there was an expenditure by the landlord of
+L1936?--Yes.
+
+'The old rent was L688?--Yes.
+
+'That was reduced by the Sub-Commissioners to L493?--Yes. A reduction of
+about 30 per cent.
+
+'Notwithstanding the outlay by the landlord in the interval of nearly
+L2000?--Yes, that is it.
+
+'Table F is a list of eleven farms, on which there was practically no
+expenditure by the landlord?--Quite so, no recent expenditure. That is,
+between 1863 and 1887?--There was a good deal done in the famine time, but
+I did not take account of that.
+
+'You had no evidence in these eleven cases of expenditure for many years
+prior to the fixing of the rent?--No. In these cases the old rents tot up
+to L361?--Yes. And the reductions only brought them to L280?--A reduction
+of 18 per cent.
+
+'In other words, on the unimproved farms the reductions only average 18,
+while on the improved farms they went as high as 30 per cent.?--Quite so.
+
+'SIR E. FRY: Were these two sets of farms different classes of
+farms?--They were practically of the same class.'[108] In the same way, in
+the case of the estate of Lord Leconfield, a great and excellent landlord
+in the County Clare, the Sub-Commission made no real allowance for a sum
+of L20,500 expended on twenty-seven farms. 'Am I right in saying that from
+1852 to 1881 there was spent by Lord Leconfield L20,500 in these
+twenty-seven cases?--The return speaks for itself. That is the result of
+it.' 'No. 4: As an example of the reductions of the Sub-Commissioners were
+the rents put back to what they had been in 1852?--Very nearly. There is a
+difference, I think, of about 1/2 per cent.?--About 1/2 per cent. The rent
+in 1852 was L2524, and the judicial rents on these farms was L2632.'[109]
+
+I pass on to the methods pursued by the Sub-Commissioners in actually
+fixing 'fair rents.' As I have said, they usually heard the cases at
+length in Court; they usually devoted attention to them. I do not think
+they set much store on the reports of valuers, on the part either of
+landlords or tenants; they formed their decisions, as a general rule, on
+the inspections made by the lay Commissioners of the lands they visited.
+This was a much better method, as I shall point out afterwards, than that
+adopted by their superiors; but obviously inspections of this kind made by
+officials without local knowledge of the farms, which they examined and
+valued, could not be a sufficient, or a satisfactory, way to fix 'fair
+rents.' The great error, however, made, in this matter, by the
+Sub-Commissions--and in this respect they had the countenance of the
+higher tribunal--was that they had little or no regard for the evidence
+which in adjusting rent was assuredly of the greatest importance. They
+rejected, we have seen, the principle of competition in adjudicating on
+rent; in fixing the 'fair rents' of holdings before them, they refused to
+consider the rents of the neighbourhood and of adjoining lands, that is,
+to consider the price of the market. Yet this was but a trifling compared
+to their capital mistake, one that, indeed, can hardly be explained: in
+investigating the subject of 'fair rent,' they would not take into account
+sums paid on the transfer of farms, that is, their tenant right, in other
+words, as an indication of what ought to be their 'fair rents.' If we bear
+in mind, as I have said before, that these sums were given subject to the
+existing rents, which always formed the first charge on the lands, it is
+most difficult to understand, as we have seen, how this circumstance did
+not create a very strong presumption that the rents in question must be
+'fair' from the very nature of the case, assuming the Irish tenant to be a
+rational being. The sums paid for this tenant right were sometimes
+enormous, not uncommonly equal to one-third or one-half of the value of
+the fee; I illustrate my meaning from the evidence, taken with reference
+to the estate of Lord Downshire, one of the largest and best managed in
+Ulster: 'What would you say the tenants' interest would be worth on the
+Downshire estate?--Well, judging from the average prices obtained by
+tenants on transfers, my opinion is that the tenants' interest would be
+worth L1,000,000.
+
+'On the Downshire estate alone?--Yes.
+
+'Now, could that value in the tenants, or that interest in the tenants,
+exist, unless the rents at which they were holding were low rents?--No,
+the prices of tenant right are incompatible with high rents. Does it in
+your opinion point to their being lower than the commercial rents?--Yes,
+they are lower.'[110] And will it be believed that on this very estate, in
+the case of thirteen farms, held at the rents fixed by the landlords, the
+tenant right realised L7296, and yet the Sub-Commission reduced the rents
+more than 20 per cent.? In other words, they declared that the old rents
+were not fair, though these lands, when transferred, fetched L7296 paid by
+their purchasers, subject to the rents in question![111]
+
+The Downshire was only one of many scores of estates in which the tenant
+right was exceedingly high, that is, the sums paid, at existing rents, on
+the transfer of farms, were very great, yet in all these instances this
+striking fact was not taken into account. It cannot cause surprise that,
+at a judicial inquiry held afterwards to review the subject, tenants'
+advocates endeavoured to exclude the evidence which, in the judgment of
+plain men of sense, affords almost a decisive indication as to whether
+given rents are 'fair.' It has been argued, however, that the price of
+tenant right, that is, the sums paid by incoming to outgoing tenants, on
+the sale of farms, at the current rents, ought to form no element in the
+fixing of 'fair rent;' it is only just to set forth the reasons. Mr.
+Bailey, the able legal Sub-Commissioner, referred to before, has explained
+them in this passage: 'Do you attend to tenant right in considering the
+fair rent?--No, we do not. The view we take of it is this. The tenant
+right paid for land is paid for something of an altogether different
+character from the rent of the land.... When a tenant sells his interest
+in his holding, he sells two things, first, the improvements on the
+holding, and secondly, his goodwill or share of the gross product of the
+holding.... When you put these two items together, viz. improvements and
+goodwill, it seems to me that the prices paid for tenant right are not at
+all remarkable. Then your view is that the price paid for tenant right
+throws no light on what the fair rent ought to be?--No, no light at all.'
+Mr. Bailey has added these significant words: 'The tenant does not buy at
+the rent which the tenement at present stands at, but he buys with a
+possible increase or reduction of the rent?--Quite so. And in latter years
+with the fall of prices he was buying with the expectation of a very
+considerable reduction?--Undoubtedly.'[112]
+
+The first of these arguments appears to me to be wholly irrelevant to the
+real question. Undoubtedly the tenant right of a farm represents the
+tenant's improvements and his interest in the land, and is completely
+distinct from the rent; and this is acquired on a sale by an incoming
+tenant. But the purchaser buys the tenant right, subject to the first
+charge, the rent; if the rent were excessive, or even high, either he
+would not buy at all, or he would pay a low price; when, therefore, we
+find the tenant right commanding very large sums, the conclusion is
+inevitable, that, taking human nature as it is, the rent must be in the
+nature of a 'fair rent.' The Sub-Commissions rejected a plain inference
+they ought to have drawn; that they refused to give weight to an
+all-important fact cannot be justified in any sense; and the result has
+been that in hundreds of cases they have done grave wrong to landlords. As
+for the second argument, it is very probable that in many instances
+tenants purchased farms in the anticipation of a reduction of rent; they
+speculated--a significant fact--that the Sub-Commissions would 'bear' the
+market; but even, on that supposition, this can hardly explain the huge
+sums paid for tenant right while the existing rents were current. For the
+rest, I refer to part of my own evidence given on this subject at the same
+inquiry; readers of ordinary intelligence may judge for themselves: 'The
+first question I ask the tenant is, "How much will you take for the land,
+L100, L200, L300; ten, fifteen, twenty, or forty years' rent?" But I never
+can get an answer. They say, "Oh, your honour, I am here to look after a
+'fair rent,' and I am not going to tell your honour what I am going to ask
+for the land." However, I have a very shrewd notion.... You take into
+consideration in fixing the fair rent the price paid by the tenants?--Yes,
+the price which an incoming tenant would give, because I am not one of
+those who think that the Irish tenant is a fool; and when I find an
+incoming tenant giving ten, fifteen, twenty, and thirty years' purchase
+for a farm, I have a very shrewd suspicion that the rent is right.'[113]
+
+It was under these conditions, and by proceedings of this kind, that the
+Sub-Commissions, bodies of ill-paid men, dependent upon the will of the
+Government, and constituted to give effect to a policy, were sent
+throughout Ireland to 'fix fair rents.' They had no assistance, we have
+seen, from the Land Commission; they often entertained very different
+views; but their uniform course was in the same direction; they
+indiscriminately abated rents, as they would abate a nuisance. In fact,
+they might have joined in the chorus of the doctors of Moliere: 'Et
+saignare, et purgare, et clysteriasaire;' they applied the same remedies
+to all their victims, and brought them nearly all into the same weak and
+low condition. But there was a right of appeal from the Sub-Commissions to
+the Land Commission; and this tribunal, certainly designed to have
+absolute power in the determination of rent, ought surely to have been
+expected to redress injustice. I approach a part of the subject on which
+the plain truth must be told, without making personal imputations of any
+kind. Appeals from the Sub-Commissions were numbered by many thousands;
+and, as I have said--an iniquitous provision of the Act of 1881--the
+decisions of the Land Commission on the subject of 'fair rent' was made
+final, at least as regards the rate of rent; there was to be no further
+appeal to a higher tribunal. I quote these significant remarks on this
+restriction: 'In an ordinary case, I need not tell you, sir, who are
+conversant with the procedure of Courts of Justice, a litigant, in a civil
+case, no matter how much the issue may be involved, has the right, if he
+thinks fit, of taking the case from one Court to another, until he reaches
+the highest tribunal of the land, the House of Lords. And as you know,
+there is a well-known case, which the House of Lords had to decide, in
+which the amount involved was one penny, an alleged overcharge on a
+railway ticket; but in these land cases, where there may be, and often is,
+a sum of L200, L300, or L400 a year involved, because in some of the large
+farms in this country there have been reductions of L300 and even of L400
+in the rent, under the Act of Parliament they cannot go beyond the Head
+Land Commission, upon any question of value. That is the Act of Parliament
+whether it be right or wrong. There it is, and I am not here to discuss
+the policy of the Act. But when a rehearing is given by the Act of
+Parliament to the Land Commission, and when the Land Commission are
+constituted the final judges in such large and important matters, it is
+obviously of great importance that the final rehearing should be full, and
+in every respect what the Act of Parliament says it is to be, namely, a
+rehearing.'[114]
+
+The Land Commission sometimes heard these appeals at length, though
+usually their proceedings were summary in the extreme. The Commissioners
+occasionally pronounced well-considered judgments, on the difficult
+questions of law that came before them, especially as regards the
+exemption of tenants' improvements from rent; in several instances the
+results were curious. The lay Commissioner now and then dissented from his
+legal colleagues; his plain common sense rejected theories in tenants'
+interests; his decisions were more than once confirmed, on these points of
+law, by the highest Court of Appeal in Ireland, a circumstance of no
+slight significance. Nineteen-twentieths, however, of these appeals were
+conversant only with the amount of 'fair rent,' as to which the
+conclusions of the Land Commission could not be challenged. The Land
+Commissioners undoubtedly heard these cases, and sometimes had much
+evidence brought before them; in tolerably many instances they varied the
+'fair rents' fixed by the Sub-Commissions, if these variations were seldom
+important. But the Land Commission practically adopted, with scarcely a
+single exception, the errors of principle and the faulty methods which had
+marked the practice and the proceedings of the Sub-Commissions.[115] They
+excluded the element of competition from the subject of 'fair rent;' they
+never attempted to define 'fair rent,' or to establish a standard by which
+to gauge it; they disregarded, to a considerable extent at least, the
+distinction between the rentals of the old and the new landlords; they
+paid little or no attention to the fact that rents had been paid for many
+years without an increase; they hardly ever took deterioration into
+account, or the expenditure made on their estates by landlords. And in the
+actual fixing of 'fair rents' they virtually followed in the wake of their
+inferiors; they rejected, as a rule, the evidence that was most relevant;
+they refused to consider the rents of adjoining or neighbouring lands, in
+a word, the price of the market, in determining rent; above all, they gave
+scarcely any heed to the enormous sums paid for the tenant right of lands,
+as an indication that their rents were 'fair.' On all these particulars,
+in a word, supremely important as they were, they almost said ditto to the
+Sub-Commissions; in these respects the appeals were well-nigh useless. It
+should be added that the animus of the head of the Land Commission was
+significantly exhibited on one striking occasion. When opening the
+proceedings of the Land Commission, Mr. Justice O'Hagan pointedly laid it
+down, that the object of the Act of 1881 was 'to make tenants live and
+thrive;' in other words, as Lord Salisbury indignantly remarked, to compel
+rent to gravitate to the level of the most indolent and worthless Irish
+peasant, and practically to discourage industry.
+
+These considerations indicate, to some extent at least, the nature and
+especially the value of these appeals. But this was not all, or nearly
+all; there was a grave miscarriage of the simplest justice in this
+important province. Appeals, I have said, came in, in thousands; the work
+thrown on the Land Commissioners was immense; as one of their present
+successors remarked, 'If proper consideration' (had been) 'given to all
+the appeals you would' (have) 'wanted ten Appeal Courts to do it;'[116] as
+was said again substantially, 'Appeals would have crushed the Land
+Commissioners, had they not been crushed by them.'[117] In this position
+of affairs, the Land Commissioners, no doubt with no bad or sinister
+purpose, adopted what must be called a device, to enable them quickly to
+dispose of appeals, nay, almost in a summary way. They were empowered,
+under the Act of 1881, to appoint 'independent valuers' to examine lands,
+and to report on the subject of their 'fair rents;' it was never
+contemplated that statements of this kind were to dispense with the duty
+of hearing appeals in detail, and pronouncing solemn judgments upon them;
+but, practically, the Land Commissioners, in the great mass of instances,
+when adjudicating on appeals, as regards 'fair rents,' almost wholly
+relied on the reports of these valuers, who, be it observed, were in no
+sense witnesses, and were not subject to examination on the part of the
+suitors before the Court. In a word, the Land Commissioners did not
+exclude other kinds of evidence; but unquestionably the dicta of the
+valuers, as a rule, determined the decisions they made on 'fair rent.'
+This expedient greatly accelerated appeals; but it reduced the right of
+appeal well-nigh to a sham; and this procedure was by many degrees more
+repugnant to justice than that of the Sub-Commissions. In an inquiry held
+before the House of Lords in 1882, an eminent member of the Irish bar
+remarked, 'It was the most unsatisfactory tribunal that I ever was before.
+What occurred was this: they took up the figures of the old rent, which we
+will say was L100, and the valuation L70, and the new rent L80. Then they
+took up the valuer's report, which was a document concealed from the
+parties. It was entirely for the information of the Court, and they turned
+round to me, as the landlord's counsel, the landlord being the appellant,
+and said, "Can you go on with this appeal in the face of this document?"
+and they would show me the document.'[118] And in the inquiry I have often
+referred to before, another distinguished lawyer has said, 'I have been in
+cases where, in order to overcome the difficulty, I marshalled a perfect
+phalanx of witnesses, for the landlord, but it was all no use. They
+listened to them, I admit,--they suggested that I was wasting time, but I
+am not stating they did not hear them,--but in the end, in the morning,
+the announcement was made that the judicial rent was confirmed.'[119]
+
+As the general result these appeals, as it has been said, 'were
+strangled;' in thousands of instances they were withdrawn, the decisions
+of the Land Commission being final; expedition was attained; but it was
+only attained at the cost of gross wrong done to the landlords, a singular
+exhibition in a Court of Justice. I quote the following--and it should be
+borne in mind that the Land Commissioners have never attempted to explain
+this conduct, though the amplest opportunity was afforded, a few years
+ago: 'The extraordinary and anomalous state of things is that the valuers,
+not being assessors, do not sit with the Commissioners, and do not hear
+the evidence, and yet they are not witnesses in the proper sense of the
+term, because they are neither examined nor cross-examined. Common sense
+and justice revolt at the idea, when it is the duty of the Land
+Commissioners, upon the rehearing of a case, to sit and go through the
+proceedings _de novo_, that they should receive the evidence of valuers,
+which is not laid before the parties, and that those valuers should not be
+examined and cross-examined in the regular way. There is another matter to
+which I would refer. You will find, what is, indeed, what you might
+expect, that when the Commissioners go to Dublin, or Cork, or elsewhere,
+with a list of two or three hundred cases to be heard by them, involving,
+it may be, thousands of pounds a year of rent, that list is gone through
+in two or three days, and why? Because all the parties present know that
+they are taking part in what really is a solemn farce, and that what will
+happen in the morning after the hearing of their case is just this: John
+Brown, landlord, James Fogarty, tenant; judicial rent affirmed; John
+Robinson, landlord, James McNorth, tenant; judicial rent affirmed.'[120]
+
+The first set of Land Commissioners passed away; they were succeeded by a
+second Land Commission, the president of which was Mr. Justice Bewley, an
+accomplished, if not a very eminent, lawyer. This Commission, like the
+other, was composed of honourable men; it is only just to remark that it
+was bound by the bad precedents made by the tribunal which it had
+replaced. The procedure of the Sub-Commissions was, in some degree,
+improved; but the methods of the second Land Commission differed for the
+worse where they differed from the methods of its predecessor. The Land
+Commissioners appear to have not at all regarded the general principles in
+fixing 'fair rent,' which ought to have had effect on their judgments;
+they gave less weight, than Mr. Justice O'Hagan, and his colleagues did,
+to the most important evidence, in this province, to which I have adverted
+before, and laid too much stress on the least important evidence. As has
+been truly remarked, 'We believe that much more attention was paid in the
+early days of the Land Commission to the remaining kinds of popular
+evidence than has been the case of late years; and we are assured by one
+of the head Commissioners that the Act of 1896 has made a great change in
+the fixing of fair rents by placing an emphasis on the technical evidence,
+and throwing the popular evidence into the background.'[121] The
+Commissioners, too, followed the bad example of the first Land Commission,
+in the province of appeals; they practically disregarded almost everything
+but the reports of their valuers, unchecked statements made by men who
+were not even witnesses, were not sworn, and were not examined--a
+procedure worthy of the Council of Ten at Venice; as before, the result
+was that appeals were made all but fruitless, in the Court of which the
+decisions were, in this respect, final.
+
+There was, too, another grave miscarriage of justice caused, perhaps, by a
+mistake made by the head of the second Land Commission. The Act of 1881
+provided that 'fair rent' should be fixed, having due regard to the
+'interest' of the tenant on the land, that is, to his improvements, and
+perhaps to the mode of his tenure. Mr. Justice Bewley seems to have
+decided that another element ought to be taken into account, and should
+effect a reduction of rent; the tenant had 'an occupation right' in his
+favour, over and above the 'interest' the law gave him; by reason of this
+he had a right to have his rent cut down. The only plausible ground
+alleged for this doctrine was that landlords would usually accept a lower
+rent from a 'sitting' tenant in possession than from an incoming tenant;
+in other words, their good nature was turned against them, and was to be
+made a pretext for their being despoiled. It is just to observe that Mr.
+Justice Bewley's colleagues dissented from this curious view of the law;
+and the claim for 'occupation right' has since been blown to the winds in
+the superior Courts of Ireland. But though many faint denials were made,
+some of the Sub-Commissioners acted upon Mr. Justice Bewley's doctrine;
+the evidence is conclusive that this imaginary right was made the means of
+considerably reducing rent. Mr. Justice Bewley candidly admitted: 'From
+the commencement, apparently, a number of the Sub-Commissioners have acted
+on the principle that there is a certain occupation interest, which every
+tenant has, varying according to circumstances, not any fixed amount, but
+varying, and that that is to be taken into account in fixing the fair
+rent.'[122] This statement has been confirmed by a host of witnesses by no
+means willing in not a few instances. 'Would you make a difference between
+the assessment of the fair rent in the case of a sitting tenant, and in
+the case of an incoming tenant--a stranger? Certainly. Can you give us any
+idea what that difference is, expressed in percentage?--I could not very
+well answer that question. It is a mental calculation, and a good deal
+would depend upon the length of the tenure of the tenant.'[123] And again:
+'In your experience of the Land Commission Court, do you find the
+"occupation interest" has been taken into account in fixing the fair
+rent?--Yes, I cannot account for the reductions that have been made,
+except on that supposition.'[124] And again: 'As far as your experience
+goes, do they invariably value the holdings on the principle of giving an
+occupation interest to the sitting tenant?--Yes, the tenants' valuers, as
+a rule, give 40 or 50 per cent. as the interest of the sitting tenant....
+Do you find that the Sub-Commissioners fix the rent on what the valuers
+state?--Well, no; that would be going too much out of the way.'[125] And
+again: 'Have you any doubt that the rents are fixed on the basis of the
+occupation interest in the sitting tenant?--I have none. I do not know how
+else the rents could have been arrived at.'[126] And once more: 'Did the
+Sub-Commissioners invariably take the occupation interest of the sitting
+tenant into account?--I think so.' I conclude with these remarks of Mr.
+Barnes, one of the best and most impartial of Irish valuers: 'When I came
+to give evidence in Court I found that nothing else would be accepted as
+evidence unless based on occupation interest. It was almost the first
+question.... Whenever there was an answer made that the valuation was
+based on what the landlord would get for the land in his own hands, it was
+discounted at once.'[127] No wonder that it has been alleged by the
+highest authority with respect to this claim, since proved to have been
+unfounded, guarded and cautious as the language is: 'There is, however,
+reason to believe that this notion of an occupation interest existed in
+the minds of some of the early valuers, and did, in fact, influence them,
+and it is very possible that some cases in which the reductions there made
+appear startling, may be, in part, attributable to this doctrine.'[128]
+
+What amount of the rental of Ireland was unlawfully cut down owing to the
+theory of 'occupation right,' it is, of course, impossible to ascertain.
+Reductions of rent, too, were probably unjustly made through the
+ignorance of the Land Commission as to agricultural matters. I refer to a
+grotesque instance of this: 'You have marked a passage there in the
+judgment, which, according to you, shows that owing to their ignorance as
+experts they entirely mistook what six-course rotation meant?--Yes. The
+fact is they took it to be the same crop in the whole seventy acres, that
+instead of having so many different crops in this portion of the ground,
+it was to be put into one crop for the year, and that is what they call
+"rotation" in the Court of Rehearing.... It is plain enough, from the
+authorised report of the judgment, that they made that mistake?--It is
+clear as possible, and it was upon that that they threw me out. The tenant
+himself knew that it was all absurdity and mistake.'[129]
+
+A remarkable incident occurred in 1897 which threw a strong, if not a
+complete, light on the proceedings of the Land Commission and its
+Sub-Commissions in the adjustment of rent. In 1896 the time had come for
+renewing the first statutory leases, under the Act of 1881; the
+Commissioners suddenly made such enormous reductions of rent that persons
+who knew Ireland were simply astounded. The Irish landlords naturally were
+indignant; after some hesitation, and with plain reluctance, the
+Government gave its consent to a very imperfect inquiry. A Commission,
+presided over by Sir Edward Fry, a judge of the highest eminence, retired
+from office, and composed of four additional colleagues, two being
+well-known agricultural experts, was appointed to investigate the subject
+on the spot; but the scope of the inquiry was limited in the extreme; it
+was confined, in this respect, to examining the procedure and practice
+adopted in fixing 'fair rents;' it did not extend to the conduct generally
+of the Land Commission and its dependent tribunals. The Commission was
+engaged nearly three months in its task; it held its sittings in different
+parts of Ireland; it had before it 183 witnesses; and restricted as it
+was in this province, it pronounced, in grave and judicial language, a
+marked censure on the methods that had been followed in fixing 'fair
+rents' in Ireland. In fact, Sir Edward Fry and his colleagues confirmed,
+in many respects, the charges which I have made with regard to this whole
+system. No doubt they reported, in very guarded words, 'that they were
+unable to conclude that the machinery of the Land Statutes has been
+uniformly worked with injustice towards landlords;'[130] but as they
+pointedly refused to rehear a single case, in which the Land Commission
+and the Sub-Commissions had fixed a 'fair rent,' this statement, ambiguous
+as it is, is of no real importance. In other particulars the expression of
+these opinions cannot be mistaken; to impartial minds it will appear
+decisive. They evidently thought that such wrong had been done to
+landlords owing to the want of a definition of 'fair rent,' that they
+actually framed a definition of their own, in order to establish some kind
+of standard; this did not widely differ from that of Mr. Law, which, I
+have said, would have made things very different had it been adopted.[131]
+They pointed out that the Land Commissioners should have assisted the
+Sub-Commissions in fixing 'fair rents,' and should not have left them
+'like ships without a rudder or a compass on a stormy sea;' it is 'a
+subject of regret,' they reported, 'that in the early days of the system
+the Land Commissioners were unable to take a part in the tribunals of
+first instance; and that the whole original business was left to
+Sub-Commissions.'[132] They strongly condemned the nature of the
+Sub-Commission Courts, as being composed of members inadequately paid and
+mere tenants at sufferance; and they put forward an elaborate scheme to
+make the administration of justice in these tribunals more above
+suspicion.[133] They evidently believed that the Land Commission and the
+Sub-Commissions did not give due weight to the class of evidence that was
+most important, and gave too much weight to that which was the least; and
+they made significant observations on this subject.[134] On the whole,
+they arrived at the conclusion that the fixing of 'fair rents' 'gives
+opportunity for dissatisfaction, and leaves much more for improvement; ...
+and that the settlement of fair rents has been effected in an
+unsatisfactory manner, with diversity of opinion and practice, sometimes
+with carelessness, and sometimes with that bias towards one side or the
+other which exists in many honest minds.'[135] But their strongest
+animadversion was found in the system, through which, I have said, the
+Land Commission really 'strangled' appeals, though in this province its
+decisions were final: 'An almost universal dissatisfaction is expressed
+with regard to these appeals, a dissatisfaction felt by some at least of
+the Commissioners themselves. No witness, with, perhaps, a single
+exception, spoke in favour of the existing system.'[136]
+
+Mr. Justice Bewley has retired from office, and has been replaced by Mr.
+Justice Meredith, a capable and experienced lawyer. He has done, probably
+as much as in him lay, to alleviate some of the wrong done to Irish
+landlords; and for this he has been subjected to violent abuse, especially
+on the part of an advocate of Ulster farmers, whose tongue is at odds with
+his trade in temperance. But he is bound by the precedents set by those
+who have gone before him; and though the work of the Land Commission is
+now better done than it was before the Report of the Fry Commission
+appeared, and its general procedure has improved, little change has been
+effected in the reduction of rent in Ireland. The Government, as I have
+pointed out in a preceding chapter, has made a few administrative reforms
+in the composition and the arrangement of the Sub-Commissions; but it has
+not taken a single step to give effect to the recommendations made by the
+Fry Commission, so far as these are of real importance; it has refused to
+legislate on the subject, and to bring in the measure that was required;
+it has even refused to set a further inquiry on foot. The general results
+of the labours of the Land Commission and of its subordinate tribunals in
+fixing 'fair rents' may be summed up in a very few sentences. According to
+the Report of the Fry Commission, the tenants of rural holdings in Ireland
+are about 486,000 in number; 328,720 of these have had 'fair rents' fixed,
+between August, 1881, and the end of March, 1900.[137] The tenants, who
+have not had 'fair rents' fixed, are probably either tenants of lands not
+within the Land Acts, or 'future tenants' since 1881-82, or tenants too
+poor to pay law costs; but these, perhaps in nine cases out of ten, have
+indirectly had the benefit of the law, and have had their rents reduced
+like those of the large majority, by voluntary concessions on the part of
+landlords. The great mass of 'fair rents' has been fixed by the Land
+Commission and its dependents, and the proceedings of these tribunals
+have, beyond question, formed a standard for the adjustment of rent;
+whether 'fair rents' have been fixed by the County Courts,[138] or by
+agreements between landlord and tenant, they have, in the main, conformed
+to the measure established by the Courts set up in 1881. The reductions of
+rent made, in every way, in the first statutory leases, were, on an
+average, rather more than 20 per cent. on the old rental;[139] but those
+on the second statutory leases have been 22 per cent. more,[140] that is,
+the fixing of 'fair rents,' so far as it has gone, has reduced rents
+rather more than 42 per cent. It may be asserted, with some confidence,
+that through the operation of the new Irish land code, taking in tenancies
+of all kinds, Irish rents have been cut down nearly 40 per cent.; little
+doubt can exist that they are now lower than they were in the day of
+Wakefield, and in some instances in the day of Arthur Young, when the
+price of Irish agricultural produce was less than half what it is at the
+present time.[141]
+
+The agricultural rental of Ireland, therefore, in all probability, has
+been reduced almost 40 per cent., or will be in a short space of time; and
+as long as the present system of fixing 'fair rent' continues, however it
+may be lowered, it will certainly not be raised. The Act of 1881, I have
+already said, would, by itself, necessarily reduce rents; but the faulty
+administration of it, on which I have dwelt, has reduced them far more
+than ought to have been the case. In fact, disguise it as you may, an
+immense confiscation, gradual, indeed, and veiled, but not the less real,
+has been made of the property of Irish landlords, even on the principles
+of a bad law; the evidence of this is, I believe, conclusive. Rents have
+been cut down indiscriminately in the great mass of instances; for
+example, rents in country districts only opened to good markets of late
+years, have been reduced quite as much as rents around Dublin, which had
+almost a monopoly of the best market until about 1855-60. But the proof of
+this spoliation is made most apparent by taking into account a single
+fact, and drawing the natural inference from it. The value of the
+landlords' interest in the land, before 1881, was from 20 to 25 years'
+purchase; it is now between 15 and 18; at the same time the value of the
+tenants' interest has, in thousands of cases, enormously increased. I
+refer to a few examples out of scores to be found in the evidence given to
+the Fry Commission. I take first an estate in Ulster: 'I only remember one
+case of a holding before 1881 that went up (in a sale of the farm) to
+anything like 20 years' purchase of the rent, and I have several cases
+since then that have gone beyond it. I remember one case that struck me
+very forcibly because of the great amount the man got--20 years' purchase.
+Since then I have known, 29, 35, 36, 34 years' purchase to be given.' I
+turn now to two estates in the south of Ireland: 'Charles Bolster, 112
+acres; rent L79 5_s._; sold for L570 in 1889. Daniel Buckley, 9 acres, at
+rent of L3 3_s._; sold in 1889 for L45. Christopher Crofts, 131 acres; old
+rent, L86; judicial rent fixed in 1893, L80; sold in 1889 for L120.
+Timothy Reefe, 5 acres; rent, 29_s._; sold in 1891 for L47.' I pass on to
+the second estate: 'Next case, 65 acres; old rent, L60; judicial rent, L56
+14_s._, fixed in 1883 by agreement; sold in 1883 for L330. Next, 76
+statute acres; old rent, L115; judicial rent fixed in 1885 at L108; sold
+in December, 1885, for L1600.'[142]
+
+This great fall in the value of the fee simple in the Irish land, and this
+great rise in the value of the tenant right, coinciding with the general
+fixing of 'fair rents,' distinctly point to a plain conclusion: the
+interest of the Irish landlord has been enormously reduced, a result never
+contemplated by the author of the Act of 1881. In truth, there has been
+little or no decline in the market price of land in Ireland; but property
+that ought to belong to the landlord has been improperly taken from him,
+and has been transferred to the tenant who had no right to it. Excuses,
+however, have been made for this wholesale abolition of rent; they are
+worthless, but may be briefly noticed. Ireland, it is said, is suffering,
+like England, from the agricultural depression of late years; and rents
+in Ireland have not been cut down more by the act of the State than they
+have been reduced in England by the voluntary acts of landlords. But
+agricultural depression in Ireland, a land of small holdings, and of
+pasturage, to a considerable extent, is not, by many degrees, as severe as
+in England, a land of large farms and largely of cereal culture; a signal
+proof of this is that, while in England, tenants have, in hundreds of
+instances, thrown up their farms, there has hardly been a case of the kind
+in Ireland, as appears from the Report of the Fry Commission. Besides, if
+agricultural prices have fallen in Ireland, compared to what they were,
+say, twenty-five years ago, they are higher than they were in the years,
+say, 1850-55, not to take into account the progress made by Ireland, in
+the last half-century, in crops, farm machinery, and the breeds of farming
+animals. As to the reduction of rents in England and Ireland, the supposed
+analogy completely fails. The rental of England rose greatly from 1850 to
+1880; there was no corresponding increase in Ireland; there was thus a
+margin for reduction, in the greater island, which in the lesser did not
+exist. Again, no comparison can be made between State-settled Irish rents
+and English rents lowered by the voluntary acts of landlords. 'Fair rents'
+have practically been reduced for all time; the reduction of English rents
+is temporary, and can be at once annulled; this difference makes a
+supposed resemblance a very striking contrast. As to the argument that the
+Courts which have fixed 'fair rents' have been composed of honourable men,
+and that it is extremely invidious to make charges against them, mere
+leather and prunella may be brushed aside. No one disputes the honour of
+the Land and the Sub-Commissioners, but it does not follow that they have
+not done injustice; no one has disputed the honour of the Commission which
+carried out the Encumbered Estates Act, and yet it repeatedly sold
+estates at less than half their value.
+
+The Irish landlords, I repeat, have been iniquitously despoiled; a huge
+confiscation has been made of their property. If the simplest right is to
+be done in this province, their claim to compensation has been rendered
+complete--apart from the utterances of Mr. Gladstone; should this be
+disregarded, Parliament will have been chargeable with a grave breach of
+faith, and a precedent will have been set from trampling on the just
+rights of property in the Three Kingdoms, which will be dangerous in the
+extreme. I pass on to consider the Irish land on the side of ownership,
+and the administration of the system of so-called 'land purchase.' Of the
+total of L40,000,000 alone available, some L20,000,000 appear to have been
+expended; some 50,000 tenants have been made owners of their farms,
+without having paid a shilling of their own, that is, rather more than one
+in ten of the whole tenant class in Ireland. The politicians who declared
+against 'dual ownership,' that bugbear of self-sufficient ignorance, can
+find little consolation in these figures; I shall comment afterwards on
+what this state of things has produced. The Government of Lord Salisbury
+still proposes to seek to accelerate 'land purchase' of this kind; and
+loud complaints have been made of the law's delay in not having made the
+process more speedy. I have had no experience in this matter, and shall,
+therefore, give no opinion on it; but it appears to me that there has been
+some want of care in making advances to these so-styled 'purchasers;' not
+a few were insolvent when they acquired their farms, and many are now on
+the verge of bankruptcy. This, however, was perhaps inseparable from the
+system that has been pursued; it is only an additional proof of its
+essential vices.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (_continued_)--PROPOSED REFORM OF THE IRISH
+LAND SYSTEM
+
+    Retrospect of the present Irish land system--Position of the Irish
+    landlords--Position of the Irish tenant class--This not as
+    advantageous as might be supposed--The effects of the land code on
+    Irish agriculture injurious--The effects on the general Irish
+    community--Confiscation, violation of contracts, shock given to
+    credit, increased alienation of classes, and demoralisation--The land
+    system considered on the side of ownership--'Voluntary
+    purchase'--Mischief of this policy--It sets up a false standard
+    against rent, and creates unjust distinctions between different
+    classes of tenants--The results it has produced already--An instance
+    of the system--The demand for the compulsory purchase of the Irish
+    land caused by 'voluntary purchase'--Compulsory purchase has some hold
+    on opinion, but is an impossible, and would be a disgraceful and
+    ruinous policy--It would ruin Irish landlords as a
+    class--Instances--It would ultimately bring Ireland into the state in
+    which she was before the Great Famine--Proposed plan for the reform of
+    Irish land tenure--Questions as to the means of compensating Irish
+    landlords, a deeply wronged order of men.
+
+
+Having traced the attempts that have been made to reform Irish land
+tenure, in the last thirty years, and noticed the administration of the
+new Irish land code, I must, for the sake of clearness, take a short
+retrospect, and consider the Irish land system as it exists at this day; I
+shall review it on the side of occupation first, that is, in the relations
+of landlord and tenant. The agricultural rental of Ireland, we have seen,
+has been, or is being, reduced about 40 per cent. since 1881, through the
+operation of laws carried out by tribunals of the State; this proceeding,
+unexampled in civilised lands, has been the means, I have proved, of doing
+gross wrong to the Irish landed gentry. But this, if a signal, is only one
+of the many acts of injustice perpetrated on a cruelly injured body of
+men. The fee simple has been wrested from the Irish landlord, where he has
+been subjected to the legislation of late years; he has been deprived of
+the ownership which had been his birthright. An estate, nominally for
+fifteen years, but really capable of being renewed for ever, has been
+created against him by an unjust law; and this has been vested in his
+former tenants, subject to the mode of land tenure known as the 'Three
+F's,' the chief of these being 'fair,' that is, State-settled rents, in
+the adjustment of which he has no voice. He may, no doubt, retain
+fragments of his old proprietary rights; parts of his estate may be
+excluded from the provisions of the law; he may be the lord of 'future
+tenants;' he is left 'royalties,' such as minerals, mines, and timber; he
+possesses most of his former legal remedies; and should the holders of the
+lands, which had been his own, who have obtained the benefits of the
+'Three F's,' infringe the statutory conditions imposed on them, they may
+be dispossessed, and he may enter upon their farms again. But,
+notwithstanding exceptions and possibilities like these, the Irish
+landlord has, for practical purposes, been well-nigh assimilated to a
+rent-charger, and his tenants have been nearly converted into owners of
+the soil, an utter revolution in the whole land system, in truth, turning
+it upside down. The status, indeed, of the Irish landed gentry now bears a
+strong resemblance to that of the chief landlords of the eighteenth
+century, who, separating themselves altogether from their lands, let them
+in perpetuity at low rents, and, as a necessary consequence, produced the
+middleman, the pest, as he has rightly been called, of Irish land tenure.
+
+The enormous and, as I believe, the unjust benefits secured by recent
+legislation to the Irish tenant, are not, however, so complete as they
+appear to be, and are not without disadvantages attendant on them. Tenants
+of holdings, to which the law does not apply, such as tenants of demesnes
+and large pastoral lands, if rightly excluded, nevertheless complain; and
+'future tenants,' and petty occupants, who cannot afford to seek 'fair
+rents' from the Courts, have, from their point of view, solid grounds of
+complaint. The scope of the new land code is, therefore, to some extent,
+restricted; and if the law has actually caused a general reduction of
+rents, it has not secured the 'Three F's' for a considerable body of
+farmers, not improbably a fourth or fifth part of the class as a whole.
+And even the occupiers of the Irish soil, who have obtained the advantages
+of the new mode of tenure, have not obtained these without a certain kind
+of drawback. Completely separated as they now are from their former
+landlords, they cannot expect indulgences from a class which considers
+itself to have been shamefully wronged; the allowances, which, whatever
+may be said, had been made to them, in thousands of cases, have, as a
+rule, been altogether withdrawn; they get no help in making improvements;
+they are usually obliged regularly to pay their 'fair rents;' above all,
+landlords, of a strict or harsh nature, are sometimes on the look-out to
+see if they do not violate the statutory conditions to which they are
+subject, in order to convert them into 'future tenants,' outside of the
+protection of the law, and even to reacquire their lands. These
+circumstances are not without adverse effects; though unquestionably they
+are far more than countervailed by the change which has been wrought in
+Irish land tenure, and has given the Irish tenant the benefits already
+described. Yet, even from this point of view, the law does not operate as
+unreservedly in his favour as might be supposed. He has his 'fair rent,'
+probably much too low; his 'fixity of tenure,' a perpetuity in all but
+name; his right to 'free sale,' sometimes worth thousands of pounds. But,
+as a rule, he can only gain these advantages at the cost of a lawsuit
+recurring at short intervals of time, with the vexation and mischief this
+brings with it, a lawsuit, too, of which the results may be more or less
+doubtful. If, too, he is a saving and thrifty man he will hardly be able
+to acquire lands for himself, as, in consequence of the right of 'free
+sale,' the tenant right of these will have become immensely high; he will
+be confined, in most instances, to the farm he holds. On the other hand,
+if he be dishonest or imprudent, he will be tempted to run out and even to
+injure his land, in order to effect a reduction of rent, or to sublet or
+mortgage it should an opportunity be found.
+
+The new Irish land code has thus had this special feature: it has done
+infinite harm to the despoiled landlord, but the tenant has not gained the
+expected benefits. Let us now see what effect it has had on the great
+industry on which the Irish landed classes depend, the main source of the
+wealth of their country. Unquestionably, as I have remarked, over and over
+again, the tenant in Ireland makes, for the most part, the plant of his
+farm a necessary incident of the small-farm system; but the Irish landed
+gentry, in the last half century, have done a great deal in the work of
+improvement. Whatever interested calumny may falsely assert, they have
+expended millions, as unerring statistics show, in planting, enclosure,
+and, especially, in arterial drainage, this last beyond the reach of the
+common peasant; they have, in thousands of instances, made the breeds of
+stock better; they have made large allowances as regards farm buildings.
+All this is now a thing of the past; the sometime landowner, in a real
+sense, has been divorced from his former estate; law has prohibited him
+from doing anything for it; his only interest is to collect the
+rent-charge called, in mockery, 'fair rent.' On the other hand, tenants in
+Ireland have, in a great many cases--I have briefly glanced at the
+conclusive evidence--positively wasted or neglected their holdings, for
+the express purpose of working rent down; this shameful expedient has been
+hardly checked; the deterioration of a large area of land has been thus
+accomplished. And, at the same time, as 'fair rent' is much lower than the
+rent of the market, a considerable minority of this class have sublet or
+mortgaged their lands, in order to get advances of which they stand in
+need; this, no doubt, is a violation of the law; but it is a violation
+difficult to prove, and they run the risk. In this way, as I have shown,
+in a preceding chapter, the husbandry of Ireland has declined of late
+years; woodland has been cut down recklessly to a great extent; main
+drainage has been largely neglected, a ruinous thing in a wet climate; in
+thousands of cases the farming of tenants at 'fair rents' is wretched. The
+face of the country reveals these facts: Ireland is worse cultivated than
+it was twenty years ago; indeed, the best farming, in the island, by many
+degrees, is that conducted by a small number of men of substance, who
+still hold on the footing of free contract, having settled with their
+landlords, and taken out leases, a significant commentary on Irish
+legislation since 1881.
+
+This subject, however, must be considered from a broader point of view,
+and with reference to the community of Ireland, as a whole. A great
+confiscation, I have said, has been wrought in the Irish land; the immense
+fall in the value of the landlord's estate, and the immense rise in the
+value of the tenant right, prove that property belonging to one class has
+been transferred, wholesale, by law, to another, a result never
+contemplated by responsible statesmen. And confiscation has produced its
+inevitable effects; free dealing in land has been prevented; except to his
+former tenants an Irish country gentleman cannot sell what remains to him
+of his former estate, and that through the system of 'land purchase;'
+capital shuns the Irish soil as if it were a quicksand; trustees and
+mortgagees will not invest in it; in a word, as respects the class which
+had been its owners, the Irish land has been bound in a kind of pernicious
+mortmain. It is unnecessary to dwell on the resulting evils; one of the
+sources of the wealth of Ireland has been made barren; a paralysis has
+fallen on a member of Irish industry; what is, perhaps, even worse, a
+sense of insecurity, of instability, of fear of unknown change, so widely
+prevails in Irish landed relations, that they have become completely
+unsettled, and are a mere chaos. And as vicious legislation has cut the
+old landlord off from his estate, has assimilated him to the chief lord of
+the eighteenth century, and is evolving, by degrees, the middleman, so the
+effects of confiscation, by keeping land out of commerce, have unnaturally
+limited and restricted its nominal ownership; in fact, many of the
+features of the detestable penal laws of Ireland are reappearing in the
+Irish land system, and are being reproduced by the modern Irish land code.
+Another mischievous effect of this code, in another direction, requires
+attention. The value of tenant right, we have seen, has enormously
+increased; the sums paid by incoming to outgoing tenants, on the transfer
+of farms, have, accordingly, become enormous; these purchasers, therefore,
+are being subjected to heavy outlays, practically in the nature of
+rack-rents, which hamper their industry, starve their capital, and most
+injuriously affect good husbandry. One class of the community is thus
+wronged for the behoof of another; and agriculture must, more or less,
+suffer.
+
+Not the least, however, of the manifold evils caused by this legislation
+have to be yet noticed. The ancient divisions of race and faith in the
+Irish land system still continue; what was most harsh and oppressive in
+them has been effaced; but they have become wider and more marked in the
+last twenty years; and this is largely to be ascribed to the present land
+code. A mode of land tenure, which produces harassing litigation at short
+intervals of time, and makes landed relations cockpits for legal
+conflicts, necessarily sets the landed classes against each other; it has
+aggravated the old differences deep-rooted in the Irish soil. The
+Protestant gentleman and the Catholic peasant are more estranged from each
+other, in the southern provinces, than they have been, I believe, within
+living memory; the same remark, too, applies to Presbyterian Ulster, where
+the gentry belong, for the most part, to the late Established Church, and
+the tenant classes are of the faith of John Knox; the lines of distinction
+between these orders of men have deepened; and this alienation, concurring
+with another cause, has contributed to the cry for the confiscation of the
+Irish land, which is now being very generally raised, and to which I shall
+refer afterwards. Another mischief of this legislation, at which I have
+already glanced, is the widespread demoralisation it has caused, from the
+nature of the case. The litigation in the Courts where 'fair rents' are
+being fixed, is often a miserable spectacle of hard and mendacious
+swearing productive of the worst effects on the human character. Peasants,
+as a rule, do not scruple to pledge their oaths that their rents ought to
+be at most a fourth of the rents they had paid for perhaps half a century;
+the witnesses they call as valuers usually repeat these statements. The
+claims, too, for exemption from rent, on account of improvements, are
+often ridiculous, often shameful; I have seen sums paid for manures twenty
+years old, gravely put forward as creating a claim for exemption; and the
+subject of the deterioration of farms is another fruitful source of
+falsehood. It is hardly necessary to comment on the results, as regards
+self-respect and the moral sense of men, which must follow proceedings of
+this kind, carried on, over whole counties, in thousands of cases; they
+are, inevitably, in a very high degree, unfortunate; but, when law
+encourages dishonesty, they were to be only expected.
+
+Such have been the fruits of the new Irish land code, on the side of the
+occupation of the Irish land. Legislation, essentially faulty and unwise,
+in conflict with economic science and the facts of the case, has taken
+from the Irish landlords their chief proprietary rights, and forcibly
+transferred these to their tenants; it has not conferred the benefits it
+intended on an unfairly favoured class; it has wrought a revolution in the
+Irish land system, in contravention to plain justice, and given it an
+unnatural and evil aspect; it has caused iniquitous confiscation on a vast
+scale and demoralisation profound and widespread, with the far-reaching
+inherent mischiefs; and bad administration has made bad laws worse.
+Political economy, spite of Mr. Gladstone, has not fled from this world at
+his bidding; she looks on, so to speak, at the ruins in Ireland produced
+by the violation of her most certain principles; I will add, she affirms
+the claim to compensation of the Irish landlord, if the simplest equity is
+not to be set at nought. As to the general situation evolved by the
+present Irish land code, I may refer to these pregnant words of Mr. Lecky:
+'It cannot be denied that this legislation has redressed some hard cases
+and benefited a large number of tenants; and as few men look beyond
+immediate consequences, or rightly estimate those which are indirect and
+remote, this fact is accepted by many as its justification. For my own
+part, I believe that it will one day be found that the evils resulting
+from this policy have greatly outweighed its benefits, and that they will
+fall far more heavily on another class than on the small class which was
+directly injured. In a poor country, where increased capital, improved
+credit, and secure industry are the greatest needs, it has shaken to the
+very basis the idea of the sanctity and obligation of contract; made it
+almost impossible to borrow any considerable sum on Irish land;
+effectually stopped the influx of English gold; paralysed or prevented
+nearly all industrial undertakings stretching into a distant future. It
+has reacted powerfully upon trade, and thus contributed to impoverish the
+Irish towns, while it has withdrawn the whole rental of Ireland from the
+improvement of the soil, as the landlord can have no further inducement or
+obligation to spend money on his estate. In combination, also, with the
+Home Rule movement, it has driven much capital out of the land.'[143]
+
+I pass on to the legislation of late years, with respect to the Irish
+land, on the side of ownership. I have briefly described what that
+legislation is: a Conservative Ministry, impressed with the wrong idea
+that Mr. Gladstone had 'created dual ownership,' by the ill-conceived
+measure of 1881, resolved to abolish this evil thing if they could, though
+it is the natural mould of Irish land tenure; and Parliament has allotted
+L40,000,000 to attain this object, through the operation of what is
+falsely called 'land purchase.' The mode of proceeding has been explained:
+an Irish landlord, who desires to sell his estate to his tenants, can
+obtain an advance for this purpose from the State, through the agency of
+the Land Commission; the tenants are then made owners of their farms,
+without contributing any moneys of their own, and hold at terminable
+annuities much lower than even 'fair rents.' The transaction, therefore,
+we have seen, is, in no sense, a purchase; it is a gift, in the nature of
+a bribe; it is completely different from the policy of John Bright and the
+sales of land made to tenants before 1885, in which these men paid part of
+the price at least, the only real security for thrift and honesty. Of the
+L40,000,000, nearly half, I have said, has been spent; and out of the
+486,000 agricultural Irish tenants, some 50,000 have acquired their
+holdings, in fee, under these conditions. The law thus applies to a mere
+fraction of the class; it is idle to assert that this can do much to
+extinguish 'dual ownership' in all Ireland; the sum required would be many
+times more than that which alone has been made available; and the
+process, at the present rate of 'purchases,' would not be accomplished
+within a century. We may, therefore, pass away from this part of the
+subject; but let us see how 'land purchase,' effected in this way, bears
+on the position of the Irish landed gentry. The immense majority of this
+order of men still cling to their native country and their homes; they
+hate the idea of parting with the rights they retain in the land, trampled
+down and injured as they have been; this is especially the case with the
+best and most solvent landlords. But as the terminable annuities payable
+on 'land purchase' are not nearly so high as even very low rents, not to
+speak of the other conditions of this mode of tenure, it follows that
+tenants who have thus been made owners are infinitely better off than
+tenants still subject to rent; one class has great advantages, of which
+the other is deprived; as a necessary consequence an artificial standard
+is set up against rent, which does wrong to the landlord, from the nature
+of the case; gives every tenant on his estate a grievance; and not
+improbably may expose him to a determined refusal to pay any rent
+whatever.
+
+'Land purchase,' therefore--the name is a mere untruth--has been a failure
+as regards 'dual ownership;' and it is establishing against the Irish
+landlord a false measure of rent, analogous to a base coinage, a strange
+achievement of a Conservative Government. Let us next consider what has
+been the working of this economic nostrum, with respect to the class, for
+the benefit of which it was first prescribed, and which has reaped the
+advantages it gives. The tenants, who have been made owners of their
+farms, have, as a rule, discharged their obligations to the State very
+well, though I could point to not a few exceptions; and there have been
+strikes against the payment of the terminable annuities in some instances.
+This may be sufficient for official bureaucrats; it is not sufficient for
+those who know Ireland, and can impartially watch the course of events.
+It was fondly expected that 'land purchase,' that is, bribing tenants in
+Ireland to become owners of their farms, would create a powerful body of
+freeholders loyal to the State; but this has already been seen to be a
+mere delusion. As Parnell predicted would be the case, these 'purchasers'
+are 'patriotic' in the highest degree; they fill the ranks of the United
+Irish League, that is, of a conspiracy against our rule in Ireland, and
+are numbered among its most efficient agents; human nature being what it
+actually is, this is precisely what was to be expected. It was confidently
+foretold, again, that these 'purchasers' would form a thriving class of
+model farmers; and that their lands would be patterns of admirable and
+improved peasant husbandry, but this forecast is being, in a great degree,
+falsified. These men, 'rocked and dandled into their possessions,' in the
+words of Burke, without a single guarantee for common prudence, and
+especially without an effort of their own, have, in hundreds of instances,
+turned out sorry failures; and it has been the almost universal practice
+of the whole class to cut down every tree that grows on their lands, an
+act of ruinous waste in a rain-drenched climate. Besides, as freehold
+ownership is not an Irish idea--indeed, is opposed to Irish ideas--these
+'purchasers' have, in many cases, following the example of tenants 'at
+fair rents,' subdivided, sublet, or mortgaged their holdings; instead of
+remaining owners in a true sense, they are becoming middlemen lording it
+over rack-rented serfs. The agriculture, too, of hundreds of these farms
+is slovenly in the extreme, for bribery does not promote industry; what is
+'easy got, easy goes' is a true proverb; and, in addition, a number of
+these men were really insolvent when they were made 'purchasers.' That
+Ireland will blossom like a rose, under these conditions, is seen even now
+to be a chimera; and there is much reason to believe that many of these
+'purchasers' have become the prey of the race of local usurers, a
+consummation that might have been predicted. 'I shall sell my estate,' a
+witty Irishman once remarked, 'but I will keep two loan offices and four
+public-houses; and in two generations my "purchasing" tenants will be too
+happy to resell their lands to my grandsons.'
+
+A singular instance of 'land purchase,' and, indeed, of the working of
+another part of the land code, has come under my notice of late; I can
+answer for the accuracy of what I write; scores of similar cases could be,
+probably, found. In 1852, an industrious Scottish tradesman invested the
+savings of years of his life in buying a chief rent under the Encumbered
+Estates Act; he gave L5000 for a perpetual rent-charge of L192, that is,
+not quite 4 per cent. on his capital. The tenant of the lands subject to
+the rent was a middleman, with an estate of about L3000 a year; he had
+sublet the lands to a tenant in occupation of them, a slovenly,
+ill-conditioned, and indolent farmer. The Land Act of 1887 passed; the
+wealthy middleman, an excellent 'mark' for the chief rent, who, therefore,
+had been obliged to pay the L192 a year, was empowered by the new law to
+evade his contract, and practically to get rid of his interest; the owner
+of the chief rent, therefore, had only the tenant in occupation to look to
+for the discharge of his claim. This person was succeeded by his son, a
+good-for-nothing and drunken man, who soon became head over ears in debt;
+but he was declared 'a purchaser' by the Land Commission, and, subject to
+a terminable annuity, was made owner of the lands. But the advance made
+was not more than L2300; the representative of the hardworking Scotchman,
+who had bought property, as secure, at the time, as Consols, was a loser
+of more than half of his capital; he was simply cheated out of L2700,
+through the operation of an iniquitous law; his indignant protests may
+well be conceived. The subsequent history of this so-styled 'purchase' is
+significant, and not without interest. The worthless owner took possession
+of the lands; his first step was to cut down the woodland, until he was
+stopped by a creditor to whom he owed a mortgage. Since that time he has
+become insolvent in all but name, and cannot pay the annuity due to the
+State; the Land Commission has been trying to sell the lands; but the
+attempt has, hitherto, been a failure; the lands have been 'boycotted,'
+and the market has been closed against a sale. These proceedings do not
+require a word of comment; they strikingly illustrate how the agrarian
+code of Ireland makes havoc of capital, annuls contracts, and confiscates
+property for the behoof of dishonest thriftlessness. Meanwhile the happy
+middleman enjoys his L3000 a year; I dare say he licks his lips as he
+thinks of the Land Act of 1887, which scattered a just liability to the
+winds.
+
+The most remarkable and the worst effect--with a revolutionary tendency in
+no doubtful sense--of this mischievous system has, however, to be still
+noticed. About one out of ten of the agricultural tenants of Ireland have
+'purchased' their farms in the way described; the fund available for 'land
+purchase' cannot include more than one in five; and the process is and
+must be slow, owing to the law's delay. Legislation, therefore, with a
+singular want of insight, has drawn, and is drawing, an unjust distinction
+between 'purchasing' and rent-paying tenants; it is dividing them into a
+small favoured class, and a multitude harshly left out in the cold--fat
+sheep in one fold, lean goats in another; as the inevitable result, the
+rent-paying tenant resents the benefits obtained by 'the purchaser;' and
+the immense majority of the farmers of Ireland are made discontented with
+their lot, from their point of view not without reason. It is idle to say
+to this great body of men that they have already gained advantages from
+the State, on which they never reckoned thirty years ago, and that they
+have the 'Three F's,' and all that the phrase implies; those who have
+secured much are eager to secure more; the unfair distinction arbitrarily
+made against them is unintelligible and exasperating, man being what he
+is. The policy of 'voluntary purchase,' as it is called, has, accordingly,
+from the very nature of the case, provoked and called into being the cry
+for the 'compulsory purchase' of the Irish land, now being heard far and
+wide in Ireland--that is, for the forcible expropriation of all Irish
+landlords, and for placing all their tenants, in their stead, as owners of
+their estates. This demand has as yet been rejected by statesmen, and is,
+I believe, both hopeless and shameful; but it has, nevertheless, some
+logic on its side; it is a corollary from legislation essentially bad;
+and, backed as it is by a large force of Irish opinion, it cannot be
+ignored or treated with contempt. It is simply extraordinary that many
+Irish landlords have been encouraging, and still encourage, 'voluntary
+purchase,' on its existing lines, and will not perceive that it leads to
+'compulsory purchase;' either from a desire to dispose of parts of their
+estates, or from motives not easy to understand, they are promoting a
+revolution, which, if accomplished, would assure their ruin, as I shall
+conclusively prove afterwards. But the well-informed and most thoughtful
+members of their class are not flies lured into a bottle by a bit of
+sugar; they are alive to all that is involved in what is called 'land
+purchase.' Many years ago, when Parliament was voting funds for 'voluntary
+purchase,' on the present system, I indicated what would be the results; I
+only claim credit for some share of common sense: 'Law will have been
+severing the occupiers of the soil by an arbitrary process into a pampered
+caste, marked off from a disfavoured multitude; and, as a necessary
+consequence, the mass of tenants, kept in an inferior position, will be
+filled with discontent--and from their point of view with perfect
+justice--when, as the advances from the State run short, their prospects
+of "land purchase" shall wane and diminish. An "ugly rush" will be made
+throughout the country to force landlords, as a class, to sell, in order
+to get a chance of buying; in Ulster the cry for "compulsory purchase,"
+already heard, will swell high and fierce.'[144]
+
+These, therefore, have been the fruits of the system called 'land
+purchase' with euphemistic falsehood. 'Compulsory purchase,' a demand
+caused by an unwise policy, is a question that must be fairly discussed;
+it is nothing to the purpose that it has as yet made little way in
+Parliament. This claim would have been regarded as sheer insanity thirty
+years ago; it was scouted by John Bright as in the highest degree
+mischievous, though John Bright was the first statesman who proposed
+making tenants in Ireland owners of their farms, but through a real, not a
+sham, mode of purchase. The compulsory purchase of the rented land of
+Ireland is a policy that has advocates even in England and Scotland; and
+it is lamentable to observe how British opinion seems to take little heed
+how a measure of this kind would affect the position of the Irish
+landlord, another of the many instances of its habitual disregard of the
+plainest rights of property in land in Ireland. A set of doctrinaires,
+ignorant of Irish nature and of the Irish land, imagine that 'the creation
+of a peasant proprietary,' in all parts of Ireland, as the cant phrase is,
+would, in any case, make the Union secure, and would promote tranquillity,
+industry, and content. Some politicians still cherish the fond belief,
+that thrusting Irish tenants, wholesale, into the place of their
+landlords, by an act of violence without a parallel, would make Irish
+government and administration more easy; and shut their eyes to the nature
+of this policy. English and Scottish capitalists, who have made advances
+on Irish estates, see in compulsory purchase the best probable means of
+realising securities now in danger; a few great absentee landlords, eager
+to part with their possessions in Ireland, at almost any price, are
+possibly not opposed to this scheme; and so maybe a few bankrupt Irish
+landlords, hoping to get a trifle out of a general shipwreck. The demand,
+however, for compulsory purchase has its only real strength in Ireland;
+and unquestionably it is widespread and far-reaching. The conspiracy
+against British rule in Ireland, which has made the annihilation of Irish
+'landlordism' one of its main objects, calls for compulsory purchase, as a
+matter of course; it finds no difficulty in banding together the peasantry
+of the southern provinces in support of a cry which means for this class
+an improvement in their lot, and appeals to deep-rooted sentiments of
+human nature. The Irish Catholic priesthood, too, back the movement to a
+man, and so do the local Nationalist boards; for obvious reasons, both
+these orders of men seek to drive the Irish landed gentry from their
+homes, and to replace them by dependents in sympathy with them. The demand
+has also extended to Ulster, chiefly on account of the harsh distinction
+drawn between 'purchasing' and 'non-purchasing' tenants; it is economic
+rather than social or political; but the cry for compulsory purchase is
+perhaps loudest in parts of the northern province. Its principal champion,
+at present, is an enthusiast, sincere, indeed, if without judgment and
+insight; but he is sustained by bodies of farmers formidable in numbers at
+least.
+
+The sharp and, as I think, the unfair distinction drawn by the present law
+between tenant 'purchasers' and tenants still subject to the payment of
+rent, has created, it cannot be said too often, the demand for the
+compulsory purchase of the Irish land, and for this Lord Salisbury's
+Government is largely responsible. But because an Irish peasant, on one
+side of a fence, cannot obtain the benefits of land tenure, which his
+neighbour, on the other side, has obtained, and may even have a right to
+complain, it does not follow that compulsory purchase is a possible, or
+aught but a disgraceful policy; other interests and considerations must be
+taken into account. Let us first see how compulsory purchase would affect
+the financial position of the Three Kingdoms. Great as the prosperity of
+the Empire is, the strain on its resources is immense; the expenditure of
+the State at home is vast, and on the increase; the war in South Africa,
+and the settlement of that huge region, will cost unknown millions; the
+reform of our military and even of our naval system, necessary to our
+safety, will be a weighty burden for years; every Chancellor of the
+Exchequer has declared that fiscal economy, as far as possible, is his
+first duty. But what does the compulsory purchase of the Irish land
+involve, and what, confessedly, are its essential conditions? Mr.
+Gladstone, I have said, asserted, long ago, that the value of the
+agricultural area of Ireland was L300,000,000; this estimate, I believe,
+is too high; but, in the opinion of competent judges, it cannot be deemed
+less than L150,000,000. But the forcible expropriation of the Irish landed
+gentry on every principle of civilised law, as, indeed, Sir Michael Hicks
+Beach has already insisted, would imply giving them a large additional
+bonus; this probably would not be less than L50,000,000; the sum,
+therefore, required for compulsory purchase, would, it may be assumed, be
+not less than L200,000,000. Now, can any one imagine that the general
+taxpayer, in the financial situation in which we are, and shall be for
+years, will make himself liable for this colossal charge, equal to the
+ransom Germany extorted from France, in order to bribe Irish peasants into
+the ownership of their farms, and to effect an agrarian revolution, in
+which he has no interest? I should like to see the Minister who would go
+to the country on such an insane policy, and who would call on the hardly
+taxed millions of England, Scotland, and Ireland, to burn huge holes in
+their pockets for such an object, for simply robbing Peter to pay Paul,
+and that without a pretence of right, or any conceivable good. And what
+security would the Irish land afford for the payment of this enormous
+impost? The terminable annuities due from the 'purchasing' tenants would,
+it has pleasantly been said, be a sufficient guarantee; but men of common
+sense are not to be caught by chaff; the idea is a vain and worthless
+delusion. The 'No Rent Manifesto' and the 'Plan of Campaign' were
+movements of Irish peasants, so to speak, of yesterday; what if another
+Parnell were to arise and to issue a ukase that 'a foreign and alien
+Government had no right to an unjust tribute;' and how could this be
+collected by a Department of an absentee State?
+
+The general taxpayer, therefore, who, thirteen years ago, grumbled at a
+demand of L5,000,000 only, will assuredly not fling L200,000,000, or half
+that sum, into the Serbonian bog of the Irish land. It is hardly necessary
+to dwell on so small a fact, 'that compulsory purchase would reduce the
+income tax of Ireland about one-half, for nine-tenths of the tenant
+'purchasers' would be below its level;' but even this cannot be left out
+of sight. Conservative statesmen, it should be added, are especially bound
+to reject this scheme; in 1886 they denounced, in emphatic language, Mr.
+Gladstone's far less dangerous plan of making the State liable for
+L50,000,000, to buy out Irish landlords; flagrant inconsistency in
+politics should be eschewed. The probably fixed purpose of the general
+taxpayer not to mulct himself heavily to fling the Irish soil to a mass of
+peasants, is doubtless, and I say it with regret, the best security
+against the destruction of the Irish landlords; this despoiled and
+maltreated body of men just now fill the place in Irish affairs of the
+'Injured Lady' of Swift's satire, gravely told by her lover across the
+Channel that 'I had cost him ten times more than I was worth to maintain
+me, and that it had been much better for him if I had been damned, or
+burnt, or thrown to the bottom of the sea.'[145] Nevertheless, I have
+faith in right-minded Englishmen, however prejudiced or ill-informed about
+an unpopular class, if plain facts and figures are set before them; let us
+see how it would fare with the Irish landlord were he forcibly
+expropriated under compulsory purchase. I will take the case of an Irish
+country gentleman, who, in the period between 1868 and 1878, had an income
+from his estate of L1500 a year, subject to a family charge of L10,000 at
+4 per cent., that is, had a net annual income of L1100. Owing to the
+depression of agriculture since 1879, his rents would have naturally
+fallen about L300 a year; but let us suppose that, through the operation
+of the new Irish land code, they have been cut down to 'fair rents' of
+L900 a year only. His annual income, therefore, would be L900 less by
+L400, that is, he would still have L500 a year he could call his own; how
+would it be with him were he forcibly sold out? Admit that his estate
+would fetch eighteen years' purchase--the present average rate is
+seventeen--that is, would realise L16,200; deducting, say, L200 for law
+costs, this would be a net residue of L16,000. But the family charge would
+absorb L10,000; the surplus would be L6000 only, producing, let us
+calculate, L4 per cent.; this ruined man, therefore, who, little more than
+twenty years ago, possessed an income of L1100 a year, would be left L240
+at the very utmost. I have taken care to understate the case; I challenge
+attention to my figures; I ask honest Englishmen would not this be sheer
+robbery, accomplished, to the disgrace of the State, in its name?
+
+It has been urged, however--and to those who know the facts, the statement
+is cruel and shameful mockery--that the Irish landlord would only lose his
+rented lands, and that 'he could live happily on the demesne land, which
+he would still retain.' This would be simply impossible in the case of
+nineteen-twentieths of the class; they would not have the means to keep
+their demesnes up; they would be compelled to part with them at almost any
+price; and the few, who would have the means, would, all but certainly,
+with their beggared fellows, leave a country in which they had been foully
+betrayed. It is notorious, indeed, that Irish Nationalist leaders, knowing
+what compulsory purchase means, have marked down the demesnes of the Irish
+landed gentry as their prey; associates of American Fenians and of the
+Clan na Gael are to revel in the mansions of the Geraldines, the Butlers,
+the O'Connors, the O'Neills, as Jacobins revelled in the mansions of the
+La Tremouilles and the De Noailles. But man does not live by bread alone;
+the material ruin of the Irish landlord would be bad enough; but the moral
+consequences of his expropriation must not be left out of sight. Few of
+the purchasers under the Encumbered Estates Acts care probably much about
+the lands they have bought; the same remark probably applies to most Irish
+absentees. But an immense majority of the Irish landed gentry are deeply
+attached to their hearths and their homes; they are bound to their lands
+by innumerable ties; they have been brought up with the sentiments which
+property in land creates; in the pathetic words of an old chronicler,
+'They do not wish to pray in foreign churches, or to lie in foreign
+graves;' their hope has been to live and die amidst their ancestral
+surroundings. The State has, in a special manner, encouraged this belief;
+it rooted the Irish landlord in the soil to be its supporter; is it to
+expel him from the position it has made for him, without a thought of the
+shock to his best feelings this must produce? Would not such an act be
+dishonourable, nay, infamous? Let us hear what the deepest of our
+political thinkers, Burke, has written upon a somewhat parallel case:
+'When men are encouraged to go into a certain mode of life by the
+existing laws, and protected in that mode as in a lawful occupation--when
+they have accommodated all their ideas, and all their habits to it, ... I
+am sure it is unjust in legislature, by an arbitrary act, to offer a
+sudden violence to their minds and their feelings; forcibly to degrade
+them from their state and condition, and to stigmatise with shame and
+infamy that character and those customs, which before had been made the
+measure of their happiness and honour. If to this be added an expulsion
+from their habitations, and a confiscation of all their goods, I am not
+sagacious enough to discover how this despotick sport, made of the
+feelings, consciences, prejudices, and properties of men, can be
+discriminated from the rankest tyranny.'[146]
+
+I have referred to an instance, within my knowledge, of the operation of
+the new Irish land code, in the case of a middleman, his under-tenant, and
+a despoiled owner of a rent. I now refer to an instance, also within my
+knowledge, of what compulsory purchase would do in the case of an Irish
+landlord. This person is a scion of one of the princely Irish-Milesian
+houses; his forefathers were lords of a tract extending from the Boyne to
+the Shannon. They belonged to one of the famous 'five bloods of Ireland,'
+acknowledged to be half-royal by Henry of Anjou; they intermarried with
+the great Norman-Irish _noblesse_; one of their matronage was half-sister
+of Surrey's fair Geraldine; the ruins of the abbeys they founded are still
+to be seen. Their domains were torn from them in the reign of Mary Tudor;
+but they fought stubbornly with their tribe in the great Desmond war; they
+retained, though proscribed, the rank of princes, until the close of the
+sixteenth century; leaders of the house then carried their swords into
+foreign armies, and have given a field marshal to Austria and grandees to
+Spain. The direct line of the chiefs, however, remained in Ireland; it
+vegetated in obscurity until the Irish rising of 1689-90; one of its
+members then appeared in the Parliament of James II. in Dublin, and
+perished, at the head of his regiment, it is said, at Aughrim. The
+fortunes of his descendants are not without interest; one is believed to
+have been a companion-in-arms of Villars at Malplaquet and Denain; two of
+his remote offspring, the tradition exists, perished in the ranks of
+Napoleon's armies. But the heir of the family bowed under the yoke of the
+Irish penal laws, and became a Protestant, at least in name; his near
+kindred gave Ireland Anthony Malone, one of the most illustrious Irishmen
+of the eighteenth century, and gave England the best commentator on her
+most immortal poet. One of his representatives, the person of whom I
+write, still possesses a fragment of the immense possessions his fathers
+ruled; of more than thirty of their castles he has the wreck of one; a
+scroll on the roof of his house bears the touching legend that he has
+sprung from the loins of the old Milesian princes. He is not wholly
+unknown as an Irish landlord of this day; curiously, too, his rental has
+been hardly reduced by the visitations of the Land and the
+Sub-Commissions. Is this scion of the best and the most ancient _noblesse_
+of Ireland to be banished in his old age from his home, and to be replaced
+in it by ornaments of the Land, the National, and the United Irish
+Leagues, for this would be one result of compulsory purchase?
+
+Let us imagine, however, that, owing to the malign influence which,
+Spenser said, attends England in Irish affairs, the Irish landed gentry
+were removed from the land, and their former tenants were put in their
+place as owners. What would be the consequences, economic, social,
+political, of this sudden agrarian revolution in one of the Three
+Kingdoms? The distribution of the Irish soil between the classes which
+would possess it, would be unfavourable, in the highest degree, to the
+establishment of a 'peasant proprietary,' the common name in use on this
+subject. Of the 486,000 tenant farmers in Ireland, some 132,000 hold
+patches of from less than one to five acres in extent; are these to be
+stereotyped as real land owners? More than 90,000 occupy from fifty to
+five hundred acres and upwards; these include the great graziers of the
+rich tracts of pasturage; do these supply elements of a 'peasant
+proprietary' in any rational sense? The only class which even on
+plausible, _a priori_ grounds could be made occupying owners of the land
+would contain much less than 300,000 families; and probably it occupies
+less than two-thirds of the island as a whole. Are all these bodies of men
+to be lumped, so to speak, together, and universally to receive the
+ownership of the soil; would not compulsory purchase, even on these
+conditions, be the sheerest folly? Furthermore, the configuration of
+Ireland and her climate make it next to impossible that a 'peasant
+proprietary' could generally thrive within her borders; Nature herself
+forbids an attempt to carry out, on a large scale, a settlement of the
+kind. The central area of the island is a low watershed of wide extent,
+from which a succession of streams descends through vast tracts of morass
+and bog; in other parts of the country there are large and deep rivers,
+curving as they approach the sea, and flowing through mountain spaces; the
+lands they traverse are swampy, and require main drainage; a large part of
+Ireland is composed of wild hill ranges only fit for the rearing of young
+and coarse breeds of cattle; she possesses a fine area of the best
+pasturage, confined, however, to a few counties; her true agricultural
+area is comparatively small. Her climate, moreover, is wet to a proverb;
+torrents of rain from the Atlantic fall on her plains for months; above
+all, her inland towns are far from each other, and petty; scarcely one is
+peopled by more than 10,000 souls. Any well-informed and right-judging
+person who knows the conditions under which a 'peasant proprietary' can
+alone flourish, must know that, from the nature of the case, it would be
+a failure, in the circumstances in which it would be necessarily placed,
+were it forcibly established in every part of Ireland. Ireland has little
+in common with Belgium, with Northern Italy, with France; this settlement
+of confiscation would go the way of the Englishry of the Middle Ages and
+the Cromwellian colonists.
+
+The most conclusive argument against compulsory purchase has,
+nevertheless, to be yet put forward. The state of things 'voluntary
+purchase' is evolving would assuredly be aggravated a hundred-fold were
+every tenant in Ireland made the owner of his farm by a revolutionary act
+on the part of the State. It is significant, in the highest degree, that
+from the time of the 'New Departure' to this hour, the conspiracy against
+our rule in Ireland has clamoured for the expropriation of the Irish
+landed gentry by force, and for the conversion of their tenants into
+possessors of these estates; far better informed than British statesmen,
+it has rightly calculated that this violent change would increase the
+'Nationalist' sympathies of the Irish peasant; and this opinion is being
+confirmed, to a great extent, by the results of 'voluntary purchase' being
+now developed. The coarse materialist view that bribery will make a class
+law-abiding and loyal, is opposed to human nature and fact; bribery will
+not efface ideas, feelings, and tendencies, deep-rooted in history and
+ancient tradition; above all, if it is a concession to agitation and a
+rebellious movement, it will only quicken the animosity to the State and
+the greed of the favoured class. Parnell, I have said, had his mind made
+up on this subject; he always insisted that the Irish tenant, wherever his
+holding had been made his own, would be 'more true to the cause than
+ever;' it is curious that the confident prediction of a most able man
+appears to have been persistently ignored. For the rest, the mischief
+'voluntary purchase' is already doing would be enormously aggravated by
+the effects of compulsory purchase. The Irish tenant farmers, made owners
+of the land everywhere, would, like the present 'purchasers,' cut down
+woodland wholesale; the country would be disafforested over an immense
+area; the consequences to agriculture would be as bad as possible.
+Arterial and main drainage too would, as a rule, be neglected; but these
+would, comparatively, be trifling results; the compulsory purchaser would
+deal with the land as their 'voluntary' fellows are now largely dealing,
+but, in all probability, more generally, and in much a greater proportion.
+Holding as they would nine-tenths of the Irish soil at terminable
+annuities much lower than any rent, they would inevitably subdivide,
+sublet, and mortgage their farms in tens of thousands of cases; they would
+become middlemen, over whole counties, the harsh oppressors of a multitude
+ground down by rack-rents; the worst kind of 'landlordism' would be
+reproduced in the worst aspect. The tendency of events is even now
+confirming what I wrote a long time ago on this subject: 'Freehold
+ownership, therefore, would disappear more or less quickly over extensive
+tracts, the "yeomen" would become a diminishing quantity, and these would
+be replaced by a new class of landlords with tenants at competition rents,
+that is, determined by the land hunger of the Celt. The transformation
+would inevitably go on, for its causes would operate with intense force;
+and before many years probably two-thirds of Ireland would have become a
+land of mere peasant landlords placed over a mass of rack-rented
+tenants.'[147] The creation of a universal 'peasant proprietary,' by
+force, would, in fact, bring the Irish land system back by degrees into
+the state in which it was before the Great Famine, when millions of
+serfdom squatted on the soil, disorganising agriculture and preventing
+social progress.
+
+These considerations, however, by no means exhaust the case against the
+compulsory purchase of the rented land of Ireland. Irish landlords have
+been decried, for an evil purpose, during many years; their position is
+difficult and open to attack; but if they are an unpopular class, they
+have been a civilising influence in Ireland of real value, the most
+civilising influence, perhaps, in her three southern provinces. Their
+annihilation, despoiled and impoverished as they are, would still withdraw
+a large fund from Irish rural labour; and it would be most injurious to
+agriculture in many ways, especially as regards main and arterial
+drainage, an absolute necessity for the Irish soil, and scarcely possible
+except under a system of large estates. Their extinction, too, Englishmen
+ought not to forget, would deprive the State of one of its mainstays in
+Ireland; the idea to the contrary growing up is a mere delusion; it was
+not for nothing that Parnell and Davitt described this order of men as
+'the British garrison' and insisted that were it once out of the fortress
+the power of England in Ireland would certainly perish. The conversion of
+Irish farmers universally into landowners would also have a ruinous effect
+on many Irish industries. It would do infinite harm to many branches of
+commerce, especially to trades of the higher type; it would be disastrous
+to such towns as Dublin and Belfast, already beginning to protest against
+it; and, whatever may be said, the prospect of it is dreaded by
+agricultural Irish labourers as a class, which has always been ill-treated
+by their masters, the farmers, though, owing to the influence of priests
+and demagogues, they are unwilling to express the sentiments they really
+feel. Compulsory purchase, in fact, is by no means so generally asked for
+in Ireland as is supposed; her representation demands it by a great
+majority of votes; but this representation, as I have pointed out before,
+is not a true index of Irish opinion. Another consideration, too, should
+be taken into account in coming to a reasonable conclusion on this
+subject. The land system of England and Scotland, from a variety of causes
+sufficiently known, is essentially different from that of Ireland;
+politically, socially, economically, it has little in common with it. But
+were Parliament to declare that the whole tenant class of Ireland were to
+be transformed into fee simple owners, subject only to renders, much less
+than true rents, and payable for a short space of time, I much doubt if
+English and Scottish tenants would acquiesce, and would not agitate for
+legislation of a similar kind, especially as British agriculture is still
+heavily depressed. Leaseholders of large houses in towns, for long terms
+of years, at ground rents, and a whole class of builders, assuredly would
+join in such a demand; the contagion of revolution and socialism is always
+perilous. English and Scottish landlords have usually played the part of
+the Jew to the Samaritan as regards their Irish fellows; but 'proximus
+ardet Ucalegon' might be borne in mind.[148]
+
+The Irish land system, therefore, from every point of view, is simply in a
+deplorable state; it is an economic and social chaos, pregnant with
+mischiefs and dangers of many kinds. Confiscation has wrought its work on
+the Irish landlord; has shaken the structure of Irish society; and has
+produced its inevitable results in banishing capital from the land, and in
+dealing a weighty blow to Irish credit. The legislation of 1881, and of
+subsequent years, has conferred immense advantages on the tenant class in
+Ireland; but these have fallen short of what might be supposed; this class
+declares itself to be dissatisfied with its lot; it is clamouring for the
+wholesale transfer to itself of the rented lands of Ireland, through what
+is known as compulsory purchase, that is, corruption and spoliation
+combined in an act of the State. And these efforts of legislation,
+essentially unwise, in direct conflict with fact and economic science, a
+mere makeshift to stave off agitation and trouble, are, in all
+probability, by no means the worst. Demoralisation has spread throughout
+Irish landed relations, affecting them, unfortunately, in many ways;
+divisions of class have been made worse, as well as the old divisions of
+race and faith; respect for contracts and obligations has been destroyed;
+dishonesty and thriftlessness have been favoured, and industry and honesty
+not encouraged; an evil spirit of discontent and desire for change is
+abroad; agriculture is plainly on the decline; there is nothing secure or
+settled in the land. Vicious as the Irish land system unquestionably was
+before Mr. Gladstone first took it in hand, I believe that, having regard
+to the general interests of the State, it is still more vicious at the
+present time; it has been transformed, but, on the whole, transformed for
+the worse. As I wrote before, when commenting on the position of affairs
+in Ireland, before the Land Act of 1870, a revolution only could have
+removed the deep-rooted ills in all that related to the land; a revolution
+alone could remove them now. But in the one instance, as in the other, the
+evil caused by a revolution would be infinitely greater than the good; a
+new agrarian revolution in Ireland would be a curse to her; it is better,
+as Burke has remarked, to try to repair even ruins than to blot out every
+trace of the edifice. Still, taking it as we find it, can nothing be done
+to amend, in some measure, at least, the existing land system? Much of it,
+I admit, must be left untouched; the principle of settling rent, through
+the agency of the State, false as it is, must continue to work; the
+principle of so-called 'land purchase' must, within reasonable limits, be
+still given free scope. But something in the nature of reform is, I think,
+possible; the discussion of the subject may be of use; I contribute my
+mite to it, if with unfeigned diffidence.
+
+In order to find out the truth, and thoroughly to clear the ground, a
+Commission, I suggest, ought to be appointed, as important as the Devon
+Commission of nearly sixty years ago; it should investigate the Irish Land
+Question in all its branches. Its President should be a great English
+nobleman--the nation would have confidence in the Duke of Bedford, a
+princely and most liberal English landlord; but the judicial element
+should be strong in it; English and Irish judges should be among its
+members; it should include trained agricultural experts: it should have
+representatives of Irish landlords and tenants. It should examine the
+Irish land system as this existed before 1870; should review the whole
+series of Irish Land Acts, from 1870 to the present time, and inquire into
+their results and tendencies; should carefully consider the operation of
+the tribunals selected to carry out the new Irish land code, especially as
+regards the fixing of 'fair rents,' and that not with respect to their
+procedure only, an unjust limit imposed on the Fry Commission, but with
+respect to the principles that have been adopted and the methods pursued;
+it should deal exhaustively with the subject of so-called 'land purchase,'
+and see whether it has not directly led to the demand for compulsory
+purchase; it should take evidence as to 'peasant proprietary' and its
+creation; and it should make a complete and searching report, with a view
+to the legislation it might recommend. And if I am not altogether
+mistaken, such a Commission would state, in emphatic language, that the
+present Irish land code was ill designed, even if it cannot be now much
+changed; that its administration has been attended with grave errors; that
+cruel wrong has been done to Irish landlords, while Irish tenants have not
+obtained what was hoped for; that the economic and social results have
+been deplorable; that if 'land purchase' cannot be stopped, it is a bad
+expedient on its present lines, and that the cry for compulsory purchase
+has been its evident effect; and that extensive, still more universal
+peasant ownership, is an impossible and would be a pernicious policy.
+Finally, if I am not much mistaken again, such a Commission would report
+that a reform of the Irish land system, if very difficult, should be
+attempted; and that, in its main scope and operation at least, it should
+be carried out on the side of land tenure, that is, in the relations of
+landlord and tenant, as has been the opinion of every thinker from Burke
+onwards, who has not been swayed by the exigencies of agitation, or of
+party politics.
+
+I proceed briefly to put my scheme forward, assuming that I have made a
+reasonably correct forecast. I may say it has been a subject of reflection
+during many years, indeed, since the legislation of 1881; Mr. Gladstone,
+in his place in the House of Commons, pointedly approved of a tract in
+which I set forth my views; and so, curiously enough, did Parnell. It is
+impossible, I have said, to transform the existing system of Irish land
+tenure; a wide departure from it cannot be made; but improvement is really
+feasible within certain limits. My object would be to get rid of palpable
+evils, inseparable from the present state of things; to make the positions
+of both Irish landlords and tenants in some degree better than they now
+are; to place the Irish land system on a somewhat less precarious basis.
+In the first place, the law as to the exemption of tenants' improvements
+from rent, an excrescence on the Land Act of 1881, and made extravagant by
+the Land Act of 1896, should be restricted in its application to some
+extent; as it stands, it is a fruitful cause of injustice, of
+demoralisation, and of hard swearing, producing endless litigation to very
+little purpose; claims in respect of improvements ought to be more
+limited, in point of time, than they are; a check should be placed on
+obsolete and illusory claims; this would be advantageous, I think, to all
+interests involved. Again, it would be impracticable to exclude from the
+operation of the present land code lands that have been already brought
+within its scope; but a more precise definition should be made of the
+lands that are intended to be now excluded--demesnes, town parks,
+residential holdings, and large pastoral farms; the decisions of the
+Courts, in this province, are very perplexing; a good definition would
+make litigation very considerably less. These changes, I am convinced,
+would do much appreciable good; but I would go a long way farther in
+attempting to make the status of both landlord and tenant in Ireland less
+insecure and vexatious than it now is. In the first place, leaving lands
+now excluded out, I would make all agricultural and pastoral Irish tenants
+entitled to the tenure of the 'Three F's,' removing the prohibition as to
+'future tenants,' a distinction that never ought to have been made, and,
+as far as possible, securing this mode of tenure to the poorest tenants,
+by means to which I shall advert afterwards. In the next place, I would
+make an earnest effort to lessen the ruinous litigation and the
+instability caused by the statutory leases renewable at short intervals of
+time. The tenant should have 'fixity of tenure' in a real sense; the
+estate created in his favour against the landlord ought not to be one of
+fifteen years only, however indefinitely it may be extended; I would
+prefer to see it an estate for ever; but, as in the present state of
+agriculture, there would be objections to this, on account of the
+uncertainty of the rate of rent, it might be an estate for a limited term.
+But the term ought not to be less than thirty years at least, renewable,
+of course, like the shorter term of fifteen; this would quiet possession
+and get rid of lawsuits for the period of a generation of men. The tenant
+should retain his right of 'free sale;' but I would make the conditions
+less stringent than they are under the existing law.
+
+The position of the Irish tenant would thus be greatly improved; the
+sphere of the 'Three F's' would be largely extended; he would have 'fixity
+of tenure,' for a long time, at least, without the hazard and loss of
+litigation every fifteen years; his right of 'free sale' would be less
+restricted; and he would have distinct advantages, as respects 'fair
+rent,' under the part of my plan I am about to explain. I turn to the
+position of the Irish 'landlord'--I still use this expression and that of
+'tenant,' though both words are hardly applicable to existing facts; this,
+too, in my judgment, would be made much better. The estate that is now
+created against him would still be preserved; I wish it were a perpetual
+estate, but it would be one for thirty years at least; he would,
+therefore, remain assimilated to a rent-charger, as he is at present. But
+like his tenant he would be comparatively free from lawsuits; he would be
+less harassed by claims in respect of improvements; he would have, in many
+particulars, a more stable tenure. He should, of course, retain the
+'royalties' still reserved to him--mines, minerals, timber, and such
+things; and he should have the title to the statutory conditions he now
+has; but as his reversionary rights would be somewhat lessened, he should
+be compensated for these by a small money payment. With one great
+exception he should have the legal remedies to enforce the rights he now
+possesses; and that exception would be of great importance. I have always
+thought the law of ejectment for non-payment of rent harsh; it is an
+innovation on the ancient Common Law; it sometimes causes forfeitures far
+from just; it is not properly applicable to tenancies of long duration. I
+would certainly abolish this mode of procedure; I would instead of it give
+the landlord a power to sell the tenant's lands, by a procedure analogous
+to that of bankruptcy, should default be made in the payment of the rent,
+or rather the rent-charge that might be due. The advantage to both
+landlord and tenant would be great: the first would have a remedy more
+expeditious and just than he has; the second, should the land be sold and
+lost to him, would, as a rule, have a surplus over and above his debts;
+unlike what is sometimes the case in evictions, he would realise for
+himself his whole legitimate interest in the land. This single reform
+would do much to make 'fair rent' a less onerous charge than it now is.
+
+By these means the status of the Irish landlord would be made by many
+degrees more secure; the Irish tenant would acquire an interest in the
+land much more durable and stable than he has now, in fact, nearly
+equivalent to full ownership, subject to a rent-charge; and if his
+interest were made a perpetuity, as I hope would be the case at last, he
+would be assimilated to an owner subject to a perpetual rent, or to an
+English copyholder subject to a similar render. This is the position Burke
+proposed he should have, considerably more than a century ago;[149] it is
+that which has been advocated by John Stuart Mill, and, I am happy to add,
+by Mr. John Morley; it is the only position, compatible with common sense
+and justice, which the new Irish land code has left possible, for I put
+the quackery of compulsory purchase out of sight, and voluntary purchase
+is a bad half-measure. The great subject of fixing rent by the State would
+remain; for, unjustifiable as this expedient is, it is impossible, after
+what has happened, to dispense with it. Without imputing personal motives
+or moral blame to any one, the Land Commission and its Sub-Commissions
+ought, I am convinced, to cease to be the agency to fix 'fair rents;'
+however unconsciously, in my judgment, they have often proceeded on false
+principles, and have done immense, if not wilful wrong; they are decried
+by landlords and tenants alike in Ireland. Besides, there is a
+constitutional objection to their adjusting rent; the Land Commission is
+entrusted with the task of carrying out 'land purchase;' it has a direct
+inducement to whittle rents away, in order to facilitate the sale of land;
+its interest and its duty are thus placed in conflict. Be this as it may,
+my plan for fixing 'fair rents' in Ireland by the State would be
+altogether different. In the first place, a definition of 'fair rent'
+should be made by statute, and should dominate, so to speak, the subject;
+the omission of this criterion has caused grave injustice. This having
+been made, I would adjust Irish rents by a method much better, I believe,
+than that now in existence. A body of competent and well-paid valuers of
+land should be formed--there would be no difficulty about this in
+Ireland; these men should visit, when required, estates; and having heard
+what landlords and tenants had to say on the spot, should declare what
+they consider the 'fair rents' of farms, making a deduction for
+improvements as arranged by a reformed law, and taking waste and
+deterioration into account. The reports made by the valuers should be
+complete and explicit; they would probably satisfy landlords and tenants
+in most instances; but dissatisfied persons should have a right to an
+appeal, which should be a full rehearing of all the facts in issue; but
+the appeal should be at the peril of costs against unsuccessful suitors.
+The tribunals to decide the appeals should, I suggest, be composed of two
+eminent judges, for each of the four provinces, assisted by trained
+agricultural experts; but the authority of the judges should prevail on
+all questions. From these Courts a further appeal should run to the Court
+of Appeal in Ireland, on all matters of law and fact, and ultimately
+should run to the House of Lords; the present restricted appeal to the
+Land Commission has been little better than a sorry mockery of right.
+
+The scheme I propose has obvious defects; it sanctions the vicious
+principle of State-settled rents, a thing unknown in lands outside of
+Ireland, a defiance of the simplest axioms of economic science. But it
+endeavours at least to improve a bad system of tenure dealing with
+accomplished facts now beyond recall; I certainly think it would make the
+relations of Irish landlords and tenants better than they are, and would
+tend to place both classes in the positions which, as affairs now stand,
+they will probably, in the long run, occupy. As regards 'alternative
+policies,' as they have been called, I have set forth the reasons that the
+compulsory purchase of the Irish land would be, I believe, impossible,
+and, were it possible, would be a confiscation of the foullest kind,
+ruinous to Great Britain and Ireland alike. I have also shown how the
+present system of so-styled 'voluntary purchase' is, in my judgment,
+essentially immoral, and pregnant with dangers; and I have indicated the
+results being already produced. That system, however, must go on; for the
+present it cannot be arrested; a Conservative Government still pins its
+faith on it, as a Whig Government, half a century ago, pinned its faith on
+the Encumbered Estates Act; but a 'peasant proprietary' rooted in
+corruption will hardly succeed, and 'voluntary purchase' draws the worst
+kind of distinctions in Irish land tenure. The acceleration, indeed, of
+this 'remedy' has been deemed advisable; and as long as the sum voted by
+Parliament is not expended, the system evidently must continue in force.
+Some of its evils, however, would be lessened were the State to reserve to
+itself the woodland, which tenant 'purchasers,' as a rule, cut down and
+sell; and if tenants proved to be solvent were compelled to advance part
+of the money required to transfer their lands to themselves. It is
+revolting to my mind to see a wealthy Irish farmer bribed into the
+ownership of his farm by an Act of the State, without having paid a
+shilling of the price. I commend this spectacle to the hard-pressed
+general taxpayer.
+
+I need hardly say that, under the scheme I propose, existing interests of
+tenants should remain intact, and statutory leases should be allowed to
+come to an end, before a change should be made by law in the position they
+hold. The question of compensating the Irish landlords would remain; a
+very few words on this will suffice. I must remind the reader, as I have
+already shown, that the Land Act of 1881 was passed on the condition that,
+should experience prove that real injury had been done to this order of
+men, their right to indemnity would be plain; Mr. Gladstone's language was
+unequivocal; the House of Commons approved. Nor can any reasonable doubt
+exist that the course of legislation from 1881 to 1896 has confiscated the
+property of the class to an immense extent; the simple fact that the
+value in Ireland of the fee simple in land has been reduced by a third at
+least, and that the value of the tenant right has been increased in about
+the same proportion, points to a conclusion evident to impartial minds. I
+am satisfied as to what would be the report on this subject of the
+Commission I should wish to see appointed; it could not avoid drawing an
+inference that cannot be resisted. The question, therefore, will have to
+be faced; the good faith of Parliament is virtually at stake; and if a
+pledge made in the name of the State is not to be broken, the right of the
+Irish landlords to compensation is complete. Independently, too, of
+considerations of this kind, it is a recognised principle that should a
+policy have caused loss to a class, the State is morally bound to make the
+loss up; a violation of this principle is unjust and dangerous alike. I
+quote from John Stuart Mill on this very question: 'The principle of
+property gives the landowners no right to the land, but only a right to
+compensation for whatever portion of their interest in the land it may be
+the policy of the State to deprive them of. To that their claim is
+indefeasible. It is due to landowners and to owners of any property
+whatever, recognised as such by the State, that they should not be
+dispossessed of it without receiving its pecuniary value, or an annual
+income equal to what they have derived from it. If the land was bought
+with the produce of the labour of themselves or their ancestors,
+compensation is due to them on that ground; even if otherwise, it is still
+due on the ground of prescription. Nor can it ever be necessary for
+accomplishing an object by which the community altogether will gain, that
+a particular portion of the community should be immolated. When the
+property is of a kind to which peculiar affections attach themselves, the
+compensation ought to exceed a bare pecuniary equivalent.... The
+legislature, which, if it pleased, might convert the whole body of
+landlords into fundholders or pensioners, might, _a fortiori_, commute
+the average receipts of Irish landowners into a fixed rent-charge, and
+raise the tenants into proprietors; supposing always that the full market
+value of the land was tendered to the landlords, in case they preferred
+that to accepting the conditions proposed.'[150]
+
+Assuming, then, the case for compensating the Irish landlords to have been
+made out, compensation can be afforded without the loss of a shilling to
+the State. The _bona fide_ encumbrances on their estates, that is, those
+which represent advances in cash, are now at an interest of from 4 to 5
+per cent.; the State could pay off those which were perfectly secure at an
+interest of 2-1/4 per cent., and could make the landlords chargeable with
+interest at 3 per cent., in order to provide against possible loss. As for
+encumbrances that were not perfectly secure, the State should only pay off
+what was well charged; but it should do this on the same conditions; and
+it should declare hopeless encumbrances extinct. This would be a
+considerable and just boon to the Irish landlords; the securities taken
+by the State should be in the form of debentures, which would pass from
+hand to hand in the market; and many owners of encumbrances would no doubt
+accept sums less than their full demands, for these, they well know, are
+at present in danger. I would go, however, farther in relieving the Irish
+landlords; their estates are subject to a mass of family charges created
+under a different order of things; if the State has arbitrarily cut down
+the fund set apart for these, by a wholesale reduction of rents, I cannot
+understand how it is not the simplest justice to cut the charges down in
+some fair proportion. At all events, I make these suggestions for what
+they may be worth; if right is to be done to the Irish landed gentry, and
+a gross breach of public faith is not to be made, some relief of this kind
+should be extended to them. Very possibly this will not be afforded; but I
+venture to remind politicians that even an unpopular class cannot be
+cruelly wronged and sacrificed, without doing injury to all classes, and
+shaking to their foundations the clear rights of property. And I openly
+avow that, in my judgment, it would be in the highest degree against the
+national interest to annihilate this body of men, as must probably happen,
+should things in Ireland be left as they are. What if they are the heirs
+of conquest and confiscation in the past? Is that a reason for destroying
+them after the lapse of centuries, and when England planted them in the
+land to be her mainstay? What if, in instances, comparatively few in the
+extreme, they have abused the social trust imposed on them? Was not this
+because the opportunity was given by law, and was not the law the work of
+successive Parliaments? Is it not a fact that British ministers, so to
+speak, of yesterday, declared that they were secure in their proprietary
+rights; and that Mr. Gladstone solemnly acquitted them of what had been
+laid to their charge? On the other hand, have they not been for ages the
+staunchest friends of England in Irish affairs, especially in troubled
+and perilous times? Is it for nothing that they have been called the
+British garrison by her foes, the strongest obstacle to rebellion and
+treason? And is a class, which has, on the whole, been a civilising
+influence, for many years, in Ireland, and which has given the State far
+more than a due proportion of worthies--warriors, orators, statesmen,
+thinkers, men of eminence in all the arts of life--to be sacrificed at the
+bidding of a conspiracy bent on subverting British rule in Ireland, or in
+deference to false and perilous theories?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE QUESTION OF THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
+
+    The subject briefly considered--Financial position of Ireland before
+    1782, and under Grattan's Parliament--Her taxation and debt small
+    before 1798--Ireland financially a distinct country--At the Union,
+    Pitt wished to 'assimilate her in finance' with Great Britain, but
+    this impossible, and why--Ireland's contribution after the Union--This
+    was unjust, but it left her financially a distinct country--Ireland
+    made nearly bankrupt--The compromise of 1816--The Irish Exchequer
+    closed, and the Irish and British debts consolidated--The object of
+    the compromise was rather to relieve Ireland from her burdens than to
+    assimilate her in finance with Great Britain--She still remained for
+    many years financially distinct from Great Britain, and is so still to
+    some extent--The conduct of Peel a striking proof of this--Mr.
+    Gladstone imposes the income tax on Ireland, and her spirit duties are
+    largely raised--Injustice of this policy--The Committee of
+    1863-64--Ireland does not obtain financial justice--The Report of the
+    Childers Commission made upon a reference by Mr. Gladstone following
+    Mr. Goschen--The Commission declares that Ireland has been greatly
+    overtaxed for many years--Evidence on which it has founded this
+    conclusion--Examination of arguments to the contrary--Another
+    Commission promised, but the promise not fulfilled--Importance of
+    settling this question.
+
+
+The financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland have been a
+subject, at intervals of time, no doubt, of strong controversy during a
+whole century. I shall not harp on the saying of Johnson to an Irish
+friend, 'Avoid a Union with England, she will only rob you;' but, in the
+opinion of well-informed Irishmen, the fiscal treatment of Ireland, since
+1800-01, strikingly illustrates the significant remark of Burke, 'When any
+community is subordinately connected with another, the great danger of the
+connection is, the extreme pride and self-complacency of the superior,
+which, in all matters of controversy, will probably decide in its own
+favour.' There is no reason to impeach the good faith of Pitt and
+Castlereagh; but the financial arrangements they made for Ireland, when
+the Union became law, were denounced by the most distinguished Irishmen of
+the day; these imposed on Ireland an overwhelming burden, and, in fact,
+reduced her to the very edge of bankruptcy. A compromise was effected in
+1816-17; this has been described as a generous boon to Ireland; but it was
+at best a slight relief from injustice; and it weakened securities she had
+against fiscal exaction, while it involved her in liabilities which, if
+remote, were not the less possible. It is a most significant fact that
+Peel, who, as Chief Secretary from 1812 to 1818, was familiar with the
+economic state of Ireland, refused, though under the strongest
+inducements, to apply to Ireland the fiscal charges extended to her by one
+of his brilliant successors; the most sagacious financier of the
+nineteenth century played, in this matter, a very different part from the
+most impulsive and not the least unscrupulous. In 1853, and from thence in
+other years, Mr. Gladstone, in order to carry out a policy distinctly
+opposed to many Irish interests, subjected Ireland to a sudden and heavy
+load of taxation, exactly at the time when, for the plainest reasons, she
+ought to have been exempted from it; from that day to this, Irishmen, who
+understand the question, are agreed that this was gross, nay, cruel,
+injustice. The whole subject of British and Irish financial relations was
+sent by Mr. Gladstone to a Commission in 1893, here following the example
+of Mr. Goschen; a careful inquiry was held during many months; the Report
+of the Commission was startling and important in the extreme. This
+tribunal, mainly composed of eminent English experts, announced, and that
+almost with one voice, that Ireland was being enormously overtaxed, and
+had been for upwards of forty years; and it plainly intimated that a
+remedy for this wrong should be found. No real answer has been made to
+this remarkable judgment; the attempts at answers that have been made are
+nearly all mere trifling; Lord Salisbury's Government evidently believes
+that an answer is not possible; it promised to appoint another Commission
+to investigate certain parts of the subject; years have passed, and it has
+not performed its promise. Meanwhile, even amidst the hurly-burly of Irish
+politics, Irishmen of all parties have united in a demand for redress; and
+if the demand is not pressed with extreme vehemence, it is sustained by
+all that is best in Irish opinion. It is obviously unwise, and it may
+become dangerous, to continue to ignore such a claim; in any event the
+financial relations of the Three Kingdoms are not the least important of
+'Present Irish Questions;' I shall briefly examine it in this chapter.
+
+It is unnecessary to dwell on the financial relations of Great Britain and
+Ireland before 1782 and the Union. England held the position of an
+absolutely dominant State before 1782, Ireland that of a conquered and
+despised colony; Ireland was under the control of the British Parliament,
+and was governed by English officials supreme at the Castle. Ireland was
+excluded from the foreign and colonial trade of Great Britain; her
+agriculture and manufactures were half destroyed by the selfish jealousy
+and greed of her imperious neighbour. She contributed, on the other hand,
+nothing to the treasury of the ruling power; she had little or no part in
+British wars, or in building up the edifice of the Empire, except through
+her soldiers in the British army; she was free from British debt and from
+British taxation. In these circumstances, grievous as was the incubus of
+Protestant ascendency upon the land, it is remarkable what material
+progress she made; her Parliament, though little more than a local vestry,
+unquestionably promoted her material welfare; she was very lightly taxed,
+and was free from debt for many years. She was still so completely
+distinct from Great Britain, that it was not until 1769 that her
+Parliament agreed that 15,000 men, of whom 12,000 were to remain in
+Ireland, should be enrolled for the defence of the State; before that
+time, she was only obliged to maintain a small British force within her
+borders. After a partial relaxation of the restraints on her commerce
+caused by the stress of the American War, and by the famous volunteer
+movement, Ireland obtained legislative independence in 1782; she ceased to
+be subject to the British Parliament, and to fill the position of a
+degraded colony; she became, in theory at least, an independent State in
+many respects. Her Parliament was all but sovereign in name; Ireland was
+now united to Great Britain only by the link of the Crown; by an executive
+always despatched from Downing Street; and, it must be added, by the
+corruption of her Houses of Lords and Commons. She was thus more than ever
+a distinct country; in fact, most British statesmen had soon perceived
+that the celebrated settlement of 1782 greatly weakened her old connection
+with England. She advanced, however, markedly in prosperity for many
+years, until the French Revolution arrested this; her debt was little more
+than L2,000,000 for a long time, her taxation only about L1,000,000. But
+by the close of the eighteenth century these figures had been disastrously
+changed; her debt had risen to upwards of L28,000,000, her taxation to
+about L2,500,000. This great increase had been partly caused by the costly
+expenditure of her transformed Parliament, which had spent considerable
+sums on public works, and on economic experiments of different kinds; but
+five-sixths of it was probably caused by the enormous charge incurred by
+the Rebellion of 1798--one of the most woeful tragedies of Irish
+history--and by the suppression of that ill-starred movement.[151]
+
+The Rebellion led at once to the Union; it precipitated what had perhaps
+become a necessity of State. The great measure of Pitt was badly designed,
+and was, moreover, tainted by a grave breach of faith; it was only what
+was called a 'Protestant Union,' that is, it rested upon false and narrow
+foundations; it deceived Catholic Ireland, and did her gross wrong; above
+all, it did not effect its main object, and incorporate the lesser with
+the more powerful country. It left Ireland, hitherto completely distinct,
+still, to a very considerable extent, a distinct State; she retained a
+separate Government and Administration, separate Courts of Justice, a
+separate Exchequer for many years; this shadow of separation, as Foster,
+one of her ablest worthies, foretold, would give a demand for separation
+substance.[152] The financial arrangements between Great Britain and
+Ireland were practically altogether the work of Pitt. A disciple of Adam
+Smith, the minister's wish was to 'assimilate the two countries in
+finance;' to place both under the same fiscal system, to make taxation in
+both uniform. But in 1800, the National Debt of Great Britain was more
+than L446,000,000, and her taxation was about L3 a head; the National
+Debt of Ireland, we have seen, was some L28,000,000, and her taxation by
+the head not more than 10_s._; this immense inequality made 'assimilation
+in finance' impossible. Besides, Pitt, as a matter of course, knew that
+Great Britain was a very rich country, and Ireland perhaps the poorest in
+Europe; he was too great a financier to accept the false and shallow
+theory that, as between two communities wholly unequal in wealth, equal
+taxes were really equal burdens, and could be just; he had emphatically
+remarked in 1785, when his celebrated 'Commercial Propositions' were
+opposed by the selfish monopolies of British commerce, 'If one country
+exceeded another in wealth, population, and established commerce in a
+proportion of two to one, he was nearly convinced that that country would
+be able to bear near ten times the burden that the other would be equal
+to.'[153] It had become necessary, therefore, at the time of the Union, to
+place the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland on a basis
+that had nothing in common with uniformity of taxation, and a common
+fiscal system; 'assimilation in finance' was for the present to be
+indefinitely postponed.
+
+The financial settlement made at the Union distinctly embodied these
+principles, and was carried by Castlereagh through the Irish Parliament,
+by what methods history records with shame. Like Pitt, the Chief Secretary
+looked forward to a time when Great Britain and Ireland might be under the
+same fiscal system; but at this juncture, this consummation was, he
+acknowledged, hopeless. Ireland was, financially, to remain a separate
+country; she was to have a separate exchequer and separate taxes; her
+National Debt was to be kept distinct from that of Great Britain. She was
+to furnish only a contribution to the State; and Castlereagh declared,
+over and over again, that this contribution was to be only in proportion
+to her means, and that in no event was she to be unduly taxed. 'The great
+point to be ascertained is the best criterion that can be found of the
+relative means of the two countries, in order to fix the relative
+proportions of their contributions.... As to the future, it is expected
+that the two countries will move forward together, and unite with regard
+to their expenses in the measure of their relative abilities.' By a
+comparison made between British and Irish imports and exports, and between
+the values of certain commodities, Castlereagh came to the conclusion that
+the contributions which Great Britain and Ireland ought to be expected to
+make for the general support and administration of the State, should be,
+respectively, fifteen- and two-seventeenths, that is, Great Britain was to
+pay about 88 per cent., and Ireland about 12 per cent. of the sum total.
+This proportion was to be made liable to revision at the end of twenty
+years; for this provision, Castlereagh remarked, gave 'Ireland the utmost
+possible security that she cannot be taxed beyond the measure of her
+comparative ability, and that the ratio of her contributions must ever
+correspond with her relative wealth and prosperity;' and then followed
+arrangements which undoubtedly had the 'assimilation of Great Britain and
+Ireland in finance' remotely in view; but subject to limitations that
+would preserve for Ireland her fiscal rights, and would secure her from
+taxation beyond her means, and unjust. It was proposed that if, at some
+future time, the debts of both countries should be discharged, or if their
+debts and their contributions were in the same proportion, Great Britain
+and Ireland might be 'assimilated in finance,' and placed under the same
+fiscal system; but this was to be on two express conditions, that the
+circumstances of the two countries should admit of this change, and that,
+in any case, should the change be made, Ireland--as was the case of
+Scotland when her Union took place-should have the benefit of such
+'exemptions and abatements' of taxation as might be deemed proper, and
+the circumstances of the situation might allow. The meaning of the
+technical words, 'exemptions and abatements,' interpreted of late years in
+a pettifogging sense, was fully recognised at the time, and for a long
+subsequent period, indeed, has been recognised to this day by most of our
+leading statesmen, namely, that Ireland was not to be taxed unfairly or
+beyond her resources, as Castlereagh had repeatedly promised.[154]
+
+The Opposition in the Irish Parliament had many able lawyers--the names of
+Saurin, of Plunket, of Bushe are still known to fame; it is to be
+regretted, perhaps, that these powerful minds did not examine with more
+jealousy the conditions under which Great Britain and Ireland might be
+'assimilated in finance,' distant as the contingency appeared to be; did
+not criticise more sharply words that might be wrested from their accepted
+sense; and trusted too much to Castlereagh's phrases. But the attention of
+the Opposition was rather directed to the Union in its political than in
+its financial aspect; it rather denounced the attempt to destroy the
+settlement of 1782 than scrutinised the terms of the fiscal system to be
+imposed on Ireland, at least, as these were concerned with the future. The
+arrangements, nevertheless, by which Ireland was to make the contribution
+of the two-seventeenths were fiercely assailed in both the Houses in
+College Green; Foster described the calculations of Pitt and Castlereagh
+as utterly false, and declared that the charge to be borne by Ireland was
+much too large; Grattan echoed this opinion in characteristic language:
+'Though I do not think the means of this country are unequal to any
+necessary expense, yet I do think they are inadequate to that contributory
+expense which the Union stipulates.... The attempt will exhaust the
+country, at the same time that it enslaves her. Colour it as you please,
+Ireland will pay more than she is able. Considering these the terms of the
+Union so far as they relate to revenue, they amount to a continuation of
+the double establishment, an increase of the separate establishment, and a
+military government, with a prospect of soon succeeding to the full taxes
+of England.'[155] The Opposition, too, in the Irish House of Commons
+loudly protested: 'Your Majesty's faithful Commons are satisfied that this
+calculation is extremely erroneous; and that on a just and fair inquiry
+into the comparative means of each country, the Kingdom ought not, and is
+not able to contribute anything like that proportion.'[156] And twenty
+Irish peers placed this emphatic protest on record; I have space for a few
+sentences only: 'Under such circumstances, it appears to us that if this
+Kingdom should take upon herself irrevocably the payment of
+two-seventeenths of these expenses, she will not have means to perform her
+engagements unless by charging her landed property with 12_s._ or 13_s._
+in the pound; it must end in the draining from her her last guinea, in
+totally annihilating her trade for want of capital, in rendering the taxes
+unproductive, and consequently in finally putting her in a state of
+bankruptcy. We think ourselves called upon to protest against a measure so
+ruinous to our country, and to place the responsibility of its
+consequences upon such persons as have brought it forward and supported
+it.'[157]
+
+The Treaty of Union left Ireland, financially, still a separate country,
+paying a fixed contribution for the uses of the State. The great war with
+France soon broke out again; England was involved with Napoleon in a
+life-and-death struggle; her fiscal resources were strained to the utmost;
+her expenditure became prodigious for a series of years. In these
+circumstances, the debt of Ireland rose from L28,000,000 to upwards of
+L112,000,000; and her taxation from about L2,500,000 to about L4,500,000;
+while the debt of Great Britain advanced from some L446,000,000 to some
+L737,000,000, and her taxation from some L24,000,000 to L54,000,000; the
+taxation of Ireland being by the head about L1 in 1816, that of Great
+Britain being about L5, the figures sixteen years before being 10_s._ and
+L3. The immense increase in the debt of Ireland, much greater in
+proportion than that of Great Britain, was certainly due to a large extent
+to the fact--and this was frankly admitted by Grattan--that the poorer
+country could not keep pace with the richer in the gigantic charges of the
+war; the case, it has justly been remarked, may be compared to a case of
+this kind: 'If one man, A, who has been living at the rate of L100 per
+annum, arranges to keep house with another man, B, who has for some time
+been living at the rate of L700 per annum, and to spend L1 for every L7
+which B spends, then so long as B continues to live at the same rate as
+before, the expenses of A will not be increased. But if B begins to live
+at the rate of L2100 a year, A will have to spend L300 a year, and if his
+means are not sufficient for this, he must become bankrupt.'[158]
+Allowing, nevertheless, for all this, it is not the less certain that the
+calculations of Pitt and Castlereagh were utterly falsified by the event,
+and that the warnings of Foster, Grattan, and other well-informed
+Irishmen, besides the protests made in the Irish Parliament, were verified
+to the fullest extent; as has been remarked by a distinguished English
+expert, 'The calculations of Mr. Pitt and Lord Castlereagh, the ministers
+who promoted the Union, and who declared that Ireland would be able to
+pay, and ought to pay, two-seventeenths of the joint expenses of the
+United Kingdom, turned out to be mistaken, and the opinions of Mr.
+Grattan, Mr. Foster, and other Irish members, who denied that she would be
+able to contribute so large a proportion, are proved by the event to have
+been well founded.'[159]
+
+This contrast, it is hardly necessary to say, to persons acquainted with
+Irish history, is only one of the innumerable proofs of the ignorance of
+Ireland too common to British statesmen, and of their too common disregard
+of the best Irish opinion. In 1815-16, at the close of the war, Ireland
+was financially in a bankrupt condition; she could not pay the interest on
+her debt; she could not bear the weight of further taxation; she was
+exhausted and sucked dry by fiscal injustice. Her social state, too, had
+become very alarming; her population had rapidly increased, and, mainly
+depending on the frail potato, was already becoming an incubus on the
+land; the collapse of the high war prices had caused a sudden fall in
+rents and the wages of labour; there was general distress in several
+counties, and Whiteboy and agrarian disorder widely prevailed. The
+financial position of Ireland was necessarily taken up by Parliament; a
+Committee of the House of Commons was selected to report upon it. By this
+time one of the contingencies had taken place for the possible
+'assimilation in finance' with Great Britain of the much weaker country;
+the contribution of Ireland, compared with her debt, was even in less
+proportion than the contribution of Great Britain to her own; she had been
+left far behind in the effort to pay her way. In this position of affairs
+the Committee made its report, after a long and careful examination of the
+case; the House of Commons passed these resolutions in May, 1816: 'That it
+is the opinion of this Committee that the values of the respective debts
+of Great Britain and Ireland, estimated according to the provisions of the
+Acts of Union, have been, at a period subsequent to these Acts, in the
+same proportion to each other (within one-hundredth part of the said
+value), with the respective contributions of each country respectively,
+towards the annual expenditure of the United Kingdom; and that the
+respective circumstances of the two countries will henceforth admit of
+their contributing indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed upon the same
+articles upon each, to the future expenditure of the United Kingdom;
+subject only to such particular exemptions and abatements in Ireland and
+in Scotland as circumstances may appear from time to time to demand; and
+that it is no longer necessary to regulate the contribution of the two
+countries according to any specific proportion, or according to the rules
+prescribed by the Acts of Union, with respect to such proportions. That it
+is the opinion of this Committee, that it is expedient that all expenses
+henceforth to be incurred, together with the interest and charges of all
+debts hitherto contracted, shall be so defrayed indiscriminately by equal
+taxes to be imposed on the same articles in each country; and that from
+time to time, as circumstances may require, such taxes should be imposed
+and applied accordingly, subject only to such exemptions and abatements in
+Ireland and Scotland as circumstances may appear to demand. That it is
+the opinion of this Committee that such legislative measures should be
+adopted as may be necessary to carry into further effect the purposes of
+the said Acts of Union, by consolidating the public revenues of Great
+Britain and Ireland into one fund, and applying the same to the general
+services of the United Kingdom.'[160]
+
+These resolutions were partly embodied in an Act which received the Royal
+assent in June, 1816. By this law the separate exchequer of Ireland was
+shut up; there was to be but one exchequer for the Three Kingdoms; all the
+revenues of Great Britain and Ireland were thrown into a general fund to
+be applied to the requirements of the State; the separate debt of Ireland
+was fused into that of Great Britain, the two making a common National
+Debt. By these means Ireland was relieved from an intolerable load of
+debt; but those who contend that an immense boon was thus conferred on
+her, only illustrate the aphorism of Burke referred to before; the matter
+was decided by the opinion of the dominant power. Ireland, no doubt, was
+set free from an overwhelming burden; but the burden was one improperly
+cast on her by the Union; the relief was only a small redress of
+injustice.[161] On the other hand, the arrangements of 1816 abolished the
+contribution of the two-seventeenths, and made Ireland less a separate
+country, financially, than she had been before; the resolutions of the
+House of Commons did not all become law, but they at least declared that
+she might become 'assimilated in finance' to Great Britain at a convenient
+time, and thus diminished her security against undue taxation; and the
+amalgamation of her debt with that of Great Britain made her subject, at
+least conceivably, to a gigantic charge, for which she was not in any way
+liable. The compromise, however, effected at this time, rather
+contemplated the relief of Ireland from existing debt than her ultimate
+'assimilation in finance to Great Britain,' and the extension to both
+countries of the same fiscal system. For many years after 1816 Ireland
+remained, financially, completely distinct from Great Britain, and under a
+scheme of taxation altogether different. Nor is the reason difficult to
+seek; she was declared entitled, by the resolutions before mentioned, to
+the 'exemptions and abatements' secured to her by the Treaty of Union; and
+the Parliament of that day respected the treaty, interpreting these terms
+in their true sense, that Ireland was not to be taxed beyond her means.
+Her fiscal wrongs, besides, from 1800 to 1816, were still fresh in the
+minds of statesmen; these did not wish to repeat injustice; above all, she
+had many representatives of real weight at Westminster--Grattan was a
+tower of strength in himself, and he had very able followers; these men
+would certainly have fiercely resented attempts to impair the financial
+rights of their country.
+
+The fiscal systems of Great Britain and Ireland, still altogether
+distinct, continued nearly on this footing for a series of years. Great
+Britain was gradually relieved from taxation peculiar to herself,
+amounting to very considerable sums; Ireland was not relieved in the same
+proportion; but this was hardly a real grievance; the taxation of Great
+Britain during the war had been enormously higher than that of Ireland. In
+1819-20 the charge on Great Britain, which had been about L5 per head, had
+been reduced to L3 13_s._; that on Ireland, which had been about L1 a
+head, had been reduced to 15_s._ 5_d._ There seems to have been little to
+complain of in these figures. Some steps, however, but tentative only,
+were made by degrees in 'assimilating the two countries in finance,'
+according to the resolutions of 1816; the duties on tea were made equal
+for the Three Kingdoms, and the duties on tobacco, as early as 1819; but
+it deserves special notice that this policy was angrily opposed by many
+Irishmen in the House of Commons, the most conspicuous of these being Sir
+John Newport, a real master of Irish finance, who had been Chancellor of
+the Irish Exchequer in 1806-07. Still, notwithstanding innovations like
+these, the fiscal systems of Great Britain and Ireland remained
+substantially distinct for a long period; this was notably made manifest
+as late as 1842. At this time the population of England was in an alarming
+state; the Chartist agitation was in full swing; British commerce was half
+strangled by heavy duties on foreign imports; the corn laws crippled and
+burdened industry. Peel was at the head of his great Ministry; he began to
+carry into effect the policy of free trade, inaugurated by Pitt, but
+unhappily delayed; in order to accomplish this he had to diminish or get
+rid of the charges on foreign imports, and generally to substitute direct
+for indirect taxation. He was under a strong temptation to 'assimilate
+Great Britain and Ireland in finance;' but he had been a friend and
+colleague of Castlereagh; he understood the true import of the Treaty of
+Union; above all, he knew Ireland well for an Englishman; he had
+practically been her ruler for nearly six years. In these circumstances he
+imposed the income tax on Great Britain as an equivalent for many indirect
+taxes; but he pointedly abstained from extending the tax to Ireland; he
+felt that this would be an act of financial wrong; and though he increased
+for a short time the duty on Irish spirits, he took off the increase
+within a few months. The only 'assimilation in finance' he effected was to
+make the stamp duties in Great Britain and Ireland equal, and this was
+rather a legal than an economic reform.
+
+The life of the great minister was prematurely cut short; time brought
+with it its changes on its wings. The statesman who had living traditions
+of the Union and its finance had passed away; O'Connell had disappeared
+from the scene; the representation of Ireland had fallen into a
+deplorable state. Meanwhile the free trade policy of Peel had achieved
+great results in England and Scotland; free trade had given an immense
+impulse to our manufactures and our foreign commerce; the repeal of the
+corn laws had wonderfully quickened industry, and had been a magnificent
+boon to the mass of the people; the prosperity of Great Britain was
+advancing by leaps and bounds. The development of free trade was the
+object of nearly all our statesmen; to accomplish this it was essential
+still further to lessen or to abolish the duties on foreign imports, and
+to let in the raw materials of manufactures free; indirect taxation was
+still further to give place to direct. In 1853, and during part of the
+subsequent period, our finances were in the hands of a minister whose
+impulsive nature was upheld by a most imperious will, and who, whatever
+was his policy, seldom stuck at trifles. Apparently without mature
+reflection, and, it is to be hoped, with little knowledge of the facts of
+the case, Mr. Gladstone, setting the example of Peel at nought, suddenly
+subjected Ireland to the income tax, and began to raise the duties on
+Irish spirits; by 1860 these duties had been more than trebled; and the
+taxation of Ireland had been increased by upwards of two millions
+sterling. And what were the circumstances, during a large part of this
+period, of the country on which this enormous burden had been laid?
+Ireland, no doubt, had begun to revive from the effects of the catastrophe
+of 1845-47; but, compared with Great Britain, she was miserably poor; and
+the Great Famine had shaken her social structure to its base. Two millions
+of her population had fled from their homes into exile; a large part of
+the upper and of the middle classes had been involved in ruin; whole
+tracts of her lands were derelict wastes; her local taxation was
+exceedingly high. The imposition of this load of taxation on a country in
+such a condition, unjustifiable in the abstract, and from every point of
+view, was, in the existing position of affairs, an act of cruel wrong; no
+wonder even one of Mr. Gladstone's colleagues has remarked, measured as is
+his language, 'We think that if the House of Commons, in the period 1853
+to 1860, when the great enhancement of taxation took place, had fully
+considered the circumstances of Ireland, they would not have felt
+themselves justified in increasing the taxation of that country by means
+of the income tax and the equalisation of the spirit duties.'[162] At this
+time, in a word, the future Solon of Home Rule proved himself to be the
+merciless Draco of Irish finance.
+
+This great increase of taxation, to a considerable extent, 'assimilated
+Ireland to Great Britain in finance;' placed the two countries under
+nearly the same fiscal system; made the taxes of each not far from equal.
+This assimilation, however, was still by no means complete--indeed, is not
+complete to the present day; Ireland has still fiscal privileges under the
+Treaty of Union; and this should be carefully borne in mind. Mr.
+Gladstone, moreover, when he made this increase, acknowledged that Ireland
+remained a distinct country, entitled to immunities of her own; when he
+made her liable to the income tax, he cancelled a debt of L4,000,000 which
+he professed she owed; and if this was an illusory pretence, for her
+liability for this reason was more than doubtful, and the income tax she
+has since paid has exceeded L23,000,000, still he distinctly admitted the
+principle--indeed, it has always been admitted by statesmen worthy of the
+name. The enormous new burdens imposed on Ireland, from 1853 to 1860,
+provoked widespread and profound discontent; a Parliamentary inquiry was
+conceded; a Committee of the House of Commons went into the subject in
+1863-64. But the representation of Ireland, I have said, was feeble; her
+complaints were stifled by the arts of the treasury; the arguments of her
+members were overborne by specious but utterly false sophistry; the
+inquiry came to nothing as regards her interests. The question remained in
+abeyance for years; the Irish reforms of Mr. Gladstone, from 1869 to 1873,
+the troubles caused by the Land and the National Leagues, and the Home
+Rule agitation that followed, turned public attention away from the
+subject; but it was not forgotten by well-informed Irishmen; two real
+economists, Butt and Judge Longfield, insisted that Ireland had here a
+grievance; and this was the opinion of several independent gentlemen,
+survivors of the illustrious school of Grattan. At last Mr. Goschen,
+perhaps moved by remonstrances from Ireland being urged again, appointed a
+Committee of the House of Commons to examine into, and to report upon,
+'the equity of the financial relations in regard to the resources and the
+population of the Three Kingdoms;' Mr. Gladstone, in 1893, recurred to the
+subject, which, rather unaccountably, had been let drop. He directed a
+Commission of great authority, composed for the most part of expert
+Englishmen, and presided over by the late Mr. Childers, a Chancellor of
+the Exchequer of Mr. Gladstone, to inquire thoroughly into the whole
+question of the financial relations of Great Britain and Ireland, and
+fully to set forth the conclusions they should form. The scope of the
+investigation was to include the history of the subject since the Union; a
+consideration of the financial resources of Great Britain and Ireland
+regarded as distinct countries, and the principles to be kept in mind in
+forming a correct judgment; and, finally, the charge of Ireland with
+respect to the State, and the contribution which Ireland should make to
+it.[163]
+
+This inquiry, set on foot by a British statesman who had made himself
+notorious for 'assimilating Great Britain and Ireland in finance,'
+proceeded, nevertheless, upon an admission that, financially, the two
+countries were still distinct, and that the resources of each--their
+'taxable capacity,' in other words, a phrase turned into absurd
+ridicule--afforded the true and the only test, as to the equity of Irish
+compared to British taxation. The Commissioners were engaged in their
+arduous task for months; they explained, with a fulness and clearness
+never before so complete, the history of the financial relations between
+Great Britain and Ireland. They brought distinctly out the fiscal position
+of the two countries before the Union; they set forth at length the
+financial arrangements made in 1800-01; they described the compromise
+effected in 1816; they dwelt on the fiscal policy of Peel to Ireland, and
+placed it in significant contrast with that of Mr. Gladstone; and they
+conclusively proved that, from the Union to the present time, Great
+Britain and Ireland had been treated financially as separate countries,
+despite the 'assimilation' of 1853-60, and that the right of Ireland,
+under the Treaty of Union, to the 'exemptions and abatements' secured to
+her, these being interpreted as the case requires, still give her
+immunities from taxation especially her own, which must be recognised if
+she is to obtain justice. Turning, then, to the resources of Great Britain
+and Ireland, regarded as apart, as being the true criterion of the
+taxation which Ireland ought to bear, the Commissioners reviewed a great
+mass of evidence, which, as far as was perhaps possible, made the truth
+manifest, and arrived at conclusions which appear to be decisive.
+Comparing the death duties of Ireland and of Great Britain, the proportion
+is about 1 to 18; comparing the income tax, it is about 1 to 22; taking a
+great variety of other tests, receipts of railways, savings banks
+deposits, money and postal orders, and letters and telegrams, it varies
+from 1 to 24 and 16; and an estimate of the income of the two countries,
+an estimate certainly not fair to Ireland, gives a proportion of about 1
+to 18. There are many reasons that these figures exaggerate the true
+resources of Ireland, but, assuming them to be approximately correct, the
+Commission has reported that Great Britain exceeds Ireland in resources by
+20 to 1; in other words, that the 'taxable capacity of Ireland, as
+contrasted with that of Great Britain, cannot now be more than as 1 to
+20.'[164] Applying this inference to the taxation of the two countries,
+the conclusions formed by this tribunal can hardly admit of question. The
+revenue and taxation of Ireland compared with that of Great Britain from
+1889 to 1894 has been L7,300,000 and L7,800,000 against from L85,000,000
+to L89,000,000, that is, Ireland contributed from 8 to 9 per cent. of the
+sum total. But if the resources of Ireland are only one-twentieth of those
+of Great Britain, her taxation ought to be one-twentieth only, that is, it
+ought not to be from L7,300,000 to L7,800,000; it ought to be less than
+L5,000,000; not 8 or 9 per cent., but less than 5 per cent. It follows
+from this that Ireland has been overtaxed at the rate of between two and
+three millions a year, and that for a very considerable space of
+time.[165]
+
+Enormous against Ireland as is this excess of taxation, it may amount to a
+very much larger sum, if the national account be taken on another,
+perhaps a sounder, basis. There is the highest authority to show that
+taxation ought only to fall, in the instance of any given country, on the
+surplus remaining over and above the cost of the necessaries of life; and
+as regards the populations of Great Britain and Ireland, this cost may be
+assumed to be L12 a head. But if we take the income of Great Britain to be
+1400 millions sterling, the cost of the necessaries of life at the above
+rate would for Great Britain be a sum of 324 millions; and the surplus
+available for taxation would be 1076 millions. On the other hand, if we
+turn to Ireland, the poor country, and suppose her income to be 76
+millions sterling, the cost of the necessaries of life for Ireland would
+be a sum of 46 millions; and the surplus available for taxation would be
+30 millions only. On this hypothesis, the resources of Ireland which might
+be fairly taxed--her taxable capacity, in a word--would, compared with the
+resources of Great Britain, be, not as 1 to 20, but as 1 to 36 only; and
+her taxation ought to be less than L3,000,000, not, as before mentioned,
+less than L5,000,000. The Childers Commission, no doubt, with the
+exception of one of its members, did not give its sanction to this
+conclusion; but it was that formed by Sir Robert Giffen, a master of the
+subject on all its bearings, and it cannot, in common fairness, be left
+out of sight. Sir Robert Giffen's view is expressed in these words; it
+will be observed that his figures do not correspond with those just cited;
+but the only point to consider is the principle on which he takes his
+stand: 'If you deduct a minimum sum, so much per head from each of the
+community, as a sort of minimum sum, though you would not wish to take
+anything from a man who had no more than that, then the taxable income
+would be the whole income in each country above that sum. That was the
+sort of general idea. If you apply that to Ireland, and take a minimum sum
+of, say, L12 a head, you would get upon the basis of an Irish income of
+L76,000,000 a taxable surplus, I think, now of about L22,000,000, and in
+Great Britain your taxable surplus would come to over L900,000,000.'[166]
+
+Setting, however, these last considerations aside, the Childers Commission
+has conclusively shown that Ireland is very largely overtaxed, and has
+been so for a long series of years; and the figures that represent this
+great overcharge by no means represent the real difference of the burdens
+imposed on the two countries. It does not require the authority of Pitt to
+tell us that even equal taxation, equally applied, is felt much more
+acutely by a poor community than by one that is rich and prosperous; let
+us assume, what is by no means the fact, that this equality exists as
+between Great Britain and Ireland, still Ireland suffers much more than
+Great Britain. As Mill remarked a long time ago, 'It is not the same thing
+to take L2 from a man who has L40 a year, as to take L4 from a man who has
+L80, or L40 from a man who has L800; the sacrifice imposed on the taxpayer
+is greater upon the man from whom you take L2 out of L40 than it is on the
+man from whom you take L40 out of L800, although the proportion is the
+same.' A few examples, taken from the case of Great Britain and Ireland,
+will make the truth of this proposition perfectly clear. The wages of an
+agricultural labourer in Great Britain are, say, L40 a year; the wages of
+an agricultural labourer in Ireland are, say, L26; the first pays L3 taxes
+on his tea and tobacco; the second pays only L2; but the L2 are obviously
+much the heavier charge. Or suppose that a British artisan has L100 a
+year, and an Irish artisan no more than L80; is not the first more lightly
+taxed than the second, if he contributes L5 to the revenue against L4? And
+the same thing happens if we ascend the social scale; the L150 income tax
+paid by a British landlord of L3000 a year is not felt by him to be such
+a charge as the L50 paid by an Irish landlord of L1000 a year; the same
+principle would extend to the profits of trade were there small sums in
+Ireland and large sums in Great Britain. Make taxes, therefore, as equal
+as possible, and make their incidence completely equal, still, in the case
+of a poor compared to a wealthy country, the real burden on the taxpayer
+will be very different; it was for this reason that the late Mr. Nassau
+Senior, an economist of no ordinary parts, pointedly remarked, as regards
+British and Irish taxation, 'England is the most lightly taxed and Ireland
+the most heavily taxed country in Europe, although both are nominally
+liable to equal taxation: I do not believe that Ireland is a poor country
+because she is overtaxed, but I think she is overtaxed because she is
+poor.'[167]
+
+Ireland, therefore, on a full review of the argument, has been overtaxed
+at least between two and three millions sterling a year for certainly more
+than forty years; and this excess, as she is a very poor country, is, in
+her case especially severe. The trend of taxation, if the phrase may be
+employed, as we follow its course, during a long period, clearly indicates
+that she has suffered from grave financial wrong. In 1819-20, we have
+seen, the taxation of Great Britain was at the rate of L3 13_s._ a head,
+that of Ireland being 15_s._ 5_d._; the proportion was L2 13_s._ 1_d._ and
+L1 6_s._ 7_d._ in 1859-60; in 1893 it was L2 4_s._ and L1 8_s._; in other
+words, the imposts of the wealthy country were progressively decreased,
+while the imposts of the poor country were progressively raised. This
+distinction, no doubt, has been partly due to the fact that the population
+of Great Britain has been largely augmented, and the population of Ireland
+has been enormously reduced in numbers; the charge in Great Britain has
+been distributed among ever growing millions, the charge in Ireland has
+been concentrated upon ever lessening thousands; but this will not nearly
+account for the difference; 'the wealthier country' it has been
+caustically said, 'was taxed less and less as it became more wealthy; the
+poorer country was burdened more and more as its poverty increased.'[168]
+And the overcharge on Ireland is all the more grievous because it owed its
+origin to the policy of free trade; and this policy has been a
+questionable boon to Ireland, while to Great Britain it has been an
+immense benefit. No doubt the cheapening of the price of the necessaries
+and of some of the conveniences of life, which has been one of the results
+of free trade, has been a great advantage to the Irish labourer, artisan,
+and mere cottar peasant; but free trade has been injurious to the real
+Irish farmer and the Irish landlord, and to most of the classes connected
+with the land; and the land is the main source of the scanty wealth of
+Ireland. Free trade, on the other hand, has been a principal cause of the
+extraordinary development of the material welfare of England which has
+been witnessed during the last fifty years; it has doubled and trebled her
+gigantic manufactures and trade, if her agriculture is by no means
+flourishing. This striking contrast gives pain to right-minded Irishmen;
+they feel, as Grattan predicted would be the case, that their country's
+interests have been sacrificed to British commerce; and the following
+observations are essentially true and just: 'The change' (from protection
+to free trade) 'has not been so advantageous to Ireland, a country in
+which there is but little trade or manufacturing industry, as it has been
+to England; although, as consumers, the Irish population may have gained
+in some cases by the abolition of the duties on foodstuffs, yet, on the
+other hand, as producers, chiefly dependent on agriculture, they have lost
+in a far greater degree by the cheap prices in the British markets,
+produced, in part at least, by the free and untaxed supply of foreign
+corn, live stock, dead meat, butter, cheese, eggs, and other articles of
+food.... It may even perhaps be said that just as Ireland suffered in the
+last century from the protective and exclusive commercial policy of Great
+Britain, so she has been at a disadvantage in this century from the
+adoption of an almost unqualified free trade policy for the United
+Kingdom.'[169]
+
+Many attempts, I have said, have been made to answer the conclusive Report
+of the Childers Commission, to carp at its proceedings, to challenge its
+statements, to deny that Ireland has been largely overtaxed; but, with
+scarcely an exception, they have been grotesque failures. I need hardly
+notice an audacious sally, which has been turned to account in the House
+of Commons, and has split the ears of the groundlings in different parts
+of England. England, the argument runs, has been too kind to Ireland;
+Ireland pays no land tax and sundry other duties; in other respects she is
+equally taxed with Great Britain; she has not even a semblance of a real
+complaint; and--exactly in the manner of Swift's satire--'let her hold her
+tongue, or it may be the worse for her.' Ireland, no doubt, 'assimilated
+as she has been in finance,' is free from some charges imposed on England;
+she has still 'exemptions and abatements' which, to some extent, preserve
+her rights under the Treaty of Union, and show that she is still
+financially a distinct country, as has been recognised by every leading
+British statesman, from the day of Pitt to the day of Mr. Gladstone. But
+the English land tax, properly speaking, is not a tax at all; it is a
+rent-charge for centuries payable by the land; at all events, the Irish
+Crown and quit rents may be set off against it; and, as to the other taxes
+referred to, the cost of collection in Ireland would exceed the returns;
+it would be a case of _in Thesauro nihil_, as in Plantagenet times.
+Another argument, of which the late Mr. Lowe was the author, is more
+plausible, and has done better service; but it is not the less shallow
+and false sophistry, when brought to the test. Taxation, it is said, falls
+on populations only; it is sheer nonsense to say that it falls on
+countries; it is not levied from Great Britain and Ireland; it is levied
+from the inhabitants within their borders. But the Englishman, the
+Scotsman, and the Irishman are equally taxed; the Irishman, indeed, has a
+small advantage; equality of taxation is the rule in this matter; and
+obviously equality is the same thing as equity. An English landlord in
+Kent, a Scotch landlord in Perthshire, an Irish landlord in Kildare, pay
+the same income tax on the same rentals; so does a merchant in London, a
+merchant in Edinburgh, a merchant in Belfast, on the same profits; and the
+same principle extends to all other classes. A farmer in Surrey, a crofter
+in Argyleshire, a shopkeeper in Galway, pay exactly the same tax on a
+gallon of rum, a gallon of whiskey, a hogshead of beer; the charge is the
+same for each commodity in the three households. This Irish grievance,
+therefore, is a mere delusion; it is a sickly phantom that vanishes in the
+light of the day.
+
+That taxation falls on populations and not on areas of land is a truism
+really never disputed; the use of the word 'countries,' in this sense, is
+a mere popular phrase. This argument keeps out of sight the fact that
+equal taxes, however equally imposed, are much heavier in the case of a
+poor than of a rich community; but, waiving this objection, it is a sheer
+fallacy. If two populations had exactly the same tastes, used the same
+commodities in the same proportions, and were in the possession of the
+same resources; equality of taxation, if equally applied, would probably
+be essentially just. But if two populations have different tastes, if they
+differ in the use of even the same commodities, and if their resources are
+very different, and especially if equal taxation be not equally applied,
+this apparent equality, far from being equity, may become plain, nay, very
+grave iniquity. This may be made intelligible, at a glance, by the
+consideration of a few instances easily conceived. Impose an equal tax on
+coals in England and Ireland: would the charge fall equally on Englishmen
+in a land of coal and on Irishmen in a land of peat mosses? Tax Londoners
+and Parisians at the same rate on coffee: would the Londoner, who drinks
+comparatively little coffee, be as heavily mulcted as the Parisian, who
+drinks a great deal? Or suppose that light taxes were laid on articles
+that suit Englishmen, and enter into the consumption of the millions of
+England, and that heavy taxes were laid on articles that suit Irishmen,
+and are consumed by the Irish millions: would not this system favour
+Englishmen, and injure Irishmen, though the taxes on all these articles
+were the same in both countries? Examples by the hundred might be brought
+forward; these suffice to prove that equality of taxation, as between
+communities, differing from each other in the conditions and circumstances
+of life, and notably if the incidence of this taxation is not the same,
+may be made to effect the grossest injustice. And this financial wrong has
+been done, to a very great extent, if we compare the taxation of Great
+Britain and Ireland. The consumption of tea and tobacco by the head is
+nearly the same in both countries; the taxes on these commodities are the
+same; admit that this is equitable in a certain sense, though the impost
+is relatively more burdensome on the poor community. The consumption of
+spirits by the head, also, is much the same for the Three Kingdoms; the
+taxation is precisely the same; this, for the sake of argument, I will
+call justice. But the consumption of beer by the head in Great Britain is
+about double what it is in Ireland; probably ten Englishmen drink beer
+compared to one Irishman; whiskey is the ordinary spirituous drink of
+Irishmen. Now, the taxes on beer and on whiskey are the same in Great
+Britain and Ireland; but the tax on beer, measured by the alcoholic
+standard, is about six times lower than the tax on whiskey;[170] beer,
+therefore, compared with whiskey is greatly undertaxed; whiskey compared
+with beer is greatly overtaxed; the ordinary drink of Englishmen is
+treated differently from the ordinary drink of Irishmen, one being
+encouraged, the other discouraged; though the taxes on each commodity may
+be everywhere the same, the equality of taxation manifestly results in
+wrong. The difference amounts to a very large sum; it is one of the causes
+that Ireland is overtaxed.[171]
+
+Equality of taxation may, therefore, be not equity; it may, as I have
+said, be sheer iniquity; and this is emphatically the case with respect to
+Ireland. This system is productive of gross injustice as regards what may
+be deemed the popular Irish drink; but arguments to support it have not
+been wanting; they have been complacently gulped down at several public
+meetings, it is unnecessary to add within the borders of England. The
+'mere Irish,' it is said, have shocking bad tastes; let them take beer
+instead of whiskey and they can have no grievance; besides, whiskey is a
+nasty and unwholesome thing; it is in mercy to them that it is excessively
+taxed. Is it possible that people who utter this stuff do not see that
+sumptuary legislation of extreme harshness, nay, persecution of the worst
+kind, may be justified on the same class of premises? Suppose that
+Napoleon, in the plenitude of his power, had declared that the Parisians
+did not know what was good for them, and had heavily taxed their coffee to
+make them drink tea, even Austerlitz would not have saved the Empire.
+Marie Antoinette actually made an attempt to banish from her Court the
+velvets and silks of Lyons, and to make it adopt the cambrics and muslins
+of Belgium; she would have been too glad to see the first taxed and the
+second duty free, for she thought the French taste for heavy and gorgeous
+apparel bad; she only aroused the indignation of Versailles. Or say that
+the priests of the Jove of the Capitol had argued in this way: 'Really
+these detestable Christians are fools for worshipping a crucified Jew;
+they have only to bow down to Caesar to escape the lions; otherwise they
+have themselves alone to blame.' Nay, coming nearer home, might not a holy
+prelate of the Irish Established Church in the eighteenth century have
+reconciled the penal code to his conscience, by whispering to himself that
+the deluded Papists had but to give up their vain superstitions, and to
+conform to the pure well of faith that had its source in the Castle, and
+that then they would be no longer outlaws; but let them take the
+consequences if they were blind to their best interests on earth and in
+heaven. In fact, any act of despotism on the part of the State might be
+vindicated on these very laudable principles; but on this matter of the
+taxation of Irish whiskey I shall confine myself to a single remark.
+Reverse the cases of England and Ireland with respect to the imposts on
+beer and on whiskey; tax beer very heavily and whiskey very lightly; and
+what would Englishmen say of an argument that has been thought good enough
+for Irishmen; how long would a Government exist that would try to carry
+out such a policy? In truth, this reasoning, if it can be so called, is
+the worst kind of sophistry: the frank brutality of the Roman proconsul,
+who told the population of a subject province that they must endure their
+burdens as they would endure the rain and the tempest, is less censurable,
+to my mind at least, than this compound of absurd and offensive insolence.
+
+Another argument, really of no greater value, has had many supporters in
+the House of Commons. True it is, it is admitted, that, compared with
+Great Britain, Ireland has been hardly treated in finance; but this is
+because she is a poor country, and a poor country must suffer from
+taxation, fair as it may be, more than a wealthy country. But the same
+inequality is seen in England: Dorset and Wiltshire are more heavily
+burdened than Yorkshire and Lancashire, yet Dorset and Wiltshire make no
+complaints as Ireland does. This argument, however, ignores history, and
+sets the Treaty of Union at nought; Dorset and Wiltshire are mere
+fractions of England; Ireland has always been financially a distinct
+country, entitled to separate financial rights; and this has been
+recognised by the ablest British statesmen, notably, of late years, by Mr.
+Goschen, and by Mr. Gladstone. This reasoning, in a word, assumes that
+Ireland is merely an aggregate of British counties; but this has never
+been her true financial position; it is easy to sneer at the phrase
+'separate entity' by which she has been called, that is, a land,
+financially, apart from Great Britain, but sneers cannot get the better of
+facts. These statements of distinguished English experts are
+unquestionable in view of the record of history. Lord Farrer has remarked:
+'It is abundantly clear that of the two conflicting theories--viz. the one
+which regards Great Britain and Ireland as one country for the purpose of
+taxation and expenditure, and the other which regards Great Britain and
+Ireland as separate partners--the second is the one upon which our
+instructions are founded; the one which has the greatest support in
+history, and the one upon which all parties in Parliament have recently
+acted.'[172] And Mr. Childers completely concurs: 'If apart from the
+reference, it is asked why a distinction should be taken between Great
+Britain and Ireland any more than between Kent and Yorkshire, the answer
+is that Ireland entered into a partnership with Great Britain under a
+formal Treaty of Union, which did, to a certain extent, by the recognition
+of the claim of Ireland to abatements and exemptions, if circumstances
+should require, maintain the position of Ireland as entitled to separate
+treatment as a whole, so far as relates to taxation. It must also be
+recollected that, as a matter of fact, Ireland has, at all times since the
+Union, in various degrees received such separate treatment. Ireland,
+therefore, cannot be regarded as merely a group of counties of the United
+Kingdom.'[173]
+
+Two other arguments may be ascribed to the ingenuity, if this is the true
+word, of the Treasury; but the first rests on a gross misrepresentation of
+fact, the other upon a false theory; both, with a slight reservation, may
+be dismissed as hopeless. Ireland, it is said, may possibly be
+overtaxed--admit this for the sake of argument--but she has had more than
+her fair share of loans from the State; a considerable part of these has
+been freely remitted; this has not been the case in England and Scotland;
+a large counterclaim, therefore, may be made against her. 'Out of a total
+sum of about one hundred and nineteen millions and a half advanced in the
+United Kingdom, a little over fifty-two millions, or 43.7 per cent., has
+been advanced to Ireland, and of this, so large a proportion as one-fifth,
+or over ten millions, had to be remitted, or treated as a free grant,
+whilst only one fifty-eighth part of the advances made to Great Britain
+were so treated.'[174] So far as these loans have been advances for the
+real good of Ireland, for example, for the promotion of reproductive
+works-these may fairly be taken into account; but millions have been
+misapplied and wasted or spent in the unproductive relief of
+distress;[175] these sums probably are greater than the excess made out by
+the Treasury. As regards the remission of the L10,000,000, the assertion
+relied on is simply deceptive. Not less than L4,000,000 of this sum
+represent the fund the extinction of which was the consideration of
+putting the income tax on Ireland by Mr. Gladstone; and, as the charge of
+that tax has been since more than L23,000,000, it savours of impudence to
+call this a remission; it was writing off a doubtful debt to justify a new
+and portentous burden. The residue of the L10,000,000 is composed of
+advances that have been misspent or spent on purposes really not Irish;
+these were not remitted in the proper acceptation of the word. 'The
+remaining portion of the ten millions of alleged remissions of loans
+consists mainly of remissions of the repayment of expenditure by the Board
+of Works, where it was shown that such expenditure had been wasteful, and
+of advances to the clergy and laity of the Established Church of Ireland,
+which advances Parliament, by legislation, deprived them of the ability of
+repaying. Altogether it would appear, from Sir Edward Hamilton's evidence,
+that in reality only about one million out of the ten corresponded in
+their character to the advances made to Great Britain, and that
+consequently the proportion of real remissions of loans to Ireland did not
+differ very materially from that of the proportion of the remission in
+Great Britain.'
+
+The second argument appears to be more plausible; but it is mischievous,
+in a high degree, and dangerous; except to a slight extent, it is
+completely fallacious. Ireland, it is allowed, contributes from L7,300,000
+to L7,800,000 to the exchequer; but of this sum L5,000,000 and upwards are
+expended on her; she really hardly pays L2,000,000 to the State; the
+L5,000,000 therefore, or nearly all this sum, create a just counterclaim
+against her, even admitting she is excessively taxed. This expenditure on
+Ireland, it is contended, is for Irish 'local' purposes; it is not
+expenditure for 'Imperial' purposes; the account, as between Great Britain
+and Ireland, is to be taken as if all this expenditure, or nearly so, were
+purely local. But is not the expenditure for keeping up the
+Lord-Lieutenant and his Court, is not the expenditure on the government
+and administration of Ireland, essentially, and in the main, Imperial, and
+not local in a legitimate sense, so long as the United Kingdom exists? Is
+it not as Imperial, at least for the most part, as the expenditure on the
+British army and navy and on the government and administration of England
+and Scotland is Imperial, and not, properly speaking, local? This argument
+could be retorted with decisive effect, if urged in the interest of
+Ireland against Great Britain. If this kind of expenditure in Ireland is
+held to be local, not Imperial, the same rule must apply to England and
+Scotland; this expenditure in their case must be local and not Imperial.
+Why, then, should Ireland contribute to such charges as public works in
+Edinburgh and London, as the maintenance of the great English dockyards
+and harbours, as the cost of the army and navy outside Ireland, and of the
+government and administration of England and Scotland? Clearly on the
+Treasury hypothesis she should not contribute; and if she does, she has an
+immense counterclaim, so far as her contributions are applied to these
+local objects. But, in truth, this whole argument, when examined, is a
+mere sophism. The revenues of the Three Kingdoms are paid into a common
+exchequer; they are distributed according to the uses of the State; this
+expenditure, as a general rule, must be held to be Imperial, not local,
+and cannot give a part of the Three Kingdoms a right to make a claim
+against another. The State spends millions on London which it does not
+spend on Surrey; it spends millions in Hants which it does not spend in
+Berkshire: does this circumstance give Surrey or Berkshire a title to say
+we can make a demand on London and Hants? Precisely in the same way, the
+expenditure of the State on Ireland, as contra-distinguished from that on
+Great Britain, cannot, at least as a general principle, give Great Britain
+a right to make a counterclaim on Ireland.
+
+It is unnecessary to point out how this theory has a tendency to create
+local and even national ill-will; to set parts of one country against
+other parts, and two countries against each other; it distinctly alienates
+Ireland from Great Britain; as I have said, it is full of mischief and
+peril. In truth, however, it is a mere device to excuse the overcharge of
+Irish taxation; it has never entered the minds of statesmen. Nothing can
+be more certain than that every great British financier, from the day of
+Pitt to the day of Peel, and to the day of Mr. Gladstone, has regarded the
+expenditure of the Three Kingdoms, as this is paid into a common
+exchequer, as a general fund to be allocated as the State requires; and
+has not regarded it as a fund, under local heads, to be laid out in
+separate districts, so as to give any one district a counterclaim against
+another. I quote from a report of one of the members of the Childers
+Commissions: 'A division of the expenditure of the United Kingdom into
+"charge for Irish purposes" and "Imperial expenditure," cannot be made
+under the system of finance embodied in the constitution established by
+the Legislative Union. All expenditure under that system is "expenditure
+of the United Kingdom," or, to express it more briefly, "Imperial
+expenditure;" and all Imperial expenditure is defrayed from the common
+fund of the Imperial Exchequer. If a part of the Imperial expenditure be
+described as a charge "for Irish purposes," this classification does not
+affect the fact that it is Imperial expenditure, and charged as such upon
+the whole Imperial revenue. To regard this expenditure as non-Imperial, to
+deduct it from the particular revenue contributed by Ireland to Imperial
+expenditure, to treat the fraction of Irish revenue left as if it were the
+whole of the Irish contribution to Imperial expenditure, and to regard
+Imperial expenditure itself as not including "the charge for Irish
+purposes," would be to do what the Constitution does not sanction: it
+would be to deal with the revenue and expenditure of the United Kingdom as
+if the revenues of Great Britain and Ireland were raised and administered
+by separate authorities, each of which, having first, out of its own
+revenue, defrayed its separate charges, then applied the balance to
+payment of common expenses, which, in that case, would be properly
+classified as Imperial.'[176] And the evidence of Sir Robert Giffen is to
+the same effect: 'The opinion which I have formed is that, on the whole,
+it is not possible to make the distinction between the different objects
+of Imperial expenditure which is made in some of these discussions; that,
+in fact, all the expenditure by an Imperial Government is to be considered
+expenditure for Imperial purposes, and although part of it may be spent
+locally, you cannot in any way call it expenditure for the special benefit
+of that locality. It is expenditure for the general objects of the
+Imperial Government.'[177]
+
+The theory of the Treasury is thus essentially false; but accidentally, it
+contains, I think, a residuum of truth. When, as between two countries,
+one pays a considerable sum, exclusively or mainly from local rates, and
+the same charge in the other country is for the most part defrayed from
+Imperial taxation by the State, it appears to me that a portion of the sum
+so paid by the State may give one country a counterclaim against the other
+to some extent. This is the case as between Great Britain and Ireland; the
+cost of national education and of the police force is largely discharged
+in Great Britain by local rates; in Ireland it amounts to about
+L2,700,000, and is mainly defrayed from Imperial taxes; this may create a
+counterclaim against Ireland within reasonable limits at least. No doubt
+the charge of bringing up the young of the poorer classes and of
+maintaining public order by a suitable force, ought largely to be an
+Imperial charge; but when in one community it is chiefly borne by local
+funds, and in another it is chiefly borne by the common Exchequer of both,
+this seems to give the first community a partial claim against the second.
+This counterclaim, such as it is, has been reckoned, in addition to a sum
+for free grants, at about L500,000 a year by the Childers Commission; but
+it did not thoroughly go into the subject; this estimate is believed to be
+too low by well-informed persons; the counterclaim has been calculated to
+be about L1,000,000 sterling. Lord Salisbury's Government, we have seen,
+promised to appoint a second Commission to examine this question at
+length, besides some other financial questions suggested by the Report of
+the Childers Commission; for some unknown reason it has not redeemed its
+pledge; it is very desirable that it should redeem it. Apart from the
+mischief of a delay approaching a breach of public faith, the only
+inference that can be drawn, if this promise is broken, is that the
+Government accepts the view in this matter of the Childers Commission.
+
+The Childers Commission has conclusively proved that Ireland is much too
+highly taxed; whatever counterclaim may be made against this excess, the
+overcharge can be little less than two millions a year. The arguments
+urged against this conclusion are mere leather and prunella that may be
+brushed aside; the Report of the Commission has had the sanction of nearly
+all economists of a high order. By all means let another Commission strike
+a balance after making every fair allowance; but if it shall be struck, as
+it must be in Ireland's favour, the only real question for impartial men
+will be how it shall be best discharged. Ireland has practically
+acquiesced for years in fiscal injustice; in any view of the case she has
+no right to call for a change in our whole system of finance for her
+special benefit. Still less has she a right to demand that her customs and
+excise duties should be placed at a lower level than those of Great
+Britain; this would raise a mischievous barrier between the two countries;
+this policy would be, perhaps, impossible; if possible, it would probably
+injure Ireland greatly in the long run. The only remaining alternative is
+to leave our existing fiscal system intact, but to make an annual grant
+from the exchequer for Irish uses, as compensation for excessive taxation;
+this has the support of the Childers Commission. 'The third method, and
+that which most strongly recommends itself to our judgment, is to give
+compensation to Ireland by making an annual allocation of revenue in their
+favour, to be employed in promoting the material prosperity and social
+welfare of the country.'[178] It is difficult to suppose, should a large
+yearly sum be found to be due to Ireland, as affairs now stand, that
+Parliament will refuse to pay honourably a just debt; it would be a
+shameful act to repudiate an obligation of the kind. Years ago Pitt
+declared in his characteristic style that 'Ireland might safely rely on
+Great Britain for the discharge of any fair claim on her; the liberality,
+the justice, the honour of the people of Great Britain have never been
+found deficient.' The time has come to test the value of this pledge; it
+has been announced by the highest authority, in which English opinion
+largely prevails, that Ireland has been immensely overtaxed for years:
+will the 'people of Great Britain' give effect to this judgment, and make
+good a claim which hardly admits of a doubt? The demand of Ireland, no
+doubt, is not sustained by violent agitation and the shouts of multitudes;
+but it is backed by all that is best in Irish opinion; it rests upon the
+simplest financial justice. It is dangerous to treat a demand such as this
+with contempt, and still more so with weak sophistry; not that Ireland can
+make an effective resistance to fiscal wrong, however clearly proved; and
+I for one deprecate rhodomontade about 'the Boston tea-ships.' But a claim
+may have great moral force, though it be not supported by physical power;
+the disregard of this claim would provoke well-informed Irishmen, and
+weaken the Union perhaps greatly; and, after all, is it a seemly sight, is
+it becoming in the eyes of the world, that the richest country in Europe
+should practically impose an iniquitous burden upon the poorest?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE QUESTIONS OF IRISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND EDUCATION--OTHER
+QUESTIONS--CONCLUSION
+
+    Irish county government--The grand jury system in the eighteenth
+    century--Its merits and defects--The grand jury system in the
+    nineteenth century, and especially since 1836--The Irish poor law
+    system--Elected and _ex-officio_ guardians--The local government of
+    cities and towns in Ireland--Municipal institutions founded in Ireland
+    by the Norman kings--Why they did not prosper--Boroughs and
+    municipalities founded by James I. and the Stuarts--Their condition in
+    the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries--The Municipal Reform Act of
+    1840--The Towns Commissioners Acts--Attempts to reform the municipal
+    system of local government in Ireland--The Local Government of Ireland
+    Act, 1898--Complete change in Irish local government--The County
+    Councils--The County Borough Councils--The District, Rural, and the
+    Urban District Councils--Their functions, rights, and duties--All
+    these bodies placed on a democratic basis--Attitude of the County
+    Councils in the southern provinces--Education in Ireland--History of
+    primary education--The national system of education--The principles on
+    which it is founded--How it has worked, and what its results have
+    been--Secondary education in Ireland--Its history--Its present
+    condition very imperfect--The Intermediate Education Act--University
+    education in Ireland--Its history--Trinity College--The Queen's
+    Colleges and the Queen's University founded by Peel--Their comparative
+    failure--Mr. Gladstone's Bill to reform University education in
+    Ireland--Its glaring errors and failure--Trinity College thrown open
+    in 1873--The Royal University founded in 1879--Present state of
+    University education in Ireland--The true principles of reform--Other
+    Irish questions--Conclusion.
+
+
+That local government in Ireland should still be a 'Present Irish
+Question,' may appear strange to persons only versed in the mere routine
+of politics. The subject has been before Parliament for nearly thirty
+years; it has engaged the attention of more than one of its Committees;
+Butt endeavoured, to no purpose, to legislate on it. In 1892 Lord
+Salisbury's Government brought in a measure which aimed at transforming
+the whole system of administering local affairs in Ireland; but it had
+unquestionable defects and was vehemently opposed; unfortunately, as I
+believe, it was permitted to drop. Six years afterwards, that is, in 1898,
+the greater part of a parliamentary session was employed in dealing with
+the question again; a Bill became law which placed Irish local government,
+in all its departments, upon a new basis, and completely changed the
+characteristics it had had for centuries. The measure was to be a _ne plus
+ultra_; it was extolled by applauding partisans as a magnificent scheme of
+popular reform; these have since, over and over again, declared that its
+success has been more than manifest. It is too soon to pronounce, with
+anything like confidence, on what its ultimate results may be, or even to
+say, with certainty, how it will practically work; but enough has already
+been made apparent to cause thoughtful and fair-minded Irishmen to regard
+the changes it has effected with grave misgivings; to question the
+principles on which it rests, or at least the wisdom of applying them to
+Ireland as she now is; and to ask whether it must not be amended if the
+social structure of Ireland is not to be still more violently disturbed,
+than it has been by the experiments that have been made on it. Besides,
+the local government and administration of every community, especially if
+formed on a popular type, affect its existence in many ways; strongly
+indicate what its opinions are, what its qualities, what its evident
+tendencies; in a word, largely represent its essential nature. It was not
+for nothing that in his survey of the Revolution in France, Burke did not
+confine himself to the sovereign assembly at Versailles, but turned his
+penetrating glance on the petty assemblies which had been set up in the
+new-made departments, for the conduct of their local affairs; these, he
+insisted, formed the truest expression of the mind of the people and of
+the leaders at its head. For these reasons, therefore, if we would
+understand Ireland, her local government is a 'Present Irish Question;' it
+is a question, moreover, which, whatever may be said, in all probability
+has not been finally settled.
+
+In order to understand the subject, I must glance at the system of Irish
+local government, as this existed until, as it were, yesterday; I turn, in
+the first instance, to Irish county government. The beginnings of this
+scheme have been traced back to the time of Strafford; but it was not
+finally established until the reign of William III., when the subjugation
+of Ireland had been made complete. The Irish grand juries always had
+criminal jurisdiction in their countries like their English fellows; but
+unlike these they were now entrusted with almost absolute control over
+Irish county government. This was partly because they were representatives
+of the conquering race, by this time the owners of nine-tenths of the
+lands of the country; and partly because there was no local organisation
+in Ireland, like the English parish, which could give local influence to
+the conquered race. The grand juries were always composed of the leading
+landed gentry of their respective counties; they were nominated by the
+sheriffs, that is, by officials of the Central Government; they were
+wholly devoid of a popular element; and as no Catholic could have a share
+in their councils, until nearly the end of the eighteenth century, they
+embodied, in the fullest sense, the Protestant ascendency of the day,
+supreme in every sphere of authority in the State. The grand juries had
+almost the exclusive power of administering the local affairs of their
+counties, of managing their roads, public buildings, and police; and they
+levied the charges for these by a local rate, known as the county cess to
+this hour, and imposed almost wholly on the occupiers of the soil, that
+is, in five cases out of six on the Catholic peasantry, a striking
+instance of taxation without representation to check it. These assemblies
+of local magnates met twice a year at the assizes which were held in their
+counties. Miss Edgeworth has given us graphic accounts of them: how a seat
+on a grand jury was deemed a prize to be sometimes fought for; how the
+grand juries entertained the judges in state, and vied with these sages in
+their mighty potations; and how, while wretches were hanged and jurymen
+dined, the assize towns were scenes of not fastidious revelry. There was
+much jobbing, corruption, and waste in the administration of the counties
+in those days; much of the 'scratch me, and I will scratch you;' much
+'give and take' at the cost of the ratepayers. But there was another and
+better side to the picture: the Irish gentry of the time had the faculty
+of command; they ruled their districts efficiently with their police; the
+public works for which they were responsible were usually good. Arthur
+Young has especially noticed that the roads they constructed were almost
+always well laid out and kept up.
+
+Catholics were not admitted on grand juries until the great Relief Act of
+1793, the first general relaxation of the execrable penal code. But the
+Catholic members of these bodies have always been few; the large majority
+of the Irish landlords remains still Protestant. The bureaucracy of the
+Castle, after the Union, began to encroach on the domain of the grand
+juries; at the same time the growing needs of the country made the
+expenditure on local affairs much larger. The grand juries lost much of
+their authority by degrees; they were more and more controlled by the
+Central Government, which supplanted them in a variety of ways; and they
+were ere long compelled to vote sums for public works of different kinds
+for the behoof of their counties. This change effectually checked
+corruption and jobbing; but as the requirements of the counties
+increased, and the 'imperative presentments,' as they were called, were
+augmented, the charge of the local rate or county cess became more
+onerous--it has advanced enormously in the last sixty years; and this was
+still mainly imposed on the Catholic peasantry. The civil or fiscal
+administration, which the grand juries possessed until 1898, was finally
+arranged by an Act of Parliament passed in 1836,[179] supplemented, from
+time to time, by subsequent statutes. These bodies were composed of the
+same elements, and nominated by the sheriffs as before; and they had a
+general supervision over all the public works, roads, bridges, and
+buildings for public purposes, comprised within their different counties,
+including within these areas nearly all villages, and the large majority
+of the lesser towns. But they were made strictly dependent on the Central
+Government; this had the appointment of their chief officers; their
+accounts were subjected to a regular audit; and their 'imperative
+presentments' were largely extended. They acquired, too, an additional
+jurisdiction in some respects, especially as regards inquiries into
+criminal injuries and compensating persons who had been sufferers, and as
+regards voting an extra police force in disturbed districts; but their old
+local police had disappeared, and had been replaced by the great central
+constabulary force. A change, too, was effected in the modes through which
+local rates were voted in the counties for public purposes. These sums
+were 'presented' in the first instance at 'baronial' and 'county at large'
+sessions, held by county justices and ratepayers of substance; but these
+bodies were subordinate to the grand juries, and to a considerable extent
+drawn from the same classes; no popular element was infused in county
+government, and the grand juries were, in the last resort, supreme, within
+the limits which had been assigned to them. The local expenditure voted
+and assessed in this way was subject to examination by a judge of assize,
+who 'fiated' it, as a general rule; and ratepayers had a right to
+challenge it, by a procedure called 'a traverse,' which, however, was
+seldom turned to account.
+
+The Irish grand juries were thus oligarchic bodies, survivals of the
+Protestant ascendency of a bygone age, and with a tendency, in their later
+history, to become subordinate boards of the Castle. I pass on to the
+Irish poor law system, another considerable department of Irish local
+government. As we have seen, unlike what had been the case in England, no
+poor law existed in Ireland until 1838; the want of such a measure was one
+of the causes of the pressure of a huge mass of indigence on the soil
+before the catastrophe of 1845-47. The Irish poor law, with some marked
+distinctions, was analogous to the new English poor law, as it has long
+been called; it has now been in operation for about sixty years. The
+country was divided into a series of unions, which have varied from 130 to
+163 in number; at present there are 159 of these; these were the principal
+units for carrying the poor law system into effect. The unions were again
+subdivided into lesser districts, electoral divisions for the county,
+wards for the larger towns; the persons chosen to administer the poor law
+were taken from these areas; and the unions and all that pertained to them
+were placed under the control of the Central Government, represented by
+the Local Government Board of Ireland. The persons returned from the
+electoral divisions and the wards were selected by the votes of the
+ratepayers, and were known as the elected guardians; a popular element was
+thus introduced into the administration of the law, which had never been
+introduced into Irish county government. The vote of the ratepayers,
+however, was cumulative, not single; the largest ratepayers had the most
+votes, a safeguard, it has been assumed, for property; and the elected
+guardians, in theory at least, were balanced by an equal number of
+_ex-officio_ guardians, composed of magistrates within the unions. The
+chief duties of the elected and the _ex-officio_ guardians, collectively
+known as Boards of Guardians, were to provide for the wants of the poor,
+and to assess and levy poor rates for that purpose; but many other duties
+were gradually imposed on them, the principal of these being the care of
+the sanitary state of the lesser towns within their districts. There was a
+marked difference between the incidence of the poor rate and of the county
+rate, or cess, of the grand juries. The county cess, we have seen, was
+mainly a charge on the Catholic occupiers of the soil, the poor rate was,
+to a very considerable extent, a charge on the owners, for the most part
+Protestants; for the landlord was bound to pay the whole poor rate in the
+case of the pettiest holdings, and to allow his tenants half the poor rate
+in the case of other holdings; by these means the burden of at least half
+the poor rate, it is believed, was borne by the Irish landed gentry. It
+should be added that the elected guardians have practically had the
+administration of the poor law in their hands; the _ex-officio_ guardians,
+especially of late years, took little part in it.[180]
+
+I turn from the administration of local rural affairs in Ireland to that
+of its chief cities and its towns. The Irish towns, conquered and settled
+by the Danes, had, perhaps, a kind of municipal government; the
+Plantagenet kings conferred municipal rights as freely in Ireland as they
+did in England. Thus Dublin received a charter from John, modelled on that
+of his 'liegemen of Bristol;' Limerick, Waterford, Kilkenny, and several
+other towns were incorporated and given powers of self-government at
+different periods of the Middle Ages. But the municipal life and the
+municipal spirit which grew up and gained strength in the thriving towns
+of England, and secured for them a large measure of local liberty, had
+hardly any existence in a land like Ireland, distracted by feudal and
+tribal anarchy; the corporate cities and towns of Ireland fell into the
+hands of great Anglo-Norman nobles and Celtic chiefs, and seem to have all
+but lost their local franchises. During the long agony of the sixteenth
+century, when Ireland was devastated by a horrible strife of race and
+faith, these privileges were still further effaced; at the death of
+Elizabeth the Irish municipal centres, with the exception of the capital,
+were mere names and shadows. A great change took place when the subjugated
+land passed under the domination of the first Stuarts. English law was now
+extended over the whole of Ireland; a colonial caste of settlers was
+becoming lords of the soil; the Government was conducted by the men at the
+Castle, ruling through a Parliament largely composed of the new settlers.
+James I. created forty-six Irish boroughs with a stroke of the pen, and
+gave them a representation in the Parliament and municipal rights; but
+these, for the most part, were mere villages; they obtained their large
+privileges solely in order to support 'the English interest,' as it was
+called, in the Irish House of Commons. This system was continued by the
+later Stuarts; besides Dublin and the larger towns of Ireland, there were
+about a hundred of these petty municipalities and parliamentary boroughs
+in the eighteenth century. These places, however, could have no municipal
+freedom, and were wholly devoid of municipal feeling; they became nearly
+all the mere appanages of the neighbouring leading families; and, with
+hardly an exception, they were extreme types of the Protestant ascendency
+which prevailed everywhere. Something of the same kind was witnessed in
+England, under the aristocratic rule of that age, but there was the
+difference between a sorry caricature and a picture; the great cities and
+the better towns of England still retained an ample measure of municipal
+liberty, and, especially, did not lose the municipal spirit; the exact
+contrary was the case in Ireland.
+
+A large majority of the little Irish boroughs were deprived of their
+parliamentary representation at the Union, but they retained their nominal
+municipal rights. They still remained under the control of the chief
+landed gentry; and they became, as indeed they had always been, centres of
+maladministration, corruption, and peculation of all kinds. When, after
+the passing of the great Reform Act of 1832, statesmen directed their
+minds to the questions of corporate and municipal reform in England, they
+naturally turned their minds to Ireland also, where this reform was
+notoriously still more imperative. After the publication of a masterly
+report in 1834-35, which thoroughly illustrated the whole subject, the
+abuses in the Irish corporations were shown to be such--they were enormous
+even in the cities and larger towns--that Peel, the leader of the
+Opposition, actually gave them up; he proposed to deprive the corporate
+towns of all municipal rights and franchises, and to place them under the
+authority of Commissioners appointed by the Crown. This plan, however, was
+rejected by the Melbourne Government, and was not sanctioned by the House
+of Commons; after a long and angry controversy, which continued for years,
+a measure became law as late as 1840; and by this, with the exception of
+ten, all the corporate towns of Ireland lost their municipal rights, and
+were thus left without any power of self-government. With respect even to
+the ten still enfranchised towns, their old privileges were greatly
+curtailed and were transferred to the Central Government; and their
+municipal liberties were restricted and narrowed. They retained, indeed,
+many rights of self-government; but the municipal franchise was placed at
+a high level; the great body of the townsmen did not possess it; and they
+were subject to the supervision of the Local Government Board, that is, of
+the Central Government, to a considerable extent at least. True municipal
+life, and the municipal sentiment, could not, therefore, become well
+developed, in the case of towns under such conditions; they showed but few
+symptoms of the wonderful growth of prosperity and power which has been
+such a marked feature in the history of the great corporate towns of
+England, in what may be called the Victorian age, though, no doubt, the
+cases were widely different--poor Ireland could not, in this respect,
+compete with wealthy and progressive England. The deficiency of corporate
+towns in Ireland was felt ere long to be such, that, in 1854, and
+subsequent years, municipal rights were, in some measure, extended to
+nearly a hundred of these towns. These places were governed by bodies
+called Town Commissioners elected by a kind of popular vote; but the
+authority of these bodies has never been large; the municipal franchise
+was very high; and these towns were also under the Irish Local Government
+Board.
+
+Municipal institutions, like others of English origin, had thus, from a
+variety of causes, when transferred to Ireland, only a stunted, imperfect,
+and maimed existence. We may briefly glance at the operation of the system
+of rural and urban local government, of which we have endeavoured to
+sketch the outlines. Except, perhaps, in the instance of criminal
+injuries, and of the compensation to be adjudged by them, where they did
+not always give proof of a judicial spirit, the grand juries, for upwards
+of two generations, administered county affairs very well; they were
+economical, prudent, and jealous of expense, if the public buildings they
+sanctioned were, occasionally, too costly; but the system was an
+anachronism, and had had its day. In ordinary times the Irish poor law was
+reasonably well administered by the Boards of Guardians, as well,
+probably, as was the case in England; they were rather parsimonious in
+assessing rates, and gave little attention to the sanitary state of their
+towns, but, on the whole, there was not much cause to complain of them;
+and the Irish people, it must be recollected, have never liked the poor
+law. The local administration of the cities and the larger towns of
+Ireland was worse--a notable exception was seen in Belfast; but these, as
+a rule, gave proof of the restricted system on which their government had
+been formed; the results appeared in a high death rate, in bad supplies of
+water, in crowds of squalid and deserted dwellings--in a word, in
+stagnation and a want of progress, if other and powerful causes concurred.
+When the movement conducted by Parnell acquired strength, almost a
+revolution passed over the seats of Irish local government, where these,
+except in Ulster, possessed a popular element. Parnell called on the
+Boards of Guardians, the Corporations, and the Town Commissioners, in
+places where the 'people' had any effective voice, to rally round the Land
+and the National Leagues; he achieved remarkable success in the three
+provinces of the south. This was especially made manifest in the Boards of
+Guardians, composed largely of farmers of substance, and in which the
+_ex-officio_ guardians had little real power; these bodies set a crusade
+against the landed gentry on foot; marked them out for plunder in many
+ways; encouraged 'boycotting' and defiance of the law; gave a free rein to
+rebellious utterances of many kinds; and denounced Irish 'landlordism' and
+British rule in Ireland, as fiercely as they had been denounced at Land
+and National League gatherings.[181] The same phenomena appeared in many
+of the corporate and inferior towns: the Corporation of Dublin indulged in
+anti-British threats and speeches; the Corporation of Limerick refused to
+pay a lawful tax; the Corporation of Cork proclaimed itself supreme in a
+'rebel' city; the example was generally followed in the lesser towns of
+the south; in short, these bodies became centres of sedition, socialism,
+and resistance to the law, and widely disseminated their pernicious
+teaching. In fact, they made themselves agencies of the Land and the
+National Leagues; at the same time, in numerous instances, they set the
+authority of the Local Government Board at naught.[182]
+
+The system of Irish local government was obviously so defective, so
+antiquated, so contrary to the spirit of the age, that several attempts,
+we have seen, were made, long ago, to reform it. It has now been
+completely transformed on the principles applied to England and Scotland;
+the occasion of this transformation was somewhat singular. In 1896
+considerable relief was given, in England and Scotland, to the landed
+interest by a subvention made by the State, which defrayed half the charge
+of the local county rates, the depression of agriculture being so
+grievous; the justice of this measure was hardly disputed. But the Report
+of the Childers Commission, declaring that Ireland was greatly overtaxed,
+and had been for a long series of years, was published about the same
+time; the Government, probably because it had made up its mind not to
+countenance the report in any way, refused to extend the same relief to
+Ireland, although it was as much required--a decision that simply nothing
+could warrant. The indignation, however, expressed in Ireland, and the
+remonstrances even of the Ministerial Press, angrily as it had challenged
+the findings of the report, before long changed the Government's purpose;
+it was formally announced, in 1897, that Ireland would obtain the same
+boon as Great Britain, and, apparently, as a condition of this, that Irish
+local government was to be reformed. The measure of 1898 was the result of
+this compromise; the interdependence of two subjects, which have nothing
+in common, has made it not easy to interpret; but, as we shall see, its
+authors have provided, with skill, against one of the dangers the change
+involved, that is, the probability that it might expose the Irish landed
+gentry to predatory attacks. Before examining the recent law, I venture to
+make a single remark. The question of the alleviation of the charge of
+rates, a concession made to Ireland with bad grace, and made to England
+and Scotland as a matter of course, has nothing to do with the infinitely
+larger question of the excessive taxation imposed on Ireland; relief in
+the one case does not imply relief in the other; the two subjects are
+altogether distinct. It is essential carefully to keep this in mind, for
+attempts are being made to confuse the two questions, and
+characteristically to argue that Ireland ought to rest and be thankful,
+and not to say a word about her overtaxation, because, forsooth, in common
+with England and Scotland, she has received assistance as regards her
+local rates.
+
+The transformation which has been effected in Irish local government has
+completely changed the old order of things, and is of an extremely
+democratic character. County government has been taken from the grand
+juries, and has been extended to bodies known by the name of County
+Councils, recently formed in Great Britain. The County Councils proper are
+thirty-two in number, corresponding to the number of the Irish counties;
+they are popular assemblies in the fullest sense of the word. They are
+elected by the ratepayers of their districts, who possess the present
+extravagantly low suffrage; the right of election is also bestowed on
+women; and the protection of the cumulative vote has been removed; a
+cottar has the same voting power as a man of forty thousand a year. Any of
+these voters may have a seat in a County Council; the body, therefore, may
+be crowded with petty ratepayers; and women also may have seats. Three
+members of the grand jury, in each county, are entitled to sit in a County
+Council, but for a short time only--a provision intended to reconcile the
+old with the new; the County Councils are given a right to 'co-opt' a few
+members; and the heads of bodies subordinate to them have the privilege of
+taking part in their counsels. The rights and the responsibilities of the
+grand juries have, as a rule, been transferred to the County Councils,
+except in the instance of criminal injuries, and of determining
+compensation for these; this jurisdiction, subject to an appeal to a judge
+of assize, has been properly conferred on the County Court judges, for it
+is essentially of a judicial nature. The powers of the County Councils
+thus extend to the management and the supervision of the roads, bridges,
+and buildings for public purposes comprised within their counties, and
+also to the regulation of villages and petty towns; but, like the grand
+juries, they are subject to the same control of the Central Government;
+they must make 'imperative presentments' like the grand juries; and, as in
+the instance of the grand juries, subordinate bodies have the initiative
+in part of their duties. Their powers, however, have been made larger and
+wider than those of the grand juries; they have been given the right to
+assess and levy the poor rate in rural districts, the management of the
+asylums of the lunatic poor, an authority, in cases of exceptional
+distress, subject to the permission of the Local Government Board, to
+sanction relief to poor people out-of-doors, and several other powers of
+not much importance. It should be added that the County Councils are not
+restricted in any way by judge's 'fiats' and by 'traverses' as the grand
+juries were; these securities, such as they were, have disappeared; but
+their conduct may be controlled to a certain extent by the Superior Courts
+of Ireland, as that of most public bodies may be, if only through a
+tedious and costly procedure, and they are more or less under the
+authority of the Local Government Board.
+
+Six of the principal cities and towns of Ireland, Dublin, Belfast, Cork,
+Limerick, Londonderry, and Waterford, have been made distinct counties,
+with the appellation of County Boroughs. The scheme of County Councils has
+been applied to these also; the townsmen and townswomen have the same
+power of voting, and the same democratic suffrage as the counties proper;
+the borough assemblies may have the same kinds of members; but the titles
+of mayors, aldermen, and burgesses have been preserved, in recognition, so
+to speak, of strictly urban government. These bodies, which, it will be
+observed, are popular in the widest sense of the word, have the powers of
+grand juries within their respective spheres; but they retain besides
+their former administrative powers subject to the control of the Local
+Government Board; they have thus been changed from narrow and close
+oligarchies into democracies on the very broadest basis. The County
+Councils have under them two minor bodies, the Rural District Councils and
+the Urban District Councils, the characteristics of which may be briefly
+noticed. The sphere of the authority of the Rural District Council
+corresponds, for the most part, to the Poor Law Union; these councils are
+elected and constituted under the same conditions as the larger councils
+already described; they are, therefore, mere democracies in considerable
+numbers. The Rural District Councils are given the powers of the Baronial
+Presentment Sessions of the Grand Juries, that is, they may initiate
+proceedings as their predecessors did; they are made the sole guardians of
+the poor within their districts, the _ex-officio_ guardians having been
+abolished; their chairmen are members of the County Councils; it may be
+added here that rating for the poor has been extended generally over the
+union, not as hitherto confined to the electoral division and the ward, a
+questionable provision which will certainly increase the expenditure for
+the relief of poverty. The sphere of the authority of the Urban District
+Councils has been made that of the larger towns of Ireland, being sanitary
+areas within themselves; but power has been taken to increase the number
+of these towns, and this increase will be probably witnessed. The Urban
+District Councils resemble, in their mode of election and their
+constitution, the other assemblies, that is, they are democracies to the
+fullest extent; but they retain the names of Corporate or Town
+Commissioners towns, and of mayors, aldermen, and burgesses where they
+possessed these before. The powers of the Urban District Councils are
+those of the grand juries within the towns, except as respects the larger
+public buildings, which were formerly charged on 'the county at large;'
+these councils levy and assess the poor rate within their districts; and
+they retain the powers of urban government they formerly possessed. The
+Local Government Board has authority, also, over the Rural District and
+the Urban District Councils.
+
+The entire system of Irish local government has thus been placed on an
+extremely democratic basis, subject, however, to partial control by the
+Central Government. This revolution, for it has been nothing less, was
+obviously liable to be attended by the many mischiefs inseparable from a
+sudden transfer of enormous powers to local assemblies of the most popular
+type, to maladministration, waste, and extravagance, and, as especially
+would be the case in Ireland, to violent or insidious attacks on the
+landed gentry. The late measure has provided against these evils, if not
+completely or adequately, with ingenuity and skill. The relief of Irish
+agriculture was its first financial object; to effect this the county cess
+and the poor rate have been consolidated into a single charge; and half of
+this is to be defrayed by the State and appropriated to the relief of
+agricultural lands, towns and lands, within municipal limits, being
+excepted. The subvention is not to extend to sums payable in respect of
+criminal injuries, nor to sums payable in respect of extra police in
+disturbed districts; these charges are properly to be borne by local areas
+as before. The relief afforded is an annual sum of about L700,000; it is
+divided in tolerably equal shares between the owners and the occupiers of
+the soil, that is, between the landlords and tenants of Ireland; it is
+characteristic of Radical clamour, that a boon, the justice of which could
+not be disputed, was denounced as an 'infamous job' for the behoof of the
+Irish landed gentry. A powerful check has been placed on extravagance and
+waste, and on attempts to injure property in land, exposed, we have seen,
+to undoubted dangers. The relief afforded was calculated on the local
+expenditure for 1897, in the words of the law, 'the standard year;' it was
+regularly to be one-half of this sum. Should the local expenditure,
+therefore, in subsequent years, be in excess of that of the standard year,
+the proportionate value of the relief would fall; should it be a lesser
+amount, the value would rise. A strong restraint was thus imposed on
+attempts recklessly to job and waste local funds, and notably to plunder
+Irish landlords; but this restriction only applies to agricultural lands;
+it does not extend to property in towns; and it is difficult to say that
+it will always prove effective against democratic sentiment, passion, and
+greed. The extent of the relief afforded to Irish landlords differs widely
+as between landlords of different classes of tenants; landlords of mere
+cottars will get very little; landlords of farmers of substance will get
+much more; but it is unnecessary here to enlarge on this special
+subject.[183]
+
+This sweeping measure, in my judgment at least, might have been better
+framed to carry out its policy. Like much of the legislation of the
+Imperial Parliament, it has been fashioned too closely on the English
+model; it gives to a poor and backward country, not trained in
+self-government, local institutions naturally adapted only to an opulent
+and well-ordered country accustomed for centuries to local liberties.
+Having regard to the peculiar state of Ireland, it might have made the
+powers of local government it conferred larger, but it ought not to have
+been as purely democratic as it is; and it ought to have been accompanied
+by safeguards it does not possess. I would have been disposed to give the
+Irish County Councils a right to take evidence for private Bills on the
+spot; this, if transmitted to the Irish Privy Council, and considered by
+it, might be made the basis of reports by that body, which could be turned
+into Acts of Parliament, by a summary process, thus getting rid of great
+and useless expense, and silencing one of the few real arguments in favour
+of Home Rule. I would also have allowed the County Councils of different
+counties, in matters in which they had a common interest, say, in the
+drainage of some of the great Irish rivers, to carry out together public
+works of this kind, and to assess and levy rates for the purpose if, on
+consideration, this was deemed expedient; at present they have no
+authority like this; and such a power would, I think, be for the general
+good of Ireland. The County Councils, too, I believe, might be given a
+deliberative voice, in cases they have not at present; for example, should
+the rate-payers of any county make a demand for sectarian education,
+within its area, and declare themselves ready to pay a rate for it, the
+County Council should have a right to entertain the project, and to report
+on it to the Central Government. And I am convinced that members of the
+County Councils ought to have some seats on the Local Government Board,
+and on other boards now filled by the Castle bureaucracy; this would
+introduce a popular element into these bodies, and, in many ways, would be
+of real advantage. On the other hand, in the election and the constitution
+of the County and other Councils, democracy has simply been let run riot;
+and the resulting evils have already been made manifest. Illiterate
+persons ought not to have been qualified to be electors; the single should
+not have replaced the cumulative vote, property being thus deprived of its
+legitimate weight; above all, as is evident, security should have been
+taken that the landed gentry should have a proper representation on the
+County Councils. The authority, too, of the Superior Courts over all these
+assemblies should have been made more effective and less costly than it is
+at present; and that of the Local Government Board should have been better
+defined and increased. In all this province the checks possessed by the
+Central Government over these local democracies are not, I think,
+sufficient.
+
+It is impossible, I have remarked, to say with certainty what the end of
+this social revolution will be; but some of the results are, even now,
+apparent. There has, as yet, been little tendency in the local boards to
+waste, or to attempts to despoil the landed gentry; the check in this
+respect is of great force; but no one, I repeat, can predict what may be
+done under the influence of democratic sympathies, especially should the
+existing agitation acquire increased strength in Ireland. Some of the
+councils have been very fairly managed; a few others have been badly
+administered; as a rule, much time has been misspent in irrelevant talk;
+there has been a good deal of squabbling with the Local Government Board;
+but, on the whole, the local business of the counties and towns has been
+conducted as reasonably well as could be expected in the case of a new and
+immense experiment. But the consequences of giving raw democracies great
+and sudden power have already been made but too manifest, as persons, who
+knew Ireland, foresaw would happen. In parts of Ulster representatives of
+the landed gentry have been elected to the County Councils; property in
+these has still legitimate influence. But in Leinster, Munster, and
+Connaught, this order of men has been all but completely shut out from
+these boards; the land is not represented at all; this is an absolutely
+unnatural position of affairs, pregnant with many ills to the community as
+a whole. It is not only that the landed gentry have been deprived of an
+influence they ought to possess, in a society in any degree well ordered;
+this change has a tendency to make them more and more, what they have
+largely been made already, a privileged class without duties, akin to the
+old seigneurie of France, a state of things of which Tocqueville has
+powerfully described the evils. In the southern provinces, too, the new
+democracies, composed of Catholic 'Nationalists,' by large majorities,
+have driven loyal, and especially Protestant, men and women from local
+offices they had filled with credit, and this too at a considerable charge
+on the rates, a clear proof how no restraints can be wholly effective. But
+the main feature in the conduct of the County and other Councils is that
+in most parts of Ireland they have followed the advice given by Parnell to
+their weaker forerunners; they have made themselves agencies of the United
+Irish League, as boards before them were agencies of the Land and the
+National Leagues, and they have given but too ample proof of disaffection,
+disloyalty, and hatred of British rule. In some counties, the councils
+seized the court houses, and refused light and fire to the Superior and
+the County Court judges. Throughout the South of Ireland most of the
+boards vied with each other in wild expressions of sympathy with the
+Boers, and of hopes that disaster would befall the British army; many gave
+free voice to frankly rebellious language; many denounced Irishmen being
+recruited for the British army. Nor did these sinister exhibitions end
+here; some of these bodies went out of their way to sneer at their aged
+sovereign, when she paid last year her last visit to the Irish shores, to
+question her motives, to speak all kinds of evil; a few even refused to
+say a word of regret for her death, nay, indulged in language of scarcely
+veiled insult. These councils, in a word, in a number of instances, have
+shown a marked resemblance to the Assemblies of the Communes of Jacobin
+France, indignantly held up to execration by Burke; they have been petty
+nests of seditious agitation and clamour. It is at least well that this
+manner of men has not succeeded, in the great statesman's language, in
+'ascending from parochial tyranny to federal anarchy' and have warned us
+what would be the nature of a Home Rule Parliament.
+
+This scheme of local government must be given a trial; but ultimately it
+will have to be reformed, in a Conservative sense, if things in Ireland
+are not to be left upside down.[184] I turn to the subject of Irish
+education, which has been lately attracting much public attention.
+University education is the most prominent part of this question; but, in
+order to understand it, we must briefly consider the history of Irish
+education in all its branches. The first scheme of primary education in
+Ireland, of which we have a record--I pass over the traditions of the
+Middle Ages--was due to the policy of Henry VIII.; he procured an Act
+from the Irish Parliament, to the effect that elementary schools should be
+set up in different Irish parishes; but, true to the ideal of Tudor
+statesmen--an ideal, however, which he did not always pursue--he required
+that these should be 'English schools,' to teach the Irish poor 'the
+English language.' Many years passed before these schools were found
+beyond the borders of the Pale; but, as the march of conquest advanced,
+they existed in many Irish parishes; there were more than five hundred of
+them in 1810, the largest number probably they ever attained. These
+schools were originally intended to be open without distinction of creed;
+but, under the conditions of Irish history, they necessarily became
+confined to the lower Protestant classes; they were under the control of
+the clergy of the Established Church, and Catholic children were kept away
+from them. Elizabeth founded another class of schools, in part elementary,
+in part of a higher type; these were known as the Diocesan Irish Schools;
+but there seem never to have been more than sixteen of these; and they,
+too, became exclusively Protestant. To these schools should be added 'the
+English Erasmus Smith Schools,' as they were called, foundations grafted,
+so to speak, on grammar schools established by a wealthy Cromwellian
+settler; at one time they were more than one hundred in number; and if not
+wholly, they were nearly confined to Protestant children. A series of
+Reports of Commissions and other records show that the education afforded
+in all these schools was not what it ought to have been; but this was to
+be expected in the case of a country where Protestant ascendency was
+supreme, where all administration was selfish and corrupt, and where the
+schools were the monopoly of a fraction of the people only. As to the
+education of the Irish Catholic poor in these centuries, it was
+discouraged, and ultimately prohibited by the penal code; the Catholic
+child could not learn the rudiments in his own land; but in spite of
+this, 'hedge schools,' a significant name, grew up, in hundreds,
+throughout the country, in which, to adopt the words of Davis, a man of
+genius--
+
+  'Still crouching 'neath the sheltering hedge, or stretched on mountain
+        fern,
+  The teacher and his pupils met feloniously to learn.'
+
+As may, however, be supposed the instruction afforded in these schools was
+usually bad; throughout the eighteenth century and a part of the
+nineteenth, the young of Catholic Ireland were brought up in ignorance. In
+1733 an odious experiment was made, and continued for a long period, to
+cause education to wean the Catholic child from his faith. An institution,
+called the Charter School, was established; the object of its founders was
+to make 'the young of the Papists' Protestant, by attracting them to
+seminaries where they were kept apart from their parents and priests,
+boarded, lodged, and handed over to Protestant tradesmen; millions were
+spent in furthering a detestable policy, which literally set up Mammon
+against God. The Charter Schools, however, completely failed; they never
+had more than fourteen hundred pupils, and they became wretched Dotheboys
+Halls where cruel and pampered Squeerses, eating up funds set apart for
+education such as it was, starved and ill-treated children victims of
+every kind of disease.
+
+When the partial relaxation of the penal laws allowed the children of the
+Irish Catholics to be taught the rudiments, the 'Christian Brothers' began
+to found their schools, under the sanction of a Bull of Pius VI.; these
+schools, sectarian, like the genius of the Irish people, have, though
+receiving no endowment from the State, grown from small beginnings into a
+number of excellent Catholic schools. The Quakers in Ireland had
+established a few elementary schools before the Union; and so had the
+Presbyterians of Ulster. The Charter Schools lingered down to the year
+1832; they disappeared when their subsidies ceased; but the 'Incorporated
+Irish Society' is in possession of the lands they once held, and it
+supports a number of good Protestant schools. Primary education, however,
+in Ireland remained very backward; the Protestant schools did not
+flourish; the Catholic 'hedge schools' continued until the nineteenth
+century had far advanced. Attempts were made to promote Irish primary
+education, in different ways, after the Union; a Board of Commissioners of
+Education was appointed, and made valuable reports; but these efforts were
+of little avail for the benefit at least of the Catholic young; the
+schools thus established were all Protestant; and the evangelical
+movement, which was then powerful, made them proselytising with scarcely a
+single exception, a danger which the example of the Charter Schools had
+especially made the Catholic Irish priesthood dread. An institution,
+however, called the 'Kildare Place Schools' had, for a time, considerable
+success; these schools were thrown open to children of all creeds, and had
+the high approval of O'Connell himself; but it was one of the rules that
+the Bible should be read in the schools; they became proselytising in no
+doubtful sense, and ultimately they were tabooed by the Catholic
+priesthood. Primary education in Ireland was in this state, when the
+subject was taken up by Mr. Stanley, the Chief Secretary for Ireland of
+Lord Grey, and, in after years, the 'Rupert of Debate.' He founded in
+1831-34 what has ever since been known as the 'National System of
+Education' of an elementary kind in Ireland. The principles on which he
+proceeded were in accord with the somewhat shallow Liberalism of the day,
+but, it must be added, with the ideas of many enlightened Irishmen.
+Primary education was to be endowed by the State, but it was to be divided
+into two parts: secular instruction was to be given in the new schools to
+children assembled together to learn, and that without distinction of
+creed; but religious instruction was to be given to children kept apart,
+Protestants and Catholics being completely separate, by the pastors of
+their respective communions. By these means it was hoped that a sound
+system of primary education would be formed; that proselytising would be
+made impossible; and that the youth of the warring races and faiths of
+Ireland, under the influence of a common teaching, would be made gradually
+to forget the animosities of the past. The National Schools were to be the
+Lethe of Irish discords.
+
+I can barely glance at the chequered history of the institution which was
+thus established. The 'National System,' the name long in common use, was
+angrily condemned by the clergy of the Established Church of Ireland, and
+by a majority, perhaps, of the laity; this opposition was partly due to
+the spirit of an ascendency that would not brook equality; but it was
+largely to be ascribed to a higher motive. The new system, it was argued,
+cut education in two; the separation of what is secular from what is
+religious practically postpones what is divine to the human; and this is
+especially the case under the arrangements in force, for religious
+instruction in the schools may be a mere accident. The Irish Protestant
+clergy, and many other Protestants, have never taken to the National
+Schools; their sincerity is proved by the fact that a 'Church Education
+Society' exists, which, though depending on voluntary subscriptions alone,
+supports nearly two hundred exclusively Protestant schools. As for the
+Presbyterians of Ireland, the National system of education fell in with
+their views; its 'Liberalism' was congenial to them; but though schools of
+this type have flourished in Ulster, the Presbyterians have given a great
+deal of trouble to the Commissioners charged to carry out the law, and
+have shown much animosity to the Catholic Irish. The Irish Catholic
+priesthood at first accepted the National system almost with gratitude; it
+gave their flocks a rudimentary instruction they were much in need of; it
+seemed to provide against the proselytising they feared above all things;
+and during some years the heads of their Church in Ireland, for the most
+part not of the Ultramontane faith, were not indisposed to welcome a
+compromise. By degrees, however, opposition grew up in Catholic Ireland
+against the system; and, it must be allowed, not without reason. The
+Catholic element on the Commission was much too weak; the purely secular
+instruction in the schools was made partly religious, for books of a
+Protestant complexion found their way into them; a cry of Protestant
+proselytising was raised; and the National system was solemnly condemned
+in 1850, at the great Catholic Synod of Thurles, a sentence, however,
+which had no effect on the Government. But the real grievances of the
+Irish Catholics, in this matter, have nearly all been removed; the
+Catholic Commissioners have been made equal in number with the
+Presbyterian and Protestant; secular instruction in the schools has again
+been made strictly secular; attempts at proselytising have long been
+rendered impossible; it should be added--and this is very important--the
+Catholic priesthood have become the managers of a large majority of the
+schools. The system has certainly struck deep roots in Ireland; there are
+now nearly 9000 National Schools, endowed with about L1,300,000 by the
+State, and teaching nearly 800,000 pupils; they are supported by model and
+training schools, and have a large staff of competent teachers; the
+instruction they afford, if not remarkable, is, on the whole, sufficiently
+good. It may fairly be said that the National system has been a beneficent
+influence of the greatest value; light has shone on a people that once
+sate in darkness. The system, however, has become, insensibly, but
+greatly, changed; the National Schools have long been, for the most part,
+sectarian, that is, composed of Protestant or of Catholic children; the
+'mixed' schools, as they are called, are comparatively few. But the main
+principle of the system still is in force; the instruction given in the
+schools, when the pupils sit together, is strictly secular; and this is
+secured by a conscience clause; the Bible cannot be read, in school hours,
+even in a Protestant school; no Catholic school can have a Catholic
+emblem. The religious instruction given in the schools is hardly what it
+ought to be, especially in the case of the Protestant schools; it must be
+added that the hope of their founders that they would bridge over the gulf
+of discords in Ireland has not been, in the slightest degree, realised.
+
+The Irish are, naturally, a religious people; their history, a long
+conflict of races and faiths, has, necessarily, made them intensely
+sectarian. The system of education, of which I have traced the outlines,
+was certainly not well designed for them; it would have been severely
+condemned by Burke, the deepest of thinkers on the affairs of Ireland. And
+though the National system has had a real measure of success, it owes
+this, in the main, to the immense subvention it receives from the State;
+it has little or no support from voluntary aid; an attempt to impose an
+education rate on Ireland would be a failure, would not improbably wreck
+the system. Nor is this in harmony with genuine Irish sentiment; one of
+the most conclusive proofs is that National education has become, to a
+great extent, sectarian; the 'Christian Brothers' and the 'Church
+Education Society' schools, sustained by voluntary effort alone, and
+overweighted in the race by the endowed schools of the State, show how
+strong is Irish sectarian feeling. The clergy, too, of the late
+Established Church, and a considerable body of their communion, remain
+hostile to the National Schools; and though the Catholic priesthood have
+made them, to a great extent, their own, and avail themselves of the
+advantages they afford, they are hardly in heartfelt sympathy with them.
+Nor can it be denied that the conscientious objections to the National
+system have real weight; the system, if not irreligious, is, we may say,
+neutral; it does not make religion an essential part of school life. It
+would, nevertheless, I believe, be exceedingly unwise to disturb a system
+which, on the whole, has for many years had excellent results in Ireland.
+The opposition to it is not strong; the children of the humbler classes
+freely avail themselves of it, and that with the full consent of their
+parents. Nor is the conscientious objection of much force in the case of
+schools which are only day schools, and in which the rudiments alone are
+taught; this is not the case of education of the higher kind, in which
+this objection is perhaps decisive; and it cannot be said that the
+National Schools have, in any sense, impaired the religion of the Irish
+people.[185]
+
+I pass from elementary to schools of a secondary kind in Ireland. The
+Diocesan Schools of Elizabeth were nearly all secondary schools; but they
+were never numerous, and have all but disappeared. The two first Stuarts
+made an attempt to establish secondary education in Ireland on a larger
+scale. They founded the 'Free Royal Schools,' as they have been called,
+now seen at Armagh, Cavan, Dungannon, Portora, and Raphoe; they endowed
+them with lands perhaps worth in our day, L6000 a year; they looked
+forward to a time when they might rival Eton, Winchester, and the great
+public schools of England. Erasmus Smith established three considerable
+'grammar schools,' and granted valuable estates for their support; a
+tolerably large number of secondary schools was also founded, from time to
+time, by benefactors of the dominant race in Ireland: of these Kilkenny
+College, a seminary created by the House of Ormond, which reared Swift and
+Berkeley, was the most conspicuous. These schools, though often nominally
+open to different creeds, became, nevertheless, in the eighteenth century,
+under the Protestant ascendency, supreme in the land, restricted to the
+young of the Protestant caste; they felt the effects of monopoly, and of
+the corruption prevailing in the State; the education they afforded was,
+for the most part, bad; their governing bodies and masters were often
+grasping and selfish. After the relaxation of the penal code, the Irish
+Catholics began to found secondary schools; their exertions were, in a
+high degree, praiseworthy; and though these schools received no support
+from the State, some of them have done really excellent work. A number,
+too, of secondary schools were established in Ulster, for the most part
+for Presbyterian uses; some of these are sectarian, some open to all
+faiths; some have, others have not, received assistance from the State; in
+several the education given has been, on the whole, good. A few secondary
+schools--St. Columba is much the best--have also been founded within the
+last century, usually for the benefit of the late Established Church of
+Ireland.
+
+The progress made by secondary schools in Ireland, even in the nineteenth
+century, has not been rapid. It is not to be named with the immense
+development of public schools in England, within the same period, caused,
+in some measure, by the genius of Arnold; secondary Irish schools, in
+fact, have been largely a failure, like other institutions of British
+origin. This is mainly to be attributed to three reasons: the higher upper
+classes in Ireland usually send their sons to be educated in the great
+English public schools; the Irish secondary schools are seldom well
+endowed; above all, the upper middle class in Ireland is small and has
+little influence. Two Commissions, appointed in 1854 and in 1878, examined
+secondary education in Ireland as it then existed; their reports give a
+far from favourable account of the system. The secondary Irish schools
+have not been much affected by an Act of Parliament passed in 1885, which
+provided for making better schemes for their management; but certainly
+they have derived very great benefit from the Intermediate Education Act
+of Lord Cairns, which established a system of competition between them,
+and secured prizes for successful competitors. In these honourable trials
+the Catholic schools have done well; but even now the secondary schools
+are decidedly inferior to what they ought to be, and do not exhibit many
+signs of improvement. An impartial inquirer thus described them in
+1871:[186] 'Upon the whole, secondary instruction, throughout the country,
+was as some one--I believe Lord Cairns--said, "bad in quality and
+deficient in quantity." The fact seems incredible, but there can be no
+doubt of its authenticity, viz. that out of a total population of
+5,500,000, there were only 10,814 boys in Ireland learning Latin, Greek,
+or modern languages in 1871. Or, to put the matter in another way, while
+in England about ten or fifteen in every 1000 were instructed in these
+languages, only two in every 1000 were instructed in them in
+Ireland.'[187]
+
+I pass on to University life in Ireland, the question, I have said, most
+prominent at this time. Ireland had no Oxford or Cambridge in the Middle
+Ages; an attempt to establish a University in Dublin failed; science and
+literature could not grow up in a land distracted by feudal and tribal
+strife, and in which two Churches were continually at war with each other.
+Elizabeth founded Trinity College towards the close of her reign, on the
+site of a monastery that had been suppressed; it was the intention of the
+queen, and of her two first successors, that this seminary should expand
+into a University in the true sense, containing a number of colleges
+within its sphere, and probably open to all students whatever their race
+or their faith. This happy consummation, however, was made impossible
+during the long period of civil war and trouble, which only came to an end
+with that of the seventeenth century. Trinity College remained a single
+foundation; and, in the era of Protestant ascendency that ensued, when
+Catholic Ireland lay under the ban of the penal code, it necessarily
+became an exclusively Protestant place of learning, its dignities, its
+honours, nay, admission to it, being reserved to members of the
+Established Church. It had, however, been amply endowed; and, from an
+early period, it possessed many distinguished worthies, the names of
+Ussher, of King, of Browne, and of others, being still remembered. Trinity
+College, strange to say, was very High Church during the reigns of the two
+last Stuarts and of Anne; its leading divines preached the creed of
+passive obedience; and it was remarkable for its aversion to Presbyterian
+Ireland, as was clearly shown in the diatribes of Swift. The college,
+however, became Whiggish and Low Church during the reign of Walpole--its
+Provost was appointed by the Crown; and until nearly the close of the
+eighteenth century, its professorships, its fellowships, its scholarships,
+its degrees, even entrance to its walls, were strictly confined to the
+dominant communion of the Anglican Church. But a liberal spirit grew up,
+and gained strength within it; this appears in many of the admirable
+writings of Berkeley, breathing the ideas that afterwards inspired
+Grattan, and in the histories of Leland and Warner, on the whole just to
+the vanquished Catholic people; and after the almost National movement
+which produced the Revolution of 1782, Trinity College took a remarkable
+step, which proved that it was in advance of the politics of that age. In
+1793, when the Irish Parliament passed a great measure of Catholic relief,
+the college made Catholics eligible for its degrees and its minor prizes;
+and, but that its statutes made this impossible, it would, perhaps, have
+allowed Catholics to become professors, fellows, and scholars--in short,
+to have a share in its dignities and its government. Nothing like this was
+done at Oxford and Cambridge until the nineteenth century had run far its
+course.
+
+From this time onwards Trinity College, accessible to Presbyterians some
+years before, received Catholics honourably within its precincts. A few
+distinguished Catholic Irishmen have obtained the excellent education it
+has always afforded; and these have been treated with scrupulous fairness;
+no attempt at proselytising has ever been made or thought of. Their
+numbers, however, have never been large; and they were necessarily placed
+in an inferior position, for they could not become professors, fellows, or
+scholars; the college remained an institution essentially Protestant, even
+anti-Catholic, in much of its teaching, for example, in the predilection
+it long showed for Locke. The college continued to thrive and to make
+progress; the reproach cast on it that she was the 'silent sister,' was
+rather due to the want of publishing enterprise in the Irish capital, than
+to any deficiency in literary power; at all events, it has long ago been
+removed; Trinity College has stood for a century in the foremost rank of
+places of learning famed for scientific eminence. In 1843-44 an attempt
+was made to introduce Catholics on the foundation, as scholars; but this
+was prohibited by the statutes; some 'non-foundation' scholarships were
+then endowed; and Catholics were enabled to compete for them. This was the
+position of the college, when, in 1844-45, after the agitation for Repeal
+had shown how disaffected Catholic Ireland still was, Peel turned his mind
+to Irish remedial measures, and among these to a reform of high education
+in Ireland. His policy was to maintain the Union intact, and all the
+institutions closely connected with it, but to create institutions, so to
+speak, alongside of these, to which Irish Presbyterians, and Catholics
+especially, might freely resort, in complete equality with all Irishmen;
+he therefore left Trinity College exactly as it was, but resolved to
+establish and endow places of learning, which he hoped would be popular
+supplements to it, and would give a University training to students who,
+as affairs stood, were not on the same level as the favoured Protestants
+in it. He founded the Queen's Colleges of Belfast, of Cork, and of Galway;
+these were supplied with an ample staff of professors, endowed, and given
+the means to bestow many prizes; and they were affiliated to the Queen's
+University, empowered to confer degrees. The principle on which these
+institutions were formed was, following the so-called liberalism of the
+time, almost exactly the same as that on which the Irish National Schools
+had been based. Secular education in them was to be united, religious
+education was to be kept apart; their students were to learn the things
+that belonged to this world together; but as to what belonged to another
+world, this teaching was to be provided by their pastors outside their
+colleges, and they were not to have it in common. The colleges, and the
+University, therefore, were essentially seats of non-religious knowledge;
+religious equality, it was said, could be only thus secured; and residence
+in the colleges was not required.
+
+The principle pervading the Irish National education system was certainly
+open to grave objections; these became infinitely stronger, when it was
+applied to a system of high education in Ireland. Secular instruction
+could be really combined, and given to children together, when limited to
+the first rudiments: how could it be combined when it should embrace such
+subjects as moral philosophy, metaphysics, modern history, nay, physical
+science, and when taught to young men of the University age? Besides,
+religious instruction, without a great shock to conscience, could be made
+a subordinate consideration in mere day schools: how could it,
+consistently with Christian duty, be practically excluded from a
+University course, and left to undergraduates to be dealt with as they
+might think fit, and that at the most critical time of their life?
+Indifference to the Divine, masked in specious 'liberal' phrases, was, in
+truth, the cardinal feature of this scheme; it would have been severely
+reprobated by Burke; it was repugnant to the ideas of five-sixths of
+Irishmen; its tendency was to form minds in superior men, like those of
+Hume and Gibbon, in inferior men, to produce infidel, even atheistic,
+sentiments. It was denounced as 'godless' in the House of Commons by the
+High Church party; it was condemned by O'Connell, from the outset, though
+the men of 'Young Ireland' were not adverse; after some hesitation, it was
+rejected unequivocally by the Irish Catholic bishops,[188] and finally was
+held up to anathema at the Synod of Thurles. That the bishops were sincere
+is proved by the fact, that they established the Irish Catholic University
+a few years afterwards--the first head of this creation was Newman; and
+the foundation has been maintained ever since, though it could not give a
+degree, and it received nothing from the State, and its only funds were
+the contributions of a poor communion, a noble example of self-sacrifice
+and of a true sense of duty. Meanwhile, the Queen's Colleges and
+University were kept up and endowed, at the rate of about L30,000 a year;
+the College of Belfast has done well, for it falls in with Presbyterian
+ideas; but the Colleges of Cork and of Galway, notably the last, have been
+sorry, nay, almost useless, failures; and Peel's hope that his project
+would secure a good University training to Irish Catholics of the better
+class has not been, to any real extent, fulfilled. Trinity College
+remained for many years unchanged, that is, it gave an admirable education
+to a very few Catholics; but it continued to be a Protestant institution
+in its essential nature; its governing body and its hierarchy were all
+Protestant; its teaching was Protestant in some of its parts; its higher
+honours were a monopoly of the favoured communion.
+
+The extreme unfairness of this University system, the ascendency secured
+to Trinity College, which, admirable institution as it was, was
+practically nearly confined to Protestants of the upper class; the
+failure, with respect to Catholic Ireland, of the Queen's Colleges and the
+Queen's University, and the large and useless expenditure this involved;
+above all, the denial to the Catholic University of any share in the
+bounty of the State, though its claim to it could be hardly
+doubtful,--attracted the attention of several statesmen, from 1850 to
+1870; but nothing was done, or even attempted. The subject was taken up by
+Mr. Gladstone, with characteristic earnestness, during his first Ministry;
+he declared that University education in Ireland was 'a scandal;' indeed,
+Irish education of the higher kind was the third branch of the upas tree
+which threw its baleful shade over the land. He brought in a measure of
+reform in the session of 1873; it was an ambitious and a comprehensive
+scheme; but it was much the worst of his Irish reforms of this period; and
+it ended in complete and disastrous failure. With the historical instinct
+occasionally seen in his legislation, Mr. Gladstone proposed to revive the
+idea of Elizabeth and the first Stuarts, and to found a great National
+University, which was to have the management and control of the higher
+education throughout Ireland. The governing body of this new institution
+was to be composed partly of men chosen by the Lord-Lieutenant, and partly
+of the heads of the colleges to be connected with it; and it was to have
+the sole power of conferring degrees in Ireland. Trinity College was to
+hand over to the National University a sum of L12,000 a year, that is,
+more than a fourth of its endowments from the State; its professorships,
+its fellowships, its scholarships, in a word, all its prizes, were to be
+thrown open to all its students whatever their faith; but in most other
+respects it was not to be essentially changed, except as to the power of
+granting degrees. Trinity College was to be affiliated to the National
+University as a dependent college, and so were a number of minor colleges;
+but this remarkable distinction was made in homage to the 'liberalism' of
+the day: the Queen's Colleges, that of Galway being suppressed as useless,
+were to retain the endowments they received from the State, on the ground
+that they were free to all comers; but the Catholic University was not to
+obtain a shilling, nor yet other colleges of a sectarian type, on the
+ground that they were 'close and exclusive,' this being the case of all
+the Catholic colleges that could be affiliated to the new foundation. The
+Queen's University was to be abolished, for the National University was to
+be sole and supreme; and then came provisions, which, strange as they may
+appear at first sight, were perhaps inevitable under the conditions on
+which the project was formed. Moral philosophy, metaphysics, and modern
+history were shut out from the National University course; they might be
+taught in the colleges, but were to be no part of University learning. And
+the National University, like the Queen's Colleges, was to be
+'non-religious;' its system of education was to be secular and united,
+that is its students were to be examined together in secular learning, but
+in religious matters they were to stand apart; religion, indeed, might be
+a subject of college teaching, but it was not to be heard of within the
+University walls; in fact, it was probably to be left to the students and
+their clergy.
+
+This complicated measure, not easy thoroughly to understand, was
+sustained, for a few days, by the glamour of Mr. Gladstone's rhetoric. But
+ere long it arrayed against it an immense preponderance of opinion in
+Ireland, and was assailed with fatal effect in the House of Commons. The
+Heads of Trinity College took the initiative in declaring against it; in
+debates, wise, patriotic, and just alike, they recognised the claims of
+Catholic Ireland; but they protested against the wrong being done to the
+great and ancient foundation they represented, and especially against the
+degradation to which it was subjected by the Bill. Trinity College was to
+be deprived for no reason of a large part of its revenue; it was to be
+placed under a governing body, in which nominees of the Castle would be
+all-powerful--an influence pernicious to its independence and
+self-government; above all, the National University was to supplant it,
+and was to exclude from its teaching the noblest studies of the intellect
+of man. The Platonism which had inspired Berkeley, the records which had
+animated the genius of Burke, and had been fostered in the Alma mater of
+these great worthies, were to be banished from a foundation which was to
+be made the head of University life in Ireland. These sentiments were
+fully shared by enlightened Irishmen: that moral and metaphysical science
+and modern history should be virtually proscribed in the University about
+to be set up, was, as it were, putting out one of the eyes of the
+intellect, effacing what was best in the map of knowledge. But the most
+decisive condemnation of the scheme was that pronounced by the Irish
+Catholic bishops. Like their predecessors of nearly thirty years before,
+and the Anglican High Church party of that day, they asserted that the
+project was really 'godless;' it was irreligion in the mask of
+non-religion; its liberalism was in the highest degree illiberal, for it
+offered their flocks a system of education it was known they would reject;
+and it was flagrantly, nay, basely, unjust, for while Trinity College, and
+the Queen's Colleges, and the Queen's University, were to remain endowed,
+the Catholic University and all Catholic colleges were to get nothing from
+the State. These arguments made their way into the House of Commons, and
+were vindicated in speeches of great ability. Disraeli dwelt especially on
+the poverty and the imperfection of a University scheme, in which the
+finest branches of knowledge were not to enter; he frankly denounced the
+Bill as 'atheistic,' an epithet which Burke assuredly would have fastened
+on it. Other speakers, notably Ball, a very brilliant Irishman, enlarged
+on the wrong done to Trinity College, and earnestly advocated the Catholic
+claims; not only was the minister offering a stone for bread, he was
+virtually trying to bribe the Irish Catholic into accepting institutions
+he disliked, and in the attempt was deeply offending his conscience.
+Notwithstanding the efforts of a powerful Government, the Bill was
+rejected by the House of Commons; nearly all the Irish members voted
+against it, and so did the best men of the Liberal party.
+
+The year that witnessed the collapse of Mr. Gladstone's measure,
+witnessed, also, a reform of Trinity College conceived in the spirit of
+the 'liberalism' of the hour, and hailed as an illustration of what is
+called progress. The government, the dignities, and the prizes of the
+college were thrown open to all without regard to their creed; this was
+welcomed as 'University equality' in the most perfect sense. It is a
+mistake to suppose that a corresponding change was ever made at Oxford and
+Cambridge; the extension of their privileges to persons whatever their
+faith, has, thanks to the exertions of the late Lord Selborne, been
+strictly confined to lay offices; the religious character and teaching of
+the Universities have been carefully preserved.[189] Though Trinity
+College has been made 'non-religious' by this measure, and that to such a
+degree that its governing body might conceivably be composed of avowed
+atheists, it has, nevertheless, to this day remained a Protestant
+institution in all essential respects. Its professors, fellows, and
+scholars have, since 1873, been nearly all Protestants; its Catholic
+students are not eight in a hundred of the number as a whole; and the
+chief practical result of the late reform has been to make the heads of
+the Irish Catholic Church more opposed than before to seeing Catholics
+enter its precincts. In 1879, Lord Beaconsfield's Ministry made an attempt
+to diminish the injustice done to Irish Catholics by the system of
+University education still in force in Ireland. The Queen's University was
+abolished; a Royal University was established, which was enabled to confer
+degrees on, and to give prizes to, the students of the Catholic University
+and other colleges; but the Royal University is a mere Examining Board; it
+is not a University properly so called. One incident connected with this
+institution deserves attention; the success of the students of Catholic
+colleges at the Royal University examinations has been so great, that it
+ought to silence jeers at the 'superstition' which keeps them back, the
+vulgar cant of ignorant prejudice or worse.[190] Meanwhile the iniquities
+and anomalies of the Irish University system have continued but very
+little changed.[191] Trinity College remains a Protestant institution
+well endowed, almost a monopoly of the Protestant upper class in Ireland,
+practically little resorted to by Irish Catholics; the Queen's Colleges
+are avoided by the Irish Catholics, as being 'irreligious' if called
+'non-religious,' though the College of Belfast suits Presbyterian views;
+they, too, receive a large bounty from the State; but the Catholic
+University, the true seminary for the upper middle Catholic classes, and
+now divided into different colleges, is still, as such, left out in the
+cold. Its students, no doubt, can obtain Royal University degrees, and
+some of its professors have been placed as examiners on that foundation;
+but it is the veriest mockery to call this justice when we look at Trinity
+College and the Queen's Colleges. 'The words of scripture are reversed,'
+in Macaulay's language; 'the rich are filled with good things and the
+hungry are sent empty away.'
+
+I do not envy those who, whatever their reasons, refuse to acknowledge the
+wrong done by these arrangements. It will hardly be denied, in the
+twentieth century, that Protestant ascendency ought not to exist in any
+sphere of Irish affairs, and that in University life, as in all matters,
+Irish Catholics ought to have civil equality, and that without a violation
+of the rights of conscience. It has been triumphantly maintained that, in
+high education, these conditions are actually fulfilled in Ireland;
+Trinity College and the Queen's Colleges are accessible to all students,
+without regard to their religion or no religion; these have a perfectly
+equal right to share in the government and the honours of institutions
+thrown completely open. But those who argue in this way either shut their
+eyes to facts, or will not perceive that this fine 'liberalism' in Ireland
+works sheer injustice. Catholics are but a handful of students in Trinity
+College and the Queen's Colleges compared to what their natural proportion
+ought to be; Trinity College, if nominally open, is in all essential
+respects Protestant; the Queen's Colleges as being 'non-religious,' that
+is, in the view of their Church 'irreligious,' are practically avoided by
+Irish Catholics; yet the State endows Trinity College and the Queen's
+Colleges; it starves the Catholic University and other Catholic colleges,
+which are thus unfairly handicapped by their rivals. If this is not
+furthering Protestant ascendency in Irish high education, and denying
+civil equality to Irish Catholics who, in this matter, will not forego the
+rights of conscience, I do not know what else it can be; it seems to me to
+be iniquity in no doubtful sense. And are the objections of the Irish
+Catholics, in this province, as 'irrational' and 'superstitious' as has
+been scoffingly said? Reverse the case of Trinity College: suppose that
+England was a Catholic Power, and that she kept up a great Catholic
+University in the Irish capital, discountenancing Protestant institutions
+in many ways, how many Protestants would enter its walls, how soon would
+the cry of Catholic ascendency be raised? Or suppose that Oxford and
+Cambridge were made 'non-religious,' as the Queen's Colleges in Ireland
+are, would not an immense majority of English parents declare that these
+seats of learning were 'godless,' and persistently keep their sons away
+from them? The simple truth is that the Catholic objections to Trinity
+College and the Queen's Colleges are really those which, in this matter,
+have been entertained by the deepest thinkers; to my mind, at least, they
+seem perfectly well-founded. As to the statement that these objections are
+those of the Irish Catholic bishops alone, and are mere 'superstitious
+fancies,' it is enough to reply that, on two occasions, the Irish
+Catholic laity have distinctly pronounced on this subject, and have
+declared that they agree with the heads of their Church. And as to the
+argument that Catholic States do not endow sectarian institutions like the
+Catholic University and other Irish Catholic colleges, it will be quite
+time enough to examine this when anything like such a state of things can
+be found as that which at present exists in Ireland.
+
+One argument, however, seldom frankly set forth, but hinted at in a
+variety of ways, has been a real obstacle to a reform of this vicious
+system; it strongly appeals to British national prejudice, of all
+aberrations of opinion the most difficult to overcome. 'Popery,' it is
+said, is a 'detestable thing;' a 'Protestant' State 'must have nothing to
+do with it;' to endow a Catholic University in Ireland, therefore, or any
+colleges of the same complexion, would be 'sacrificing to Baal,' or
+something as wicked. Catholic Ireland must put up with Trinity College and
+the Queen's Colleges, which have been made open to all sorts and
+conditions of men; its 'conscientious objections' are mere 'bigotry.' This
+reasoning, which condemns as impious the religion of the greatest part of
+Christendom, would unfortunately overthrow many arrangements by which
+provision has been made in our 'Protestant' State for Catholic
+institutions of different kinds; if pushed to its consequences, it would
+revive the penal code in Ireland, and lead to the confiscation of Catholic
+charities. But though it has still indirectly an effect on some
+politicians, it is, in its naked simplicity, only the faith of Mr. Kensit
+and of those who walk in his footsteps; it is worthy of the philosophy of
+Lord George Gordon, of the meekness of Orangeism, of the bray of Exeter
+Hall. For some time a turn in British opinion has happily taken place;
+'liberalism,' it has been perceived, in Irish University education has
+failed; Mr. Arthur Balfour has made himself conspicuous in advocating the
+just claims of Catholic Ireland. Even as I write a Commission is being
+appointed to consider the whole subject of University life in Ireland;
+there can be no reasonable doubt that it will fully bring to light the
+anomalies and the unfairness of the existing system, and will recommend
+that the Catholic University, and other Catholic colleges perhaps, shall
+be endowed. In truth, things have already come to such a pass that Trinity
+College, the one institution of which, it is said, 'all Irishmen are
+really proud,' will, owing to the exceptional favour it receives from the
+State, be placed in grave danger, and the Queen's Colleges also, if a
+Catholic University in Ireland be not established and endowed, in order to
+secure to the Irish Catholic civil equality, in high education, through
+the assistance of the State.[192]
+
+On what principles, then, and by what means, is University education in
+Ireland to be so reformed as to do equal justice to all Irishmen, to place
+Protestants, Presbyterians, and Catholics on the same level, and,
+especially, to vindicate the rightful claims of Catholic Ireland? Two
+leading projects have at least been sketched out: the first, the grander
+and the more ambitious, but, in my judgment, scarcely possible to carry
+into effect; the second, more simple, more in harmony with existing facts,
+and, I think, safer and much more easy to realise. The first scheme,
+following in some respects the measure of Mr. Gladstone of 1873, but
+making a marked improvement on it, would aim at establishing and endowing
+a National University for all Irishmen, which should have a power to
+confer degrees, in common with the Royal University now existing, and
+should have an ample professional staff; it should have its examinations
+for degrees and for other honours. The governing body of this University
+should be composed of the heads of the colleges affiliated to it--the
+element of the Castle being excluded, according at least to the best
+authorities--and Trinity College should not be deprived of any part of its
+revenues, as it was to be under the Bill of 1873. Two of the Queen's
+Colleges probably should be suppressed; but the College of Belfast, which
+has been successful, should probably be made a Presbyterian college, at
+least in the main; the endowments it would receive should be, doubtless,
+increased. High Catholic education should be provided for in this way: The
+Catholic University should be established and endowed, and placed
+reasonably on a level with Trinity College, and perhaps other Catholic
+colleges also; but, in consideration of this assistance from the State, a
+lay element should be introduced into the Catholic University governing
+body; this should not be composed wholly of Catholic clergymen; and the
+teaching body should be composed of men, chosen without regard to
+religious distinctions, but so constituted that a majority should be
+Catholics, and that Catholic education should be predominant. Other
+Catholic colleges might be connected with this institution; and Trinity
+College, the Catholic University, and the Belfast and all other colleges,
+should be subordinate to the National University in this sense; their
+students should be obliged to resort to it, or to the Royal University if
+they preferred it, in order to pass examinations, and to obtain degrees or
+other honours, there being thus two Universities of different types in
+Ireland. Education in all the affiliated colleges should be perfectly
+free, that is, left to the arrangements made by their governing bodies;
+but a certain standard of proficiency should exist, which, however, the
+tests of University examinations would probably secure.
+
+An Irish National University, could it be founded on these lines, would
+present many attractive features, would realise, indeed, a noble ideal. It
+would preserve Trinity College as a great place of learning, would give
+Presbyterian Ireland a college practically its own, and ought to satisfy
+the legitimate demands of Catholic Ireland. That its dependent colleges
+should compete with each other for its degrees and honours, and be
+friendly rivals in the splendid race of learning, would also be an immense
+advantage; and the Royal University would, doubtless, suffice for students
+too poor to enter the dependent colleges, and yet aspiring to pass
+examinations and to obtain degrees. But could a National University of
+this type be set up in Ireland with a prospect that it would succeed or
+flourish? Its governing body would be formed of the heads of the colleges
+connected with it; these would be mainly composed of Catholic and
+Protestant divines: could these, in the existing state of Ireland, agree
+as to the University course that ought to be adopted? Suppose that
+Archbishop Walsh and Dr. Salmon, the venerable provost of Trinity College,
+were together members of this supreme board. Would the first approve of
+Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding as a subject of examination in
+the University schools? Would the second approve of Bellarmine and even of
+Bossuet? Dissension, I fear, would be the inevitable result; and in that
+case 'the Castle' would certainly try to gain authority over the governing
+body, and to place on it nominees of its own, in my judgment, an
+exceedingly mischievous thing. Very probably, too, the State, in the long
+run, would deprive Trinity College of some of its revenues, on different
+pleas that could be plausibly urged; to this there would be the gravest
+objections. And how could moral philosophy, metaphysics, and modern
+history, nay, even physical science itself, be made parts of University
+studies? How could Protestants and Catholics be examined in them in
+common? Would it not be necessary to exclude them from University
+teaching, as in the case of Mr. Gladstone's ill-starred measure--to close
+the University to the best works of the intellect of man, to deprive it of
+the most fruitful branches of learning? I fear the idea of a National
+University, as affairs now stand in Ireland, is not likely to become a
+reality with results that could be deemed hopeful. No doubt the Royal
+University does, to some extent, have examinations on these debateable
+subjects; but they occupy a very small place in its teaching; and in a
+National University this ought not to be the case.
+
+A National University would not be founded in Ireland under the second
+project. Trinity College would remain completely intact; it would retain
+its present governing body, its privileges, and its power of conferring
+degrees. The Queen's Colleges--that of Galway being probably suppressed,
+and its funds transferred to the College of Belfast--and the Royal
+University would continue unchanged; the students of the Queen's Colleges
+would probably seek degrees from the Royal University as they do at
+present. But the Catholic University should be established and endowed,
+and placed on the same level as Trinity College, as far as this could be
+effected by law; the charge of the endowment would not be great--it would
+be perhaps L100,000 for buildings, and perhaps L40,000 a year for other
+purposes; but the students, and those of other colleges to be connected
+with it, would not be numerous, at least for years; it should, of course,
+have the power of conferring honours and degrees. In return for these
+advantages, the State should have a right to insist that its governing
+body should be in part laymen--the Irish Catholic bishops have already
+agreed to this; and the State ought, also, to have a right to require
+that the secular education it should afford should be good, a security
+which could fully, if indirectly, be obtained. The advantages of this
+scheme, it is obvious, are that it would get rid of the difficulties
+inseparable from a National University in Ireland; it would preserve
+Trinity College exactly as it is, an enormous gain for that great place of
+learning; it would interfere as little as possible with things as they
+are; and it would do all that Catholic Ireland could reasonably demand. It
+is understood that a scheme of this description has the approval of the
+authorities of Trinity College, and of their distinguished representative,
+Mr. Lecky; their opinions are of the very greatest weight. The only real
+objection made to this plan is one made by characteristic prejudice: the
+education, in the Catholic University, it is said, would be bad, and its
+degrees would be of no value. In the face of the success of Catholic
+University students at the Royal University examinations, the first
+assertion has been proved to be false; and besides, this is the affair of
+the students and their parents alone. As to the inferiority of the
+Catholic University degrees, there is no reason to believe that this would
+exist; these degrees, moreover, would have to compete with those of the
+Royal University and of Trinity College; if they were really inferior,
+this would soon be found out, and the Catholic University would have to
+increase their value. This is the true security the State and the public
+would possess.
+
+A few 'Present Irish Questions' remain, on which I may offer passing
+remarks. Ireland is essentially a poor country; her middle class is
+comparatively very weak; her trade and manufactures are small; the greater
+part of the community is a Celtic race. It has long been contended by
+well-informed Irishmen that many undertakings, which, in Great Britain,
+have properly been left to private enterprise, ought, in Ireland, to be
+carried out by the State, as for centuries has been the case in France, a
+Celtic land, as was largely the case in Ireland under her extinct
+Parliament. This observation especially applies to the Irish railway
+system. As long ago as 1836, Thomas Drummond, the Under Secretary of
+well-known renown, strongly recommended that Irish railways should be laid
+out, managed, and controlled by the Government; but this was inconsistent
+with English ideas; the Irish railways were abandoned to private
+companies. The results have been very far from fortunate; many of the
+lines have been badly designed; the Irish railway fares are a great deal
+too high; too numerous boards of directors are a heavy charge; railway
+communication, in a word, in Ireland is of an inferior kind, and much too
+costly in a backward and poor country. Not indeed that the State has not
+made large advances to Irish railway companies, some of these on terms
+very unjust to ratepayers; but the system is faulty and ill-developed; a
+reform in this direction is greatly wanted.[193] As Drummond insisted, the
+State, even now, ought to buy up and direct the Irish railways; but this
+is only a part of what it ought to do in this province. The material
+condition of Ireland is not prosperous; her main river basins require
+drainage; her whole arterial drainage is in a bad state, and has suffered
+much from the legislation of 1881, and from the policy of so-called 'land
+purchase,' for ordinary Irish tenants will not keep it up, and their
+landlords cannot now be expected to do so; these works must be undertaken
+by the State, or assuredly they will not be undertaken at all. Mr. Arthur
+Balfour has done something in this direction by the encouragement of light
+railways in remote parts of Ireland, and by the foundation of the
+'Congested Districts Board,' an institution that has had excellent
+results. But this is only the fringe of the subject; an enormous amount of
+work remains to be done; and this, in the circumstances of Ireland, can
+only be done by the Government.
+
+In a book which has attracted some attention--'Ireland, 1798-1898'--I
+wrote these words nearly four years ago: 'An Irishman, Wolseley, an
+Irishman, Roberts, are the foremost of living British soldiers; but there
+are no Irish Guards, and few Irishmen in our artillery; we see here a want
+of tact and of sympathy.' Time, in this respect, has suddenly brought its
+changes; has again illustrated the genius of the Irishman in war, and, in
+some measure, has removed a reproach from England. It is true that the
+conspiracy, which still exists in Ireland, did all that it could to
+prevent Irishmen from taking part in the contest in South Africa, and that
+even a petty Irish contingent appeared in the ranks of the Boers. But Lord
+Wolseley had at least a great share in fitting out the largest expedition
+which has ever left our shores to fight an enemy at a distance of six
+thousand miles--no other power could do anything of the kind; and without
+disparaging our other generals, the presence of a superior mind was at
+once seen when Lord Roberts was given the supreme command in our army. And
+the Irish soldiery who fought in the campaigns of 1899-1900 were true to
+the noble traditions of their race; they were in the forefront of many a
+bloody conflict; and now that a regiment of Irish Guards has been at last
+embodied--a tardy acknowledgment of Irish military worth--England may rest
+assured that these men will rival the famous Irish Brigade of another age,
+'ever and everywhere true' to the Bourbon lilies, and conspicuous in the
+service of France on many a field of renown. I may add a word on another
+subject, in which Ireland perhaps has a just claim on England. The
+descendants of the chiefs, who, in Scotland, clung to the cause of the
+Stuarts, have, for the most part, regained their forfeited lands and
+honours; no such reparation has been made to the descendants of Irish
+nobles and princes, who supported the Stuarts in the nobler cause of
+their country. The representative of the last of the Celtic kings of
+Ireland--a man of large possessions and of unquestionable parts--has no
+place on the roll of the peerage; the sons of ennobled Cromwellian
+troopers and tradesmen have precedence at Court over the sons of the most
+illustrious Milesian Houses. This is not a mere trifle as may carelessly
+be said; it tends to revive memories that it were better to forget. Can
+nothing be done to make a graceful concession, which would touch many an
+Irish heart, and would go some way to promote a spirit of loyalty and hope
+in Ireland, which it should be a great object of statesmanship to create
+and foster?
+
+If the picture I have drawn of Ireland is correct in outline, there is
+much of evil omen in her present condition. The ancient divisions of race
+and faith, the most distinctive feature in her social structure, are at
+least as deeply marked as they have been for a century; bad legislation
+has made them deeper and wider. Catholic Ireland remains disaffected to
+British rule, despite efforts of conciliation and concessions that cannot
+be justified; no class in the community is completely satisfied;
+discontent rankles in the hearts of the landed gentry. The Union, indeed,
+has been successfully maintained; the frightful agrarian disorder of
+1881-89 no longer exists. But the Union is not permanently assured as long
+as the Liberal party and eighty Irish members demand Home Rule, and the
+over-representation of Ireland continues; the conspiracy of the Land and
+the National Leagues has revived in that of the United Irish League; and
+this seeks to compass the ends of its prototypes by obstruction in
+Parliament and detestable socialistic tyranny. And the frame of Irish
+society has been well-nigh shattered; ruins have been made, nothing solid
+has been put in their place. An aristocracy, long waning, has been
+practically destroyed, and can no longer be a support of the State; the
+bureaucracy of the Castle reigns in its stead; but this is essentially a
+weak Government; it can maintain order, but has no hold on the people; the
+Irish democracy, to which power has been transferred, regards it with a
+dislike and a contempt it does not try to conceal. The country has made
+hardly any progress of late years; if some improvement in the state of the
+middle classes appears, agriculture, its leading industry, has perceptibly
+declined. In by far the most important of Irish social relations, those
+connected with the land, a revolution has taken place; a huge if a veiled
+confiscation has gone on; the landed gentry have been shamefully wronged;
+the occupiers of the soil have been most unduly favoured; yet both classes
+declare they have been ill-treated, notably the last. And the Irish land
+system has been turned upside down, with consequences disastrous and
+far-reaching; the landlord has been cut off from his estate; the tenant
+has been encouraged in thriftlessness and waste by law; the land has been
+bound in a ruinous mortmain, like that which existed under the penal code,
+and subjected to demoralising litigation, breeding a war of class; capital
+and fruitful enterprise turn away from it. And, at the same time, in order
+to lessen these evils, recourse has been had to remedies that are perhaps
+worse; the system of so-called 'land purchase' has been devised; the
+result has been to create a class of peasant owners reproducing the nearly
+extinct middleman, and, above all, to arouse a cry for the 'compulsory
+purchase' of the rented lands of Ireland, an act of wholesale spoliation
+unjust and disastrous alike. In the position of affairs we now see in
+Ireland, the stability of society has been rudely shaken; the sense of the
+security of property has well-nigh disappeared; the sanctity of contracts
+has no respect; the pillars on which order and prosperity rest have been
+injured; violent revolution has been arrested, indeed, but revolutionary
+and socialistic ideas spread far and wide. And will any impartial inquirer
+deny that these untoward results may be largely ascribed to the faulty
+legislation of late years, and to a system of administration shifty and
+feeble? And what judgment is to be passed on the thoughtless optimism too
+common in opinion with respect to Ireland? Meanwhile, reforms imperatively
+required are not even attempted; they are passed over or postponed to some
+more convenient season. The time surely has come to look things in Ireland
+straight in the face; to see if statesmanship cannot do something really
+effective for her good. This end assuredly will not be attained by
+breaking up the Three Kingdoms under the guise of Home Rule, or by
+promoting a confiscation the worst Ireland has ever seen; still less will
+it be attained by the quackery in legislation and administration too
+apparent of late years; nor can trifling and foolish optimism blind the
+eyes of intelligent thinkers to facts. Ireland can only expect to make
+progress by ruling the community on the just and sound principles to which
+long experience has given its sanction; and this consummation can only be
+the slow result of time.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+
+THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL, 1886.
+
+ARRANGEMENT OF CLAUSES.
+
+Part I.
+
+  _Legislative Authority._
+
+  CLAUSE
+
+  1. Establishment of Irish Legislature.
+  2. Powers of Irish Legislature.
+  3. Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature.
+  4. Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature.
+  5. Prerogatives of Her Majesty as to Irish Legislative Body.
+  6. Duration of the Irish Legislative Body.
+
+  _Executive Authority._
+
+  7. Constitution of the Executive Authority.
+  8. Use of Crown Lands by Irish Government.
+
+  _Constitution of Legislative Body._
+
+  9. Constitution of Irish Legislative Body.
+  10. First order.
+  11. Second order.
+
+  _Finance._
+
+  12. Taxes and separate Consolidated Fund.
+  13. Annual contributions from Ireland to Consolidated Fund of United
+      Kingdom.
+  14. Collection and application of Customs and Excise duties in Ireland.
+  15. Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund.
+  16. Irish Church Fund.
+  17. Public loans.
+  18. Additional aid in case of war.
+  19. Money bills and votes.
+  20. Exchequer Division and revenue actions.
+
+  _Police._
+
+  21. Police.
+
+
+PART II.
+
+_Supplemental Provisions._
+
+  Powers of Her Majesty.
+
+  22. Powers over certain lands reserved to Her Majesty.
+
+  Legislative Body.
+
+  23. Veto by first order of Legislative Body, how overruled.
+  24. Cesser of power of Ireland to return members of Parliament.
+
+  Decision of Constitutional Questions.
+
+  25. Constitutional questions to be submitted to Judicial Committee.
+
+  Lord-Lieutenant.
+
+  26. Office of Lord-Lieutenant.
+
+  Judges and Civil Servants.
+
+  27. Judges to be removable only on address.
+  28. Provisions as to Judges and other persons having salaries charged on
+      the Consolidated Fund.
+  29. As to persons holding Civil Service appointments.
+  30. Provision for existing pensions and superannuation allowances.
+
+  _Transitory Provisions._
+
+  31. Transitory provisions in Schedule.
+
+  _Miscellaneous._
+
+  32. Post office and savings banks.
+  33. Audit.
+  34. Application of parliamentary law.
+  35. Regulations for carrying Act into effect.
+  36. Saving of powers of House of Lords.
+  37. Saving of rights of Parliament.
+  38. Continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, etc.
+  39. Mode of alteration of Act.
+  40. Definitions.
+  41. Short title of Act.
+
+
+SCHEDULES.
+
+_A Bill to amend the provision for the future Government of Ireland._
+[A.D. 1886.
+
+Be it enacted by the Queen's most excellent Majesty, by and with the
+advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in
+this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as
+follows:
+
+
+PART I.
+
+_Legislative Authority._
+
+[Sidenote: Establishment of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=1.= On and after the appointed day there shall be established in Ireland
+a Legislature consisting of Her Majesty the Queen and the Irish
+Legislative Body.
+
+[Sidenote: Powers of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=2.= With the exceptions and subject to the restrictions in this Act
+mentioned, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty the Queen, by and with the
+advice of the Irish Legislative Body, to make laws for the peace, order,
+and good government of Ireland, and by any such law to alter and repeal
+any law in Ireland.
+
+[Sidenote: Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=3.= The Legislature of Ireland shall not make laws relating to the
+following matters, or any of them:--
+
+    (1) The status or dignity of the Crown, or the succession the Crown or
+    a Regency;
+
+    (2) The making of peace or war;
+
+    (3) The army, navy, militia, volunteers, or other military or naval
+    forces, or the defence of the realm;
+
+    (4) Treaties and other relations with foreign States, or the
+    relations between the various parts of Her Majesty's dominions;
+
+    (5) Dignities or titles of honour;
+
+    (6) Prize or booty of war;
+
+    (7) Offences against the law of nations; or offences committed in
+    violation of any treaty made, or hereafter to be made, between Her
+    Majesty and any foreign State; or offences committed on the high seas;
+
+    (8) Treason, alienage, or naturalisation;
+
+    (9) Trade, navigation, or quarantine;
+
+    (10) The postal and telegraph service, except as hereafter in this Act
+    mentioned with respect to the transmission of letters and telegrams in
+    Ireland;
+
+    (11) Beacons, lighthouses, or sea-marks;
+
+    (12) The coinage; the value of foreign money; legal tender; or weights
+    and measures; or
+
+    (13) Copyright, patent rights, or other exclusive rights to the use or
+    profits of any works or inventions.
+
+Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void.
+
+[Sidenote: Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=4.= The Irish Legislature shall not make any law--
+
+    (1) Respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, or
+    prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
+
+    (2) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, on account
+    of religious belief; or
+
+    (3) Abrogating or derogating from the right to establish or maintain
+    any place of denominational education or any denominational
+    institution or charity; or
+
+    (4) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school
+    receiving public money without attending the religious instruction at
+    that school; or
+
+    (5) Impairing, without either the leave of Her Majesty in Council
+    first obtained on an address presented by the Legislative Body of
+    Ireland, or the consent of the corporation interested, the rights,
+    property, or privileges of any existing corporation incorporated by
+    royal charter or local and general Act of Parliament; or
+
+    (6) Imposing or relating to duties of customs and duties of excise, as
+    defined by this Act, or either of such duties, or affecting any Act
+    relating to such duties or either of them; or
+
+    (7) Affecting this Act, except in so far as it is declared to be
+    alterable by the Irish Legislature.
+
+[Sidenote: Prerogatives of Her Majesty as to Irish Legislative Body.]
+
+=5.=--Her Majesty the Queen shall have the same prerogatives with respect
+to summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the Irish Legislative Body as Her
+Majesty has with respect to summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the
+Imperial Parliament.
+
+[Sidenote: Duration of the Irish Legislative Body.]
+
+=6.=--The Irish Legislative Body whenever summoned may have continuance
+for five years and no longer, to be reckoned from the day on which any
+such Legislative Body is appointed to meet.
+
+_Executive Authority._
+
+[Sidenote: Constitution of the Executive Authority.]
+
+=7.=--(1) The Executive Government of Ireland shall continue vested in Her
+Majesty, and shall be carried on by the Lord-Lieutenant on behalf of Her
+Majesty with the aid of such officers and such Council as to Her Majesty
+may from time to time seem fit.
+
+(2) Subject to any instructions which may from time to time be given by
+Her Majesty, the Lord-Lieutenant shall give or withhold the assent of Her
+Majesty to Bills passed by the Irish Legislative Body, and shall exercise
+the prerogatives of Her Majesty in respect of the summoning, proroguing,
+and dissolving of the Irish Legislative Body, and any prerogatives the
+exercise of which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty.
+
+[Sidenote: Use of Crown lands by Irish Government.]
+
+=8.=--Her Majesty may, by Order in Council, from time to time place under
+the control of the Irish Government, for the purposes of that Government,
+any such lands and buildings in Ireland as may be vested in or held in
+trust for Her Majesty.
+
+_Constitution of Legislative Body._
+
+[Sidenote: Constitution of Irish Legislative Body.]
+
+=9.=--(1) The Irish Legislative Body shall consist of a first and second
+order.
+
+(2) The two orders shall deliberate together, and shall vote together,
+except that, if any question arises in relation to legislation or to the
+Standing Orders or Rules of Procedure or to any other matter in that
+behalf in this Act specified, and such question is to be determined by
+vote, each order shall, if a majority of the members present of either
+order demand a separate vote, give their votes in like manner as if they
+were separate Legislative Bodies; and if the result of the voting of the
+two orders does not agree the question shall be resolved in the negative.
+
+[Sidenote: First order.]
+
+=10.=--(1) The first order of the Irish Legislative Body shall consist of
+one hundred and three members, of whom seventy-five shall be elective
+members and twenty-eight peerage members.
+
+(2) Each elective member shall at the date of his election and during his
+period of membership be _bona fide_ possessed of property which--
+
+    (_a_) If realty, or partly realty and partly personalty, yields two
+    hundred pounds a year or upwards, free of all charges; or--
+
+    (_b_) If personalty yields the same income, or is of the capital value
+    of four thousand pounds or upwards, free of all charges.
+
+For the purpose of electing the elective members of the first order of the
+Legislative Body, Ireland shall be divided into the electoral districts
+specified in the First Schedule to this Act, and each such district shall
+return the number of members in that behalf specified in that Schedule.
+
+(3) The elective members shall be elected by the registered electors of
+each electoral district, and for that purpose a register of electors shall
+be made annually.
+
+(4) An elector in each electoral district shall be qualified as follows,
+that is to say, he shall be of full age, and not subject to any legal
+incapacity, and shall have been during the twelve months next preceding
+the _twentieth day of July_ in any year the owner or occupier of some land
+or tenement within the district of a net annual value of twenty-five
+pounds or upwards.
+
+(5) The term of office of an elective member shall be _ten years_.
+
+(6) In every fifth year thirty-seven or thirty-eight of the elective
+members, as the case requires, shall retire from office, and their places
+shall be filled by election; the members to retire shall be those who have
+been members for the longest time without re-election.
+
+(7) The offices of the peerage members shall be filled as follows, that is
+to say,--
+
+    (_a_) Each of the Irish peers who on the appointed day is one of the
+    twenty-eight Irish representative peers, shall, on giving his written
+    assent to the Lord-Lieutenant, become a peerage member of the first
+    order of the Irish Legislative Body; and if at any time within _thirty
+    years_ after the appointed day any such peer vacates his office by
+    death or resignation, the vacancy shall be filled by the election to
+    that office by the Irish peers of one of their number in manner
+    heretofore in use respecting the election of Irish representative
+    peers, subject to adaptation as provided by this Act, and if the
+    vacancy is not so filled within the proper time, it shall be filled by
+    the election of an elective member.
+
+    (_b_) If any of the twenty-eight peers aforesaid does not within _one
+    month_ after the appointed day give such assent to be a peerage member
+    of the first order, the vacancy so created shall be filled up as if he
+    had assented and vacated his office by resignation.
+
+(8) A peerage member shall be entitled to hold office during his life, or
+until the expiration of _thirty years_ from the appointed day, whichever
+period is the shortest. At the expiration of such _thirty years_ the
+offices of all the peerage members shall be vacated as if they were dead,
+and their places shall be filled by elective members qualified and elected
+in manner provided by this Act with respect to elective members of the
+first order, and such elective members may be distributed by the Irish
+Legislature among the electoral districts, so, however, that care shall be
+taken to give additional members to the most populous place.
+
+(9) The offices of members of the first order shall not be vacated by the
+dissolution of the Legislative Body.
+
+(10) The provisions in the Second Schedule to this Act relating to members
+of the first order of the Legislative Body shall be of the same force as
+if they were enacted in the body of this Act.
+
+[Sidenote: Second order.]
+
+=11.=--(1) Subject as in this section hereafter mentioned, the second
+order of the Legislative Body shall consist of two hundred and four
+members.
+
+(2) The members of the second order shall be chosen by the existing
+constituencies of Ireland, two by each constituency, with the exception of
+the City of Cork, which shall be divided into two divisions in manner set
+forth in the Third Schedule to this Act, and two members shall be chosen
+by each of such divisions.
+
+(3) Any person who, on the appointed day, is a member representing an
+existing Irish constituency in the House of Commons shall, on giving his
+written assent to the Lord-Lieutenant, become a member of the second order
+of the Irish Legislative Body as if he had been elected by the
+constituency which he was representing in the House of Commons. Each of
+the members for the City of Cork, on the said day, may elect for which of
+the divisions of that city he wishes to be deemed to have been elected.
+
+(4) If any member does not give such written assent within _one month_
+after the appointed day, his place shall be filled by election in the same
+manner and at the same time as if he had assented and vacated his office
+by death.
+
+(5) If the same person is elected to both orders, he shall, within _seven
+days_ after the meeting of the Legislative Body, or if the Body is sitting
+at the time of the election, within _seven days_ after the election, elect
+in which order he will serve, and his membership of the other order shall
+be void and be filled by a fresh election.
+
+(6) Notwithstanding anything in this Act, it shall be lawful for the
+Legislature of Ireland at any time to pass an Act enabling the Royal
+University of Ireland to return not more than two members to the second
+order of the Irish Legislative Body in addition to the number of members
+above mentioned.
+
+(7) Notwithstanding anything in this Act, it shall be lawful for the Irish
+Legislature, after the first dissolution of the Legislative Body which
+occurs, to alter the constitution or election of the second order of that
+body, due regard being had in the distribution of members to the
+population of the constituencies; provided that no alteration shall be
+made in the number of such order.
+
+_Finance._
+
+[Sidenote: Taxes and separate Consolidated Fund.]
+
+=12.=--(1) For the purpose of providing for the public service of Ireland,
+the Irish Legislature may impose taxes, other than duties of Customs or
+Excise as defined by this Act, which duties shall continue to be imposed
+and levied by and under the direction of the Imperial Parliament only.
+
+(2) On and after the appointed day there shall be an Irish Consolidated
+Fund separate from the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom.
+
+(3) All taxes imposed by the Legislature of Ireland and all other public
+revenues under the control of the Government of Ireland shall, subject to
+any provisions touching the disposal thereof contained in any Act passed
+in the present session respecting the sale and purchase of land in
+Ireland, be paid into the Irish Consolidated Fund, and be appropriated to
+the public service of Ireland according to law.
+
+[Sidenote: Annual contributions from Ireland to Consolidated Fund of
+United Kingdom.]
+
+=13.=--(1) Subject to the provisions for the reduction or cesser thereof
+in this section mentioned, there shall be made on the part of Ireland to
+the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom the following annual
+contributions in every financial year; that is to say,--
+
+    (_a_) The sum of _one million four hundred and sixty-six thousand
+    pounds_ on account of the interest on and management of the Irish
+    share of the National Debt:
+
+    (_b_) The sum of _one million six hundred and sixty-six thousand
+    pounds_ on account of the expenditure on the army and navy of the
+    United Kingdom:
+
+    (_c_) The sum of _one hundred and ten thousand pounds_ on account of
+    the Imperial civil expenditure of the United Kingdom:
+
+    (_d_) The sum of _one million pounds_ on account of the Royal Irish
+    Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police.
+
+(2) During the period of _thirty years_ from this section taking effect
+the said annual contributions shall not be increased, but may be reduced
+or cease as hereinafter mentioned. After the expiration of the said
+_thirty years_ the said contributions shall, save as otherwise provided by
+this section, continue until altered in manner provided with respect to
+the alteration of this Act.
+
+(3) The Irish share of the National Debt shall be reckoned at _forty-eight
+million pounds_ Bank annuities, and there shall be paid in every financial
+year on behalf of Ireland to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the
+National Debt an annual sum of _three hundred and sixty thousand pounds_,
+and the permanent annual charge for the National Debt on the Consolidated
+Fund of the United Kingdom shall be reduced by that amount, and the said
+annual sum shall be applied by the said Commissioners as a sinking fund
+for the redemption of the National Debt, and the Irish share of the
+National Debt shall be reduced by the amount of the National Debt so
+redeemed, and the said annual contribution on account of the interest on
+and management of the Irish share of the National Debt shall from time to
+time be reduced by a sum equal to the interest upon the amount of the
+National Debt from time to time so redeemed, but that last-mentioned sum
+shall be paid annually to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the
+National Debt in addition to the above-mentioned annual sinking fund, and
+shall be so paid and be applied as if it were part of that sinking fund.
+
+(4) As soon as an amount of the National Debt equal to the said Irish
+share thereof has been redeemed under the provisions of this section, the
+said annual contribution on account of the interest on and management of
+the Irish share of the National Debt, and the said annual sum for a
+sinking fund shall cease.
+
+(5) If it appears to Her Majesty that the expenditure in respect of the
+army and navy of the United Kingdom, or in respect of Imperial Civil
+expenditure of the United Kingdom, for any financial year has been less
+than _fifteen_ times the amount of the contributions above named on
+account of the same matter, a sum equal to _one-fifteenth_ part of the
+diminution shall be deducted from the current annual contribution for the
+same matter.
+
+(6) The sum paid from time to time by the Commissioners of Her Majesty's
+Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues to the Consolidated Fund of the United
+Kingdom on account of the hereditary revenues of the Crown in Ireland
+shall be credited to the Irish Government, and go in reduction of the said
+annual contribution payable on account of the Imperial Civil expenditure
+of the United Kingdom, but shall not be taken into account in calculating
+whether such diminution as above mentioned has or has not taken place in
+such expenditure.
+
+(7) If it appears to Her Majesty that the expenditure in respect of the
+Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police for any
+financial year has been less than the contribution above-named on account
+of such constabulary and police, the current contribution shall be
+diminished by the amount of such difference.
+
+(8) This section shall take effect from and after the _thirty-first day of
+March, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven_.
+
+[Sidenote: Collection and application of Customs and Excise duties in
+Ireland.]
+
+=14.=--(1) On and after such day as the Treasury may direct all moneys
+from time to time collected in Ireland on account of the duties of Customs
+or the duties of Excise as defined by this Act shall, under such
+regulations as the Treasury from time to time make, be carried to a
+separate account (in this Act referred to as the Customs and Excise
+account) and applied in the payment of the following sums in priority as
+mentioned in this section; that is to say,--
+
+    First, of such sum as is from time to time directed by the Treasury in
+    respect of the costs, charges, and expenses of and incident to the
+    collection and management of the said duties in Ireland not exceeding
+    four per cent. of the amount collected there;
+
+    Secondly, of the annual contributions required by this Act to be made
+    to the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom;
+
+    Thirdly, of the annual sums required by this Act to be paid to the
+    Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt;
+
+    Fourthly, of all sums by this Act declared to be payable out of the
+    moneys carried to the Customs and Excise account;
+
+    Fifthly, of all sums due to the Consolidated Fund of the United
+    Kingdom for interest or sinking fund, in respect of any loans made by
+    the issue of bank annuities or otherwise to the Government of Ireland
+    under any Act passed in the present session relating to the purchase
+    and sale of land in Ireland, so far as such sums are not defrayed out
+    of the moneys received under such Act.
+
+(2) So much of the moneys carried to a separate account under this section
+as the Treasury consider are not, and are not likely to be, required to
+meet the above-mentioned payments, shall from time to time be paid over
+and applied as part of the public revenues under the control of the Irish
+Government.
+
+[Sidenote: Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund.]
+
+=15.=--(1) There shall be charged on the Irish Consolidated Fund in
+priority as mentioned in this section:--
+
+    First, such portion of the sums directed by this Act to be paid out of
+    the moneys carried to the Customs and Excise account in priority to
+    any payment for the public revenues of Ireland, as those moneys are
+    insufficient to pay;
+
+    Secondly, all sums due in respect of any debt incurred by the
+    Government of Ireland, whether for interest, management, or sinking
+    fund;
+
+    Thirdly, all sums which at the passing of this Act are charged on the
+    Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom in respect of Irish services
+    other than the salary of the Lord-Lieutenant;
+
+    Fourthly, the salaries of all judges of the Supreme Court of
+    Judicature or other Superior Court in Ireland, or of any County or
+    other like Court, who are appointed after the passing of this Act, and
+    the pensions of such judges;
+
+    Fifthly, any other sums charged by this Act on the Irish Consolidated
+    Fund.
+
+(2) It shall be the duty of the Legislature of Ireland to impose all such
+taxes, duties, or imposts as will raise a sufficient revenue to meet all
+sums charged for the time being on the Irish Consolidated Fund.
+
+[Sidenote: Irish Church Fund.]
+
+=16.=--(1) Until all charges which are payable out of the Church property
+in Ireland, and are guaranteed by the Treasury, have been fully paid, the
+Irish Land Commission shall continue as heretofore to exist, with such
+Commissioners and officers receiving such salaries as the Treasury may
+from time to time appoint, and to administer the Church property and apply
+the income and other moneys receivable therefrom; and so much of the
+salaries of such Commissioners and officers and expenses of the office as
+is not paid out of the Church property shall be paid out of moneys carried
+to the Customs and Excise account under this Act, and if these moneys are
+insufficient, out of the Consolidated Fund of Ireland, and if not so paid,
+shall be paid out of the moneys provided by Parliament. Provided as
+follows:--
+
+    (_a_) All charges on the Church property for which a guarantee has
+    been given by the Treasury before the passing of this Act shall, so
+    far as they are not paid out of such property, be paid out of the
+    moneys carried to the Customs and Excise account under this Act, and
+    if such moneys are insufficient, the Consolidated Fund of Ireland,
+    without prejudice nevertheless to the guarantee of the Treasury;
+
+    (_b_) All charges on the Church property, for which no guarantee has
+    been given by the Treasury before the passing of this Act shall be
+    charged on the Consolidated Fund of Ireland, but shall not be
+    guaranteed by the Treasury nor charged on the Consolidated Fund of the
+    United Kingdom.
+
+(2) Subject to any existing charges on the Church property, such property
+shall belong to the Irish Government and any portion of the annual revenue
+thereof which the Treasury, on the application of the Irish Government,
+certify at the end of any financial year not to be required for meeting
+charges, shall be paid over and applied as part of the public revenues
+under the control of the Irish Government.
+
+(3) As soon as all charges on the Church property guaranteed by the
+Treasury have been paid, such property may be managed and administered,
+and subject to existing charges thereon disposed of, and the income or
+proceeds thereof applied, in such manner as the Irish Legislature may from
+time to time direct.
+
+[Sidenote: 32 & 33 Vict. c. 42.]
+
+[Sidenote: 44 & 45 Vict. c. 71.]
+
+(4) 'Church property' in this section means all property accruing under
+the Irish Church Act, 1869, and transferred to the Irish Land Commission
+by the Irish Church Act Amendment Act, 1881.
+
+[Sidenote: Public loans.]
+
+=17.=--(1) All sums due for principal or interest to the Public Works Loan
+Commissioners or to the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland in
+respect of existing loans advanced on any security in Ireland shall on and
+after the appointed day be due to the Government of Ireland instead of the
+said Commissioners, and such body of persons as the Government of Ireland
+may appoint for the purpose shall have all the powers of the said
+Commissioners or their secretary for enforcing payment of such sums, and
+all securities for such sums given to such Commissioners or their
+secretary shall have effect as if the said body were therein substituted
+for those Commissioners or their secretary.
+
+(2) For the repayment of the said loans to the Consolidated Fund of the
+United Kingdom, the Irish Government shall pay annually into that Fund by
+half-yearly payments _on the first day of January_ and _the first day of
+July_, or on such other days as may be agreed on, such instalments of the
+principal of the said loans as will discharge all the loans within _thirty
+years_ from the appointed day, and shall also pay interest half-yearly on
+so much of the said principal as from time to time remains unpaid at the
+rate of _three_ per cent. per annum, and such instalments of principal and
+interest shall be paid out of the moneys carried to the Customs and Excise
+account under this Act, and if those are insufficient, out of the
+Consolidated Fund of Ireland.
+
+[Sidenote: Additional aid in case of war.]
+
+=18.= If Her Majesty declares that a state of war exists and is pleased to
+signify such declaration to the Irish Legislative Body by speech or
+message, it shall be lawful for the Irish Legislature to appropriate a
+further sum out of the Consolidated Fund of Ireland in aid of the army or
+navy, or other measures which Her Majesty may take for the prosecution of
+the war and defence of the realm, and to provide and raise money for that
+purpose; and all moneys so provided and raised, whether by loan, taxation,
+or otherwise, shall be paid into the Consolidated Fund of the United
+Kingdom.
+
+[Sidenote: Money bills and votes.]
+
+=19.=--(1) It shall not be lawful for the Irish Legislative Body to adopt
+or pass any vote, resolution, address, or Bill for the raising or
+appropriation for any purpose of any part of the public revenue of
+Ireland, or of any tax, duty, or impost, except in pursuance of a
+recommendation from Her Majesty signified through the Lord-Lieutenant in
+the session in which such vote, resolution, address, or Bill is proposed.
+
+(2) Notwithstanding that the Irish Legislature is prohibited by this Act
+from making laws relating to certain subjects, that Legislature may, with
+the assent of Her Majesty in Council first obtained, appropriate any part
+of the Irish public revenue, or any tax, duty, or impost imposed by such
+Legislature, for the purpose of, or in connection with, such subjects.
+
+[Sidenote: Exchequer Division and revenue actions.]
+
+=20.=--(1) On and after the appointed day, the Exchequer Division of the
+High Court of Justice shall continue to be a Court of Exchequer for
+revenue purposes under this Act, and whenever any vacancy occurs in the
+office of any judge of such Exchequer Division, his successor shall be
+appointed by Her Majesty on the joint recommendation of the
+Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain.
+
+(2) The judges of such Exchequer Division appointed after the passing of
+this Act shall be removable only by Her Majesty on address from the two
+Houses of the Imperial Parliament, and shall receive the same salaries and
+pensions as those payable at the passing of this Act to the existing
+judges of such division, unless with the assent of Her Majesty in Council
+first obtained, the Irish Legislature alters such salaries or pensions,
+and such salaries and pensions shall be paid out of the moneys carried to
+the Customs and Excise account in pursuance of this Act, and if the same
+are insufficient shall be paid out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and if
+not so paid shall be paid out of the Consolidated Fund of the United
+Kingdom.
+
+(3) An alteration of any rules relating to the procedure in such legal
+proceedings as are mentioned in this section shall not be made except with
+the approval of the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, and the
+sittings of the Exchequer Division and the judges thereof shall be
+regulated with the like approval.
+
+(4) All legal proceedings instituted in Ireland by or against the
+Commissioners or any officers of Customs or Excise, or the Treasury,
+shall, if so required by any party in such proceedings, be heard and
+determined before the judges of such Exchequer Division, or some or one of
+them, and any appeal from the decision in any such legal proceeding, if by
+a judge, shall lie to the said division, and if by the Exchequer Division,
+shall lie to the House of Lords, and not to any other tribunal; and if it
+is made to appear to such judges, or any of them, that any decree or
+judgment in any such proceeding as aforesaid, has not been duly enforced
+by the sheriff or other officer whose duty it is to enforce the same, such
+judges or judge shall appoint some officer to enforce such judgment or
+decree; and it shall be the duty of such officer to take proper steps to
+enforce the same, and for that purpose such officer and all persons
+employed by him shall be entitled to the same immunities, powers, and
+privileges as are by law conferred on a sheriff and his officers.
+
+(5) All sums recovered in respect of duties of Customs and Excise, or
+under any Act relating thereto, or by an officer of Customs or Excise,
+shall, notwithstanding anything in any other Act, be paid to the Treasury,
+and carried to the Customs and Excise account under this Act.
+
+_Police._
+
+[Sidenote: Police.]
+
+=21.=--The following regulations shall be made with respect to police in
+Ireland:--
+
+    (_a_) The Dublin Metropolitan Police shall continue and be subject as
+    heretofore to the control of the Lord-Lieutenant as representing Her
+    Majesty for a period of _two years_ from the passing of this Act, and
+    thereafter until any alteration is made by Act of the Legislature of
+    Ireland, but such Act shall provide for the proper saving of all then
+    existing interests, whether as regards pay, pensions, superannuation
+    allowances, or otherwise.
+
+    (_b_) The Royal Irish Constabulary shall, while that force subsists,
+    continue and be subject as heretofore to the control of the
+    Lord-Lieutenant as representing Her Majesty.
+
+    (_c_) The Irish Legislature may provide for the establishment and
+    maintenance of a police force in counties and boroughs in Ireland
+    under the control of local authorities, and arrangements may be made
+    between the Treasury and the Irish Government for the establishment
+    and maintenance of police reserves.
+
+
+PART II.
+
+_Supplemental Provisions._
+
+Powers of Her Majesty.
+
+[Sidenote: Power over certain lands reserved to Her Majesty.]
+
+=22.=--On and after the appointed day there shall be reserved to Her
+Majesty--
+
+    (1) The power of erecting forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and
+    other buildings for military or naval purposes;
+
+    (2) The power of taking waste land, and, on making due compensation,
+    any other land for the purpose of erecting such forts, magazines,
+    arsenals, dockyards, or other buildings as aforesaid, and for any
+    other military or naval purpose, or the defence of the realm.
+
+Legislative Body.
+
+[Sidenote: Veto by first order of Legislative Body, how overruled.]
+
+=23.=--If a Bill or any provision of a Bill is lost by disagreement
+between the two orders of the Legislative Body, and after a period ending
+with a dissolution of the Legislative Body, or the period of _three
+years_, whichever period is longest, such Bill, or a Bill containing the
+said provision, is again considered by the Legislative Body, and such Bill
+or provision is adopted by the second order and negatived by the first
+order, the same shall be submitted to the whole Legislative Body, both
+orders of which shall vote together on the Bill or provision, and the same
+shall be adopted or rejected according to the decision of the majority of
+the members so voting together.
+
+[Sidenote: Cesser of power of Ireland to return members to Parliament.]
+
+=24.=--On and after the appointed day Ireland shall cease, except in the
+event hereafter in this Act mentioned, to return representative peers to
+the House of Lords or members to the House of Commons, and the persons who
+on the said day are such representative peers and members shall cease as
+such to be members of the House of Lords and House of Commons
+respectively.
+
+Decision of Constitutional Questions.
+
+[Sidenote: Constitutional questions to be submitted to Judicial
+Committee.]
+
+=25.= Questions arising as to the powers conferred on the Legislature of
+Ireland under this Act shall be determined as follows:--
+
+    (_a_) If any such question arises on any Bill passed by the
+    Legislative Body, the Lord-Lieutenant may refer such question to Her
+    Majesty in Council;
+
+    (_b_) If, in the course of any action or other legal proceeding, such
+    question arises on any Act of the Irish Legislature, any party to such
+    action or other legal proceeding may, subject to the rules in this
+    section mentioned, appeal from a decision on such question to Her
+    Majesty in Council;
+
+    (_c_) If any such question arises otherwise than as aforesaid in any
+    Act of the Irish Legislature, the Lord-Lieutenant or one of Her
+    Majesty's principal Secretaries of State may refer such question to
+    Her Majesty in Council;
+
+    (_d_) A question referred or appeal brought under this section to Her
+    Majesty in Council shall be referred for the consideration of the
+    Judicial Committee of the Privy Council;
+
+    (_e_) The decision of Her Majesty in Council on any question referred
+    or appeal brought under this section shall be final, and a Bill which
+    may be so decided to be, or contain a provision, in excess of the
+    powers of the Irish Legislature shall not be assented to by the
+    Lord-Lieutenant; and a provision of any Act which is so decided to be
+    in excess of the powers of the Irish Legislature shall be void;
+
+    (_f_) There shall be added to the Judicial Committee when sitting for
+    the purpose of considering questions under this section, such members
+    of Her Majesty's Privy Council, being or having been Irish judges, as
+    to Her Majesty may seem meet;
+
+    (_g_) Her Majesty may, by Order in Council from time to time, make
+    rules as to the cases and mode in which and conditions under which, in
+    pursuance of this section, questions may be referred and appeals
+    brought to Her Majesty in Council, and as to the consideration thereof
+    by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and any rules so made
+    shall be of the same force as if they were enacted in this Act;
+
+    (_h_) An appeal shall not lie to the House of Lords in respect of any
+    question in respect of which an appeal can be had to Her Majesty in
+    Council in pursuance of this section.
+
+Lord-Lieutenant.
+
+[Sidenote: Office of Lord-Lieutenant.]
+
+=26.=--(1) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any Act
+of Parliament, every subject of Her Majesty shall be eligible to hold and
+enjoy the office of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, without reference to his
+religious belief.
+
+(2) The salary of the Lord-Lieutenant shall continue to be charged on the
+Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, and the expenses of his household
+and establishment shall continue to be defrayed out of moneys to be
+provided by Parliament.
+
+(3) All existing powers vested by Act of Parliament or otherwise in the
+Chief Secretary for Ireland may, if no such officer is appointed, be
+exercised by the Lord-Lieutenant until other provision is made by Act of
+the Irish Legislature.
+
+(4) The Legislature of Ireland shall not pass any Act relating to the
+office or functions of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.
+
+Judges and Civil Servants.
+
+[Sidenote: Judges to be removable only on address.]
+
+=27.= A judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature or other Superior Court
+of Ireland, or of any County Court or other Court with a like jurisdiction
+in Ireland, appointed after the passing of this Act, shall not be removed
+from his office except in pursuance of an address to Her Majesty from both
+orders of the Legislative Body voting separately, nor shall his salary be
+diminished or right to pension altered during his continuance in office.
+
+[Sidenote: Provisions as to judges and other persons having salaries
+charged on the Consolidated Fund.]
+
+=28.=--(1) All persons who at the passing of this Act are judges of the
+Supreme Court of Judicature or County Court judges, or hold any other
+judicial position in Ireland shall, if they are removable at present on
+address to Her Majesty of both Houses of Parliament, continue to be
+removable only upon such address from both Houses of the Imperial
+Parliament, and if removable in any other manner shall continue to be
+removable in like manner as heretofore; and such persons, and also all
+persons at the passing of this Act in the permanent Civil Service of the
+Crown in Ireland whose salaries are charged on the Consolidated Fund of
+the United Kingdom, shall continue to hold office and to be entitled to
+the same salaries, pensions, and superannuation allowances as heretofore,
+and to be liable to perform the same or analogous duties as heretofore;
+and the salaries of such persons shall be paid out of the moneys carried
+to the Customs and Excise account under this Act, or if these moneys are
+insufficient, out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and if the same are not
+so paid shall continue charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United
+Kingdom.
+
+(2) If any of these said persons retires from office with the approbation
+of Her Majesty before he has completed the period of service entitling him
+to a pension, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty, if she thinks fit, to
+grant to that person such pension, not exceeding the pension to which he
+would have been entitled if he had completed the said period of service,
+as to Her Majesty seems meet.
+
+[Sidenote: As to persons holding Civil Service appointments.]
+
+=29.=--(1) All persons not above provided for and at the passing of this
+Act serving in Ireland in the permanent Civil Service of the Crown shall
+continue to hold their offices and receive the same salaries, and to be
+entitled to the same gratuities and superannuation allowances as
+heretofore, and shall be liable to perform the same duties as heretofore
+or duties of similar rank, but any of such persons shall be entitled at
+the expiration of _two years_ after the passing of this Act to retire from
+office, and at any time if required by the Irish Government shall retire
+from office, and on any such retirement shall be entitled to receive such
+payment as the Treasury may award to him in accordance with the provisions
+contained in the Fourth Schedule to this Act.
+
+(2) The amount of such payment shall be paid to him out of the moneys
+carried to the Customs and Excise account under this Act, or, if those
+moneys are insufficient, out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and so far as
+the same are not so paid shall be paid out of moneys provided by
+Parliament.
+
+[Sidenote: 34 & 35 Vict. c. 36.]
+
+(3) The Pensions Commutation Act, 1871, shall apply to all persons who,
+having retired from office, are entitled to any annual payment under this
+section in like manner as if they had retired in consequence of the
+abolition of their offices.
+
+(4) This section shall not apply to persons who are retained in the
+service of the Imperial Government.
+
+[Sidenote: Provision for existing pensions and superannuation allowances.]
+
+=30.= Where before the passing of this Act any pension or superannuation
+allowance has been granted to any person on account of service as a judge
+of the Supreme Court of Judicature of Ireland, or of any Court
+consolidated into that Court, or as a County Court judge, or in any other
+judicial position, or on account of service in the permanent Civil Service
+of the Crown in Ireland otherwise than in some office, the holder of which
+is, after the passing of this Act, retained in the service of the Imperial
+Government, such pension or allowance, whether payable out of the
+Consolidated Fund or out of moneys provided by Parliament, shall continue
+to be paid to such person, and shall be so paid out of the moneys carried
+to the Customs and Excise account under this Act, or, if such moneys are
+insufficient, out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and so far as the same
+is not so paid, shall be paid as heretofore out of the Consolidated Fund
+of the United Kingdom or moneys provided by Parliament.
+
+_Transitory Provisions._
+
+[Sidenote: Transitory provisions in Schedule.]
+
+=31.= The provisions contained in the Fifth Schedule to this Act relating
+to the mode in which arrangements are to be made for setting in motion the
+Irish Legislative Body and Government, and for the transfer to the Irish
+Government of the powers and duties to be transferred to them under this
+Act, or for otherwise bringing this Act into operation, shall be of the
+same effect as if they were enacted in the body of this Act.
+
+_Miscellaneous._
+
+[Sidenote: Post office and savings banks.]
+
+=32.= Whenever an Act of the Legislature of Ireland has provided for
+carrying on the postal and telegraphic service with respect to the
+transmission of letters and telegrams in Ireland, and the post office and
+other savings banks in Ireland, and for protecting the officers then in
+such service, and the existing depositors in such post-office savings
+banks, the Treasury shall make arrangements for the transfer of the said
+service and banks, in accordance with the said Act, and shall give public
+notice of the transfer, and shall pay all depositors in such post-office
+savings bank who request payment within _six months_ after the date fixed
+for such transfer, and after the expiration of such _six months_ the said
+depositors shall cease to have any claim against the Postmaster-General or
+the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, but shall have the like claim
+against the Consolidated Fund of Ireland, and the Treasury shall cause to
+be transferred in accordance with the said Act the securities representing
+the sums due to the said depositors in post-office savings banks, and the
+securities held for other savings banks.
+
+[Sidenote: Audit.]
+
+=33.= Save as otherwise provided by the Irish Legislature--
+
+    (_a_) The existing law relating to the Exchequer and the Consolidated
+    Fund of the United Kingdom shall apply to the Irish Exchequer and
+    Consolidated Fund, and an officer shall from time to time be appointed
+    by the Lord-Lieutenant to fill the office of the Comptroller-General
+    of the receipt and issue of Her Majesty's Exchequer and
+    Auditor-General of public accounts so far as respects Ireland; and
+
+[Sidenote: 29 & 30 Vict. c. 39.]
+
+    (_b_) The accounts of the Irish Consolidated Fund shall be audited as
+    appropriation accounts in manner provided by the Exchequer and Audit
+    Departments Act, 1866, by or under the direction of the holder of such
+    office.
+
+[Sidenote: Application of parliamentary law.]
+
+=34.=--(1) The privileges, immunities, and powers to be held, enjoyed, and
+exercised by the Irish Legislative Body, and the members thereof, shall be
+such as are from time to time defined by Act of the Irish Legislature, but
+so that the same shall never exceed those at the passing of this Act,
+held, enjoyed, and exercised by the House of Commons, and by the members
+thereof.
+
+(2) Subject as in this Act mentioned, all existing laws and customs
+relating to the members of the House of Commons and their election,
+including the enactments respecting the questioning of elections, corrupt
+and illegal practices, and registration of electors, shall, so far as
+applicable, extend to elective members of the first order and to members
+of the second order of the Irish Legislative Body. Provided that,--
+
+    (_a_) The law relating to the offices of profit enumerated in Schedule
+    H to the Representation of the People Act, 1867, shall apply to such
+    offices of profit in the Government of Ireland not exceeding ten, as
+    the Legislature of Ireland may from time to time direct;
+
+    (_b_) After the first dissolution of the Legislative Body, the
+    Legislature of Ireland may, subject to the restrictions in this Act
+    mentioned, alter the laws and customs in this section mentioned.
+
+[Sidenote: Regulations for carrying Act into effect.]
+
+=35.=--(1) The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland may make regulations for the
+following purposes:--
+
+    (_a_) The summoning of the Legislative Body and the election of a
+    Speaker, and such adaptation to the proceedings of the Legislative
+    Body of the procedure of the House of Commons as appears to him
+    expedient for facilitating the conduct of business by that body on
+    their first meeting;
+
+    (_b_) The adaptation of any laws relating to the election of
+    representative peers;
+
+    (_c_) The adaptation of any laws and customs relating to the House of
+    Commons or the members thereof to the elective members of the first
+    order and to members of the second order of the Legislative Body; and
+
+    (_d_) The mode of signifying their assent or election under this Act
+    by representative peers or Irish members of the House of Commons as
+    regards becoming members of the Irish Legislative Body in pursuance of
+    this Act.
+
+(2) Any regulations so made shall, in so far as they concern the procedure
+of the Legislative Body, be subject to alteration by Standing Orders of
+that Body, and so far as they concern other matters, be subject to
+alteration by the Legislature of Ireland, but shall, until alteration,
+have the same effect as if they were inserted in this Act.
+
+[Sidenote: Saving of powers of House of Lords.]
+
+=36.= Save as in this Act provided with respect to matters to be decided
+by Her Majesty in Council, nothing in this Act shall affect the appellate
+jurisdiction of the House of Lords in respect of actions and suits in
+Ireland, or the jurisdiction of the House of Lords to determine the
+claims to Irish peerages.
+
+[Sidenote: Savings of rights of Parliament.]
+
+=37.= Save as herein expressly provided, all matters in relation to which
+it is not competent for the Irish Legislative Body to make or repeal laws
+shall remain and be within the exclusive authority of the Imperial
+Parliament, whose power and authority in relation thereto, save as
+aforesaid, shall in no wise be diminished or restrained by anything herein
+contained.
+
+[Sidenote: Continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, etc.]
+
+=38.=--(1) Except as otherwise provided by this Act, all existing laws in
+force in Ireland, and all existing courts of civil and criminal
+jurisdiction, and all existing legal commissions, powers, and authorities,
+and all existing officers, judicial, administrative, and ministerial, and
+all existing taxes, licence, and other duties, fees, and other receipts in
+Ireland shall continue as if this Act had not been passed; subject,
+nevertheless, to be repealed, abolished, or altered in manner and to the
+extent provided by this Act; provided that, subject to the provisions of
+this Act, such taxes, duties, fees, and other receipts, shall, after the
+appointed day, form part of the public revenues of Ireland.
+
+(2) The Commissioners of Inland Revenue and Commissioners of Customs, and
+the officers of such Commissioners respectively, shall have the same
+powers in relation to any articles subject to any duty of excise or
+customs, manufactured, imported, kept for sale, or sold, and any premises
+where the same may be, and to any machinery, apparatus, vessels, utensils,
+or conveyance used in connection therewith, or the removal thereof, and in
+relation to the person manufacturing, importing, keeping for sale,
+selling, or having the custody or possession of the same as they would
+have had if this Act had not been passed.
+
+[Sidenote: Mode of alteration of Act.]
+
+=39.=--(1) On and after the appointed day this Act shall not, except such
+provisions thereof as are declared to be alterable by the Legislature of
+Ireland, be altered except--
+
+    (_a_) By Act of the Imperial Parliament and with the consent of the
+    Irish Legislative Body testified by an address to Her Majesty, or
+
+    (_b_) By an Act of the Imperial Parliament, for the passing of which
+    there shall be summoned to the House of Lords the peerage members of
+    the first order of the Irish Legislative Body, and if there are no
+    such members then twenty-eight Irish representative peers elected by
+    the Irish peers in manner heretofore in use, subject to adaptation as
+    provided by this Act; and there shall be summoned to the House of
+    Commons such one of the members of each constituency, or in the case
+    of a constituency returning four members such two of those members, as
+    the Legislative Body of Ireland may select, and such peers and members
+    shall respectively be deemed, for the purpose of passing any such Act,
+    to be members of the said Houses of Parliament respectively.
+
+(2) For the purposes of this section, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty
+by Order in Council to make such provisions for summoning the said peers
+of Ireland to the House of Lords and the said members from Ireland to the
+House of Commons as to Her Majesty may seem necessary or proper, and any
+provisions contained in such Order in Council shall have the same effect
+as if they had been enacted by Parliament.
+
+[Sidenote: Definitions.]
+
+=40.= In this Act--
+
+    The expression 'the appointed day' shall mean such day after the
+    _thirty-first day of March in the year one thousand eight hundred and
+    eighty-seven_ as may be determined by order of Her Majesty in Council.
+
+    The expression 'Lord-Lieutenant' includes the lords justices or any
+    other chief governor or governors of Ireland for the time being.
+
+    The expression 'Her Majesty the Queen,' or 'Her Majesty in Council,'
+    or 'the Queen,' includes the heirs and successors of Her Majesty the
+    Queen.
+
+    The expression 'Treasury' means the Commissioners of Her Majesty's
+    Treasury.
+
+    The expression 'Treaty' includes any convention or arrangement.
+
+    The expression 'existing' means existing at the passing of this Act.
+
+    The expression 'existing constituency' means any county or borough,
+    or division of a county or borough, or a University returning at the
+    passing of this Act a member or members to serve in Parliament.
+
+    The expression 'duties of excise' does not include a duty received in
+    respect of any licence whether for the sale of intoxicating liquors or
+    otherwise.
+
+    The expression 'financial year' means the twelve months ending on the
+    _thirty-first day of March_.
+
+[Sidenote: Short title of Act.]
+
+=41.= This Act may be cited for all purposes as the Irish Government Act,
+1886.
+
+
+SCHEDULES.
+
+FIRST SCHEDULE.
+
+First order of the Irish Legislative Body.
+
+  -------------------------------------------------
+  Electoral Districts.|Number of Members.|Rotation.
+  --------------------|------------------|---------
+                      |                  |
+                      |                  |
+                      |                  |
+  -------------------------------------------------
+
+SECOND SCHEDULE.
+
+Provisions relating to the first order of the Irish Legislative Body.
+
+THIRD SCHEDULE.
+
+Boundaries of divisions of the City of Cork for the purpose of returning
+members to the second order of the Legislative Body.
+
+FOURTH SCHEDULE.
+
+Provisions as to superannuation allowances of persons in the Permanent
+Civil Service.
+
+FIFTH SCHEDULE.
+
+Transitory provisions.
+
+
+
+
+THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL, 1893.
+
+ARRANGEMENT OF CLAUSES.
+
+PART I.
+
+  _Legislative Authority._
+
+  CLAUSE
+
+  1. Establishment of Irish Legislature.
+  2. Powers of Irish Legislature.
+  3. Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature.
+  4. Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature.
+
+  _Executive Authority._
+
+  5. Executive power in Ireland.
+
+  _Constitution of Legislature._
+
+  6. Composition of Irish Legislative Council.
+  7. Composition of Irish Legislative Assembly.
+  8. Disagreement between two Houses, how settled.
+
+  _Irish Representation in House of Commons._
+
+  9. Representation in Parliament of Irish counties and boroughs.
+
+  _Finance._
+
+  10. As to separate Consolidated Fund and taxes.
+  11. Hereditary revenues and income tax.
+  12. Financial arrangements as between United Kingdom and Ireland.
+  13. Treasury Account (Ireland).
+  14. Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund.
+  15. Irish Church Fund.
+  16. Local loans.
+  17. Adaptation of Acts as to Local Taxation Accounts and Probate, etc.,
+      duties.
+  18. Money bills and votes.
+  19. Exchequer judges for revenue actions, election petitions, etc.
+
+  _Post Office, Postal Telegraphs, and Savings Banks._
+
+  20. Transfer of post office and postal telegraphs.
+  21. Transfer of savings banks.
+
+  _Irish Appeals and Decision of Constitutional Questions._
+
+  22. Irish appeals.
+  23. Special provision for decision of constitutional questions.
+
+  _Lord-Lieutenant and Crown Lands._
+
+  24. Office of Lord-Lieutenant.
+  25. Use of Crown lands by Irish Government.
+
+  _Judges and Civil Servants._
+
+  26. Tenure of future judges.
+  27. As to existing judges and other persons having salaries charged on
+      the Consolidated Fund.
+  28. As to persons holding Civil Service appointments.
+  29. As to existing pensions and superannuation allowances.
+
+  _Police._
+
+  30. As to police.
+
+  _Miscellaneous._
+
+  31. Irish Exchequer Consolidated Fund and Audit.
+  32. Law applicable to both Houses of Irish Legislature.
+  33. Supplemental provisions as to powers of Irish Legislature.
+  34. Limitation on borrowing by local authorities.
+
+  _Transitory Provisions._
+
+  35. Temporary restriction on powers of Irish Legislature and Executive.
+  36. Transitory provisions.
+  37. Continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, etc.
+  38. Appointed day.
+  39. Definitions.
+  40. Short title.
+
+
+SCHEDULES.
+
+_A Bill to amend the provision for the Government of Ireland._ [A.D. 1893.
+
+Whereas it is expedient that without impairing or restricting the supreme
+authority of Parliament, an Irish Legislature should be created for such
+purposes in Ireland as in this Act mentioned: Be it therefore enacted by
+the Queen's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of
+the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament
+assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:--
+
+
+PART I.
+
+_Legislative Authority._
+
+[Sidenote: Establishment of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=1.= On and after the appointed day there shall be in Ireland a
+Legislature consisting of Her Majesty the Queen and of two Houses, the
+Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly.
+
+[Sidenote: Powers of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=2.= With the exceptions and subject to the restrictions in this Act
+mentioned, there shall be granted to the Irish Legislature power to make
+laws for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland in respect of
+matters exclusively relating to Ireland or some part thereof.
+
+[Sidenote: Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=3.= The Irish Legislature shall not have power to make powers of laws
+respect of the following matters or any of them:--
+
+    (1) The Crown, or the succession to the Crown, or a Regency; or the
+    Lord-Lieutenant as representative of the Crown; or
+
+    (2) The making of peace or war or matters arising from a state of war;
+    or
+
+    (3) Naval or military forces, or the defence of the realm; or
+
+    (4) Treaties and other relations with foreign States, or the relations
+    between different parts of Her Majesty's dominions, or offences
+    connected with such treaties or relations; or
+
+    (5) Dignities or titles of honour; or
+
+    (6) Treason, treason-felony, alienage or naturalisation; or
+
+    (7) Trade with any place out of Ireland; or quarantine, or navigation
+    (except as respects inland waters and local health or harbour
+    regulations); or
+
+    (8) Beacons, lighthouses, or sea-marks (except so far as they can
+    consistently with any general Act of Parliament be constructed or
+    maintained by a local harbour authority); or
+
+    (9) Coinage; legal tender; or the standard of weights and measures; or
+
+    (10) Trade marks, merchandise marks, copyright, or patent rights.
+
+Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void.
+
+[Sidenote: Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=4.= The powers of the Irish Legislature shall not extend to the making of
+any law--
+
+    (1) Respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, or
+    prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
+
+    (2) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, on account
+    of religious belief; or
+
+    (3) Abrogating or prejudicially affecting the right to establish or
+    maintain any place of denominational education or any denominational
+    institution or charity; or
+
+    (4) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school
+    receiving public money, without attending the religious instruction at
+    that school; or
+
+    (5) Whereby any person may be deprived of life, liberty, or property
+    without due process of law, or may be denied the equal protection of
+    the laws, or whereby private property may be taken without just
+    compensation; or
+
+    (6) Whereby any existing corporation incorporated by Royal Charter or
+    by any local or general Act of Parliament (not being a corporation
+    raising for public purposes taxes, rates, cess, dues, or tolls, or
+    administering funds so raised) may, unless it consents, or the leave
+    of Her Majesty is first obtained on address from the two Houses of the
+    Irish Legislature, be deprived of its rights, privileges, or property
+    without due process of law; or
+
+    (7) Whereby any inhabitant of the United Kingdom may be deprived of
+    equal rights as respects public sea fisheries.
+
+Any law made in contravention of this section shall be void.
+
+_Executive Authority._
+
+[Sidenote: Executive power in Ireland.]
+
+=5.=--(1) The executive power in Ireland shall continue vested in Her
+Majesty the Queen, and the Lord-Lieutenant, on behalf of Her Majesty,
+shall exercise any prerogatives or other executive power of the Queen the
+exercise of which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty, and shall, in
+Her Majesty's name, summon, prorogue, and dissolve the Irish Legislature.
+
+(2) There shall be an Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Ireland
+to aid and advise in the government of Ireland, being of such numbers, and
+comprising persons holding such offices, as Her Majesty may think fit, or
+as may be directed by Irish Act.
+
+(3) The Lord-Lieutenant shall, on the advice of the said Executive
+Committee, give or withhold the assent of Her Majesty to Bills passed by
+the two Houses of the Irish Legislature, subject nevertheless to any
+instructions given by Her Majesty in respect of any such Bill.
+
+_Constitution of Legislature._
+
+[Sidenote: Composition of Irish Legislative Council.]
+
+=6.=--(1) The Irish Legislative Council shall consist of _forty-eight_
+councillors.
+
+(2) Each of the constituencies mentioned in the First Schedule to this
+Act shall return the number of councillors named opposite thereto in that
+schedule.
+
+[Sidenote: 48 & 49 Vict. c. 3.]
+
+(3) Every man shall be entitled to be registered as an elector, and when
+registered to vote at an election, of a councillor for a constituency, who
+owns or occupies any land or tenement in the constituency of a rateable
+value of more than _twenty_ pounds, subject to the like conditions as a
+man is entitled at the passing of this Act to be registered and vote as a
+Parliamentary elector in respect of an ownership qualification, or of the
+qualification specified in section five of the Representation of the
+People Act, 1884, as the case may be: Provided that a man shall not be
+entitled to be registered, nor if registered to vote, at an election of a
+councillor in more than one constituency in the same year.
+
+(4) The term of office of every councillor shall be _eight_ years, and
+shall not be affected by a dissolution; and one _half_ of the Councillors
+shall retire in every _fourth_ year, and their seats shall be filled by a
+new election.
+
+[Sidenote: Composition of Irish Legislative Assembly.]
+
+=7.=--(1) The Irish Legislative Assembly shall consist of _one hundred and
+three_ members, returned by the existing parliamentary constituencies in
+Ireland, or the existing divisions thereof, and elected by the
+parliamentary electors for the time being in those constituencies or
+divisions.
+
+(2) The Irish Legislative Assembly when summoned may, unless sooner
+dissolved, have continuance for _five_ years from the day on which the
+summons directs it to meet and no longer.
+
+(3) After _six_ years from the passing of this Act, the Irish Legislature
+may alter the qualification of the electors, and the constituencies, and
+the distribution of the members among the constituencies, provided that in
+such distribution due regard is had to the population of the
+constituencies.
+
+[Sidenote: Disagreement between two Houses, how settled.]
+
+=8.= If a Bill, or any provision of a Bill, adopted by the Legislative
+Assembly is lost by the disagreement of the Legislative Council, and after
+a dissolution, or the period of _two years_ from such disagreement, such
+Bill, or a Bill for enacting the said provision, is again adopted by the
+Legislative Assembly, and fails within three months afterwards to be
+adopted by the Legislative Council, the same shall forthwith be submitted
+to the members of the two Houses deliberating and voting together thereon,
+and shall be adopted or rejected according to the decision of the majority
+of those members present and voting on the question.
+
+_Irish Representation in House of Commons._
+
+[Sidenote: Representation in Parliament of Irish counties and boroughs.]
+
+=9.= Unless and until Parliament otherwise determines, the following
+provisions shall have effect:--
+
+    (1) After the _appointed day_ each of the constituencies named in the
+    Second Schedule to this Act shall return to serve in Parliament the
+    number of members named opposite thereto in that Schedule, and no
+    more, and Dublin University shall cease to return any member.
+
+    (2) The existing divisions of the constituencies shall, save as
+    provided in that Schedule, be abolished.
+
+    (3) An Irish representative peer in the House of Lords and a member of
+    the House of Commons for an Irish constituency shall not be entitled
+    to deliberate or vote on--
+
+        (_a_) Any Bill or motion in relation thereto, the operation of
+        which Bill or motion is confined to Great Britain or some part
+        thereof; or
+
+        (_b_) Any motion or resolution relating solely to some tax not
+        raised or to be raised in Ireland; or
+
+        (_c_) Any vote or appropriation of money made exclusively for some
+        service not mentioned in the Third Schedule to this Act; or
+
+        (_d_) Any motion or resolution exclusively affecting Great
+        Britain, or some part thereof, or some local authority, or some
+        person or thing therein; or
+
+        (_e_) Any motion or resolution incidental to any such motion or
+        resolution, as either is last mentioned, or relates solely to some
+        tax not raised or to be raised in Ireland, or incidental to any
+        such vote or appropriation of money as aforesaid.
+
+    (4) Compliance with the provisions of this section shall not be
+    questioned otherwise than in each House in manner provided by the
+    House.
+
+    (5) The election laws and the laws relating to the qualification of
+    parliamentary electors shall not, so far as they relate to
+    parliamentary elections, be altered by the Irish Legislature, but this
+    enactment shall not prevent the Irish Legislature from dealing with
+    any officers concerned with the issue of writs of election, and if any
+    officers are so dealt with, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty by
+    Order in Council to arrange for the issue of such writs, and the writs
+    issued in pursuance of such Order shall be of the same effect as if
+    issued in manner heretofore accustomed.
+
+_Finance._
+
+[Sidenote: As to separate Consolidated Fund and taxes.]
+
+=10.=--(1) On and after the appointed day there shall be an Irish
+Exchequer and Consolidated Fund separate from those of the United Kingdom.
+
+(2) The duties of Customs and Excise and the duties on postage shall be
+imposed by Act of Parliament, but subject to the provisions of this Act
+the Irish Legislature may, in order to provide for the public service of
+Ireland, impose any other taxes.
+
+(3) Save as in this Act mentioned, all matters relating to the taxes in
+Ireland and the collection and management thereof shall be regulated by
+Irish Act, and the same shall be collected and managed by the Irish
+Government, and from part of the public revenues of Ireland: Provided
+that--
+
+    (_a_) The duties of Customs shall be regulated, collected, managed,
+    and paid into the Exchequer of the United Kingdom as heretofore; and
+
+    (_b_) All prohibitions in connection with the duties of Excise, and
+    so far as regards articles sent out of Ireland, all matters relating
+    to those duties, shall be regulated by Act of Parliament; and
+
+    (_c_) The excise duties on articles consumed in Great Britain shall be
+    paid in Great Britain, or to an officer of the Government of the
+    United Kingdom.
+
+(4) Save as in this Act mentioned, all the public revenues of Ireland
+shall be paid into the Irish Exchequer and form a Consolidated Fund, and
+be appropriated to the public service of Ireland by Irish Act.
+
+(5) If the duties of Excise are increased above the rates in force on the
+_first day of March one thousand eight hundred and ninety-three_ the net
+proceeds in Ireland of the duties in excess of the said rates shall be
+paid from the Irish Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom.
+
+(6) If the duties of Excise are reduced below the rates in force on the
+said day, and the net proceeds of such duties in Ireland are in
+consequence less than the net proceeds of the duties before the reduction,
+a sum equal to the deficiency shall, unless it is otherwise agreed between
+the Treasury and the Irish Government, be paid from the Exchequer of the
+United Kingdom to the Irish Exchequer.
+
+[Sidenote: Hereditary revenues and income tax.]
+
+=11.=--(1) The hereditary revenues of the Crown in Ireland which are
+managed by the Commissioners of Woods shall continue during the life of
+Her present Majesty to be managed and collected by those Commissioners,
+and the net amount payable by them to the Exchequer on account of those
+revenues, after deducting all expenses (but including an allowance for
+interest on such proceeds of the sale of those revenues as have not been
+re-invested in Ireland), shall be paid into the Treasury Account (Ireland)
+hereinafter mentioned, for the benefit of the Irish Exchequer.
+
+(2) A person shall not be required to pay income tax in Great Britain in
+respect of property situate or business carried on in Ireland, and a
+person shall not be required to pay income tax in Ireland in respect of
+property situate or business carried on in Great Britain.
+
+(3) For the purpose of giving to Ireland the benefit of the difference
+between the income tax collected in Great Britain from British, Colonial,
+and foreign securities held by residents in Ireland, and the income tax
+collected in Ireland from Irish securities held by residents in Great
+Britain, there shall be made to Ireland out of the income tax collected in
+Great Britain, an allowance of such amount as may be from time to time
+determined by the Treasury, in accordance with a minute of the Treasury,
+laid before Parliament before the appointed day, and such allowance shall
+be paid into the Treasury Account (Ireland) for the benefit of the Irish
+Exchequer.
+
+(4) Provided that the provisions of this section with respect to income
+tax shall not apply to any excess of the rate of income tax in Great
+Britain above the rate in Ireland or of the rate of income tax in Ireland
+above the rate in Great Britain.
+
+[Sidenote: Financial arrangements as between United Kingdom and Ireland.]
+
+=12.=--(1) The duties of Customs contributed by Ireland and, save as
+provided by this Act, that portion of any public revenue of the United
+Kingdom to which Ireland may claim to be entitled, whether specified in
+the Third Schedule to this Act or not, shall be carried to the
+Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, as the contribution of Ireland to
+Imperial liabilities and expenditure as defined in that Schedule.
+
+(2) The civil charges of the Government in Ireland shall, subject as in
+this Act mentioned, be borne after the appointed day by Ireland.
+
+(3) After _fifteen_ years from the passing of this Act the arrangements
+made by this Act for the contribution of Ireland to Imperial liabilities
+and expenditure, and otherwise for the financial relations between the
+United Kingdom and Ireland, may be revised in pursuance of an address to
+Her Majesty from the House of Commons, or from the Irish Legislative
+Assembly.
+
+[Sidenote: Treasury Account (Ireland)]
+
+=13.=--(1) There shall be established under the direction of the Treasury
+an account (in this Act referred to as the Treasury Account (Ireland)).
+
+(2) There shall be paid into such account all sums payable from the Irish
+Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, or from the latter to
+the former Exchequer, and all sums directed to be paid into the account
+for the benefit of either of the said Exchequers.
+
+(3) All sums which are payable from either of the said Exchequers to the
+other of them, or being payable out of one of the said Exchequers are
+repayable by the other Exchequer, shall in the first instance be payable
+out of the said account so far as the money standing on the account is
+sufficient; and for the purpose of meeting such sums the Treasury out of
+the Customs revenue collected in Ireland, and the Irish Government out of
+any of the public revenues in Ireland, may direct money to be paid to the
+Treasury Account (Ireland) instead of into the Exchequer.
+
+(4) Any surplus standing on the account to the credit of either Exchequer,
+and not required for meeting payments, shall at convenient times be paid
+into that Exchequer, and where any sum so payable in to the Exchequer of
+the United Kingdom is required by law to be forthwith paid to the National
+Debt Commissioners, that sum may be paid to those Commissioners without
+being paid into the Exchequer.
+
+(5) All sums payable by virtue of this Act out of the Consolidated Fund of
+the United Kingdom or of Ireland shall be payable from the Exchequer of
+the United Kingdom or of Ireland shall be payable from the Exchequer of
+the United Kingdom or Ireland, as the case may be, within the meaning of
+this Act, and all sums by this Act made payable from the Exchequer of the
+United Kingdom shall, if not otherwise paid, be charged on and paid out of
+the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom.
+
+[Sidenote: Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund.]
+
+=14.=--(1) There shall be charged on the Irish Consolidated Fund in favour
+of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom as a first charge on sums which--
+
+    (_a_) Are payable to that Exchequer from the Irish Exchequer; or
+
+[Sidenote: 54 & 55 Vict. c. 48.]
+
+    (_b_) Are required to repay to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom
+    sums issued to meet the dividends or sinking fund or guaranteed land
+    stock under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891: or
+
+    (_c_) Otherwise have been or are required to be paid out of the
+    Exchequer of the United Kingdom in consequence of the non-payment
+    thereof out of the Exchequer of Ireland or otherwise by the Irish
+    Government.
+
+(2) If at any time the Controller and Auditor-General of the United
+Kingdom is satisfied that any such charge is due, he shall certify the
+amount of it, and the Treasury shall send such certificate to the
+Lord-Lieutenant, who shall thereupon by order, without any
+counter-signature, direct the payment of the amount from the Irish
+Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, and such order shall be
+duly obeyed by all persons, and until the amount is wholly paid no other
+payment shall be made out of the Irish Exchequer for any purpose whatever.
+
+(3) There shall be charged on the Irish Consolidated Fund next after the
+foregoing charge--
+
+[Sidenote: 54 & 55 Vict. c. 48.]
+
+    (_a_) All sums, for dividends or sinking fund on guaranteed land stock
+    under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891, which the Land
+    Purchase Account and the Guarantee Fund under that Act are
+    insufficient to pay;
+
+    (_b_) All sums due in respect of any debt incurred by the Government
+    of Ireland, whether for interest management, or sinking fund;
+
+    (_c_) An annual sum of _five thousand pounds_ for the expenses of the
+    household and establishment of the Lord-Lieutenant;
+
+    (_d_) All existing charges on the Consolidated Fund of the United
+    Kingdom in respect of Irish services other than the salary of the
+    Lord-Lieutenant; and
+
+    (_e_) The salaries and pensions of all judges of the Supreme Court or
+    other Superior Court in Ireland or of any County or other like Court,
+    who are appointed after the passing of this Act, and are not the
+    Exchequer judges hereafter mentioned.
+
+(4) Until all charges created by this Act upon the Irish Consolidated Fund
+and for the time being due are paid, no money shall be issued from the
+Irish Exchequer for any other purpose whatever.
+
+[Sidenote: Irish Church Fund. 32 & 33 Vict. c. 42. 44 & 45 Vict. c. 71.]
+
+=15.=--(1) All existing charges on the Church property in Ireland--that is
+to say, all property accruing under the Irish Church Act, 1869, and
+transferred to the Irish Land Commission by the Irish Church Amendment
+Act, 1881--shall so far as not paid out of the said property be charged on
+the Irish Consolidated Fund, and any of those charges guaranteed by the
+Treasury, if and so far as not paid, shall be paid out of the Exchequer of
+the United Kingdom.
+
+(2) Subject to the existing charges thereon, the said Church property
+shall belong to the Irish Government, and be managed, administered, and
+disposed of as directed by Irish Act.
+
+[Sidenote: Local loans.]
+
+=16.=--(1) All sums paid or applicable in or towards the discharge of the
+interest or principal of any local loan advanced before the appointed day
+on security in Ireland, or otherwise in respect of such loan, which but
+for this Act would be paid to the National Debt Commissioners, and carried
+to the Local Loans Fund, shall, after the appointed day, be paid, until
+otherwise provided by Irish Act, to the Irish Exchequer.
+
+(2) For the payment of the Local Loans Fund of the principal and interest
+of such loans, the Irish Government shall after the appointed day pay by
+half-yearly payments an annuity for _forty-nine_ years, at the rate of
+_four_ per cent., on the principal of the said loans, exclusive of any
+sums written off before the appointed day from the account of assets of
+the Local Loans Fund, and such annuity shall be paid from the Irish
+Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, and when so paid shall
+be forthwith paid to the National Debt Commissioners for the credit of the
+Local Loans Fund.
+
+(3) After the appointed day, money for loans in Ireland shall cease to be
+advanced either by the Public Works Loan Commissioners or out of the Local
+Loans Fund.
+
+[Sidenote: Adaptation of Acts as to Local Taxation Accounts and Probate,
+etc., duties. See 50 & 51 Vict. c. 41. 54 & 55 Vict. c. 48.]
+
+=17.=--(1) So much of any Act as directs payment to the Local Taxation
+(Ireland) Account of any share of Probate, Excise, or Customs duties
+payable to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom shall, together with any
+enactment amending the same, be repealed as from the appointed day without
+prejudice to the adjustment of balances after that day; the like amounts
+shall continue to be paid to the Local Taxation Accounts in England and
+Scotland as would have been paid if this Act had not passed, and any
+residue of the said share shall be paid into the Exchequer of the United
+Kingdom.
+
+[Sidenote: See 21 & 22 Vict. c. 86, ss. 12-18. 21 & 22 Vict. c. 95, s. 29.
+22 & 23 Vict. c. 31, s. 25. 39 & 40 Vict. c. 70, ss. 41-44.]
+
+(2) The stamp duty chargeable in respect of the personalty of a deceased
+person, shall not in the case of administration granted in Great Britain
+be chargeable in respect of any personalty situate in Ireland; nor in the
+case of administration granted in Ireland be chargeable in respect of any
+personalty situate in Great Britain; and any administration granted in
+Great Britain shall not, if re-sealed in Ireland, be exempt from stamp
+duty on administration granted in Ireland, and any administration granted
+in Ireland shall not, when re-sealed in Great Britain, be exempt from
+stamp duty on administration granted in Great Britain.
+
+(3) In this section the expression 'administration' means probate or
+letters of administration, and as respects Scotland, confirmation
+inclusive of the inventory required under the Acts relating to the said
+stamp duty, and the expression 'personalty' means personal or movable
+estate and effects.
+
+[Sidenote: Money bills and votes.]
+
+=18.=--(1) Bills for appropriating any part of the public revenue or for
+imposing any tax shall originate in the Legislative Assembly.
+
+(2) It shall not be lawful for the Legislative Assembly to adopt or pass
+any vote, resolution, address, or Bill for the appropriation for any
+purpose of any part of the public revenue of Ireland, or of any tax,
+except in pursuance of a recommendation from the Lord-Lieutenant in the
+Session in which such vote, resolution, address, or Bill is proposed.
+
+[Sidenote: Exchequer judges for revenue actions, elections petitions,
+etc.]
+
+=19.=--(1) Two of the judges of the Supreme Court in Ireland shall be
+Exchequer judges, and shall be appointed under the Great Seal of the
+United Kingdom; and their salaries and pensions shall be charged on and
+paid out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom.
+
+(2) The Exchequer judges shall be removable only by Her Majesty on address
+from the two Houses of Parliament, and each such judge shall, save as
+otherwise provided by Parliament, receive the same salary and be entitled
+to the same pension as is at the time of his appointment fixed for the
+puisne judges of the Supreme Court, and during his continuance in office
+his salary shall not be diminished, nor his right to pension altered,
+without his consent.
+
+(3) An alteration of any rules relating to such legal proceedings as are
+mentioned in this section shall not be made except with the approval of
+Her Majesty the Queen in Council; and the sittings of the Exchequer judges
+shall be regulated with the like approval.
+
+(4) All legal proceedings in Ireland, which are instituted at the instance
+of or against the Treasury or Commissioners of Customs, or any of their
+officers, or relate to the election of members to serve in Parliament, or
+touch any matter within the powers of the Irish Legislature, or touch any
+matter affected by a law which the Irish Legislature have not power to
+repeal or alter, shall, if so required by any party to such proceedings,
+be heard and determined before the Exchequer judges or (except where the
+case requires to be determined by two judges) before one of them, and in
+any such legal proceeding an appeal shall, if any party so requires, lie
+from any Court of first instance in Ireland to the Exchequer judges, and
+the decision of the Exchequer judges shall be subject to appeal to Her
+Majesty the Queen in Council and not to any other tribunal.
+
+(5) If it is made to appear to an Exchequer judge that any decree or
+judgment in any such proceeding as aforesaid has not been duly enforced by
+the sheriff or other officer whose duty it is to enforce the same, such
+judge shall appoint some officer whose duty it shall be to enforce the
+judgment or decree; and for that purpose such officer and all persons
+employed by him shall be entitled to the same privileges, immunities, and
+powers as are by law conferred on a sheriff and his officers.
+
+(6) The Exchequer judges, when not engaged in hearing and determining such
+legal proceedings as above in this section mentioned, shall perform such
+of the duties ordinarily performed by other judges of the Supreme Court in
+Ireland as may be assigned by Her Majesty the Queen in Council.
+
+(7) All sums recovered by the Treasury or the Commissioners of Customs or
+any of their officers, or recovered under any Act relating to duties of
+Customs, shall, notwithstanding anything in any other Act, be paid to such
+public account as the Treasury or the Commissioners direct.
+
+_Post Office, Postal Telegraphs, and Savings Banks._
+
+[Sidenote: Transfer of post office and postal telegraphs.]
+
+=20.=--(1) As from the _appointed day_ the postal and telegraph service in
+Ireland shall be transferred to the Irish Government, and may be regulated
+by Irish Act, except as in this Act mentioned and except as regards
+matters relating--
+
+    (_a_) To such conditions of the transmission or delivery of postal
+    packets and telegrams as are incidental to the duties on postage; or
+
+    (_b_) To foreign mails or submarine telegraphs or through lines in
+    connection therewith; or
+
+    (_c_) To any other postal or telegraph business in connection with
+    places out of the United Kingdom.
+
+(2) The administration of or incidental to the said excepted matters
+shall, save as may be otherwise arranged with the Irish Post Office,
+remain with the Postmaster-General.
+
+(3) As regards the revenue and expenses of the postal and telegraph
+service, the Postmaster-General shall retain the revenue collected and
+defray the expenses incurred in Great Britain, and the Irish Post Office
+shall retain the revenue collected and defray the expenses incurred in
+Ireland, subject to the provisions of the Fourth Schedule to this Act;
+which schedule shall have full effect, but may be varied or added to by
+agreement between the Postmaster-General and the Irish Post Office.
+
+(4) The sums payable by the Postmaster-General or Irish Post Office to the
+other of them in pursuance of this Act shall, if not paid out of
+Post-Office moneys, be paid from the Exchequer of the United Kingdom or of
+Ireland, as the case requires, to the other Exchequer.
+
+[Sidenote: 26 & 27 Vict. c. 112.]
+
+(5) Sections forty-eight to fifty-two of the Telegraph Act, 1863, and any
+enactment amending the same, shall apply to all telegraphic lines of the
+Irish Government in like manner as to the telegraphs of a company within
+the meaning of that Act.
+
+[Sidenote: Transfer of savings banks]
+
+=21.=--(1) As from the _appointed day_ there shall be transferred to the
+Irish Government the post-office savings banks in Ireland, and all such
+powers and duties of any department or officer in Great Britain as are
+connected with post-office savings banks, trustee savings banks, or
+friendly societies in Ireland, and the same may be regulated by Irish Act.
+
+(2) The Treasury shall publish not less than six months previous notice of
+the transfer of savings banks.
+
+(3) If before the date of the transfer any depositor in a post-office
+savings bank so requests, his deposit shall, according to his request,
+either be paid to him or transferred to a post-office savings bank in
+Great Britain, and after the said date the depositors in a post-office
+savings bank in Ireland shall cease to have any claim against the
+Postmaster-General or the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, but
+shall have the like claim against the Government and Consolidated Fund of
+Ireland.
+
+(4) If before the date of the transfer the trustees of any trustees
+savings bank so request, then, according to the request, either all sums
+due to them shall be repaid, and the savings bank closed, or those sums
+shall be paid to the Irish Government, and after the said date the
+trustees shall cease to have any claim against the National Debt
+Commissioners or the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, but shall
+have the like claim against the Government and Consolidated Fund of
+Ireland.
+
+(5) Notwithstanding the foregoing provisions of this section, if a sum due
+on account of any annuity or policy of insurance which has before the
+above-mentioned notice been granted through a post-office or trustee
+savings bank, is not paid by the Irish Government, that sum shall be paid
+out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom.
+
+_Irish Appeals and Decision of Constitutional Questions._
+
+[Sidenote: Irish appeals.]
+
+=22.=--(1) The appeal from Courts in Ireland to the House of Lords shall
+cease; and where any person would, but for this Act, have a right to
+appeal from any Court in Ireland to the House of Lords, such person shall
+have the like right to appeal to Her Majesty the Queen in Council; and
+the right so to appeal shall not be affected by any Irish Act; and all
+enactments relating to appeals to Her Majesty the Queen in Council, and to
+the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, shall apply accordingly.
+
+[Sidenote: 39 & 40 Vict. c. 59]
+
+(2) When the Judicial Committee sit for hearing appeals from a Court in
+Ireland, there shall be present not less than four Lords of Appeal, within
+the meaning of the Appellate Jurisdiction Act, 1876, and at least one
+member who is or has been a judge of the Supreme Court in Ireland.
+
+(3) A rota of privy councillors to sit for hearing appeals from Courts in
+Ireland shall be made annually by Her Majesty in Council, and the privy
+councillors, or some of them, on that rota shall sit to hear the said
+appeals. A casual vacancy in such rota during the year may be filled by
+Order in Council.
+
+(4) Nothing in this Act shall affect the jurisdiction of the House of
+Lords to determine the claims to Irish peerages.
+
+[Sidenote: Special provision for decision of constitutional questions.]
+
+=23.=--(1) If it appears to the Lord-Lieutenant or a Secretary of State
+expedient in the public interest that steps shall be taken for the speedy
+determination of the question whether any Irish Act, or any provision
+thereof, is beyond the power of the Irish Legislature, he may represent
+the same to Her Majesty in Council, and thereupon the said question shall
+be forthwith referred to and heard and determined by the Judicial
+Committee of the Privy Council, constituted as if hearing an appeal from a
+Court in Ireland.
+
+(2) Upon the hearing of the question such persons as seem to the Judicial
+Committee to be interested may be allowed to appear and be heard as
+parties to the case, and the decision of the Judicial Committee shall be
+given in like manner as if it were the decision of an appeal, the nature
+of the report or recommendation to Her Majesty being stated in open Court.
+
+(3) Nothing in this Act shall prejudice any other power of Her Majesty in
+Council to refer any question to the Judicial Committee, or the right of
+any person to petition Her Majesty for such reference.
+
+_Lord-Lieutenant and Crown Lands._
+
+[Sidenote: Office of Lord-Lieutenant.]
+
+=24.=--(1) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in any Act, every
+subject of the Queen shall be qualified to hold the office of
+Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, without reference to his religious belief.
+
+(2) The term of office of the Lord-Lieutenant shall be _six years_,
+without prejudice to the power of Her Majesty the Queen at any time to
+revoke the appointment.
+
+[Sidenote: Use of Crown lands by Irish Government.]
+
+=25.= Her Majesty the Queen in Council may place under the control of the
+Irish Government, for the purposes of that Government, such of the lands
+and buildings in Ireland vested in or held in trust for Her Majesty, and
+subject to such conditions or restrictions (if any) as may seem expedient.
+
+_Judges and Civil Servants._
+
+[Sidenote: Tenure of future judges.]
+
+=26.= A judge of the Supreme Court or other Superior Court in Ireland, or
+of any County Court or other Court with a like jurisdiction in Ireland,
+appointed after the passing of this Act, shall not be removed from his
+office except in pursuance of an address from the two Houses of
+Legislature of Ireland, nor during his continuance in office shall his
+salary be diminished or right to pension altered without his consent.
+
+[Sidenote: As to existing judges and other persons having salaries charged
+on the Consolidated Fund.]
+
+=27.=--(1) All existing judges of the Supreme Court, County Court judges,
+and Land Commissioners in Ireland, and all existing officers serving in
+Ireland in the permanent Civil Service of the Crown and receiving salaries
+charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, shall, if they are
+removable at present on address from both Houses of Parliament, continue
+to be removable only upon such address, and if removable in any other
+manner shall continue to be removable only in the same manner as
+heretofore; and shall continue to receive the same salaries, gratuities,
+and pensions, and to be liable to perform the same duties as heretofore,
+or such duties as Her Majesty may declare to be analogous, and their
+salaries and pensions, if and so far as not paid out of the Irish
+Consolidated Fund, shall be paid out of the Exchequer of the United
+Kingdom: Provided that this section shall be subject to the provisions of
+this Act with respect to the Exchequer judges.
+
+(2) If any of the said judges, commissioners, or officers retires from
+office with the Queen's approbation before completion of the period of
+service entitling him to a pension, Her Majesty may, if she thinks fit,
+grant to him such pension, not exceeding the pension to which he would on
+that completion have been entitled, as to Her Majesty seems meet.
+
+[Sidenote: As to persons holding Civil Service appointments.]
+
+=28.=--(1) All existing officers in the permanent Civil Service of the
+Crown, who are not above provided for, and are at the appointed day
+serving in Ireland, shall, after that day, continue to hold their offices
+by the same tenure, and to receive the same salaries, gratuities, and
+pensions, and to be liable to perform the same duties as heretofore, or
+such duties as the Treasury may declare to be analogous; and the said
+gratuities and pensions, and until three years after the passing of this
+Act, the salaries due to any of the said officers if remaining in his
+existing office, shall be paid to the payees by the Treasury out of the
+Exchequer of the United Kingdom.
+
+(2) Any such officer may, after _three years_ from the passing of this
+Act, retire from office, and shall, at any time during those three years,
+if required by the Irish Government, retire from office, and on any such
+retirement may be awarded by the Treasury a gratuity or pension in
+accordance with the Fifth Schedule to this Act: Provided that--
+
+    (_a_) Six months' written notice shall, unless it is otherwise agreed,
+    be given either by the said officer or by the Irish Government, as the
+    case requires; and
+
+    (_b_) Such number of officers only shall retire at one time, and at
+    such intervals of time as the Treasury, in communication with the
+    Irish Government, sanction.
+
+(3) If any such officer does not so retire, the Treasury may award him,
+after the said three years, a pension in accordance with the Fifth
+Schedule to this Act, which shall become payable to him on his ultimate
+retirement from the service of the Crown.
+
+(4) The gratuities and pensions awarded in accordance with the Fifth
+Schedule to this Act shall be paid by the Treasury to the payees out of
+the Exchequer of the United Kingdom.
+
+(5) All sums paid out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom in pursuance
+of this section shall be repaid to that Exchequer from the Irish
+Exchequer.
+
+(6) This section shall not apply to officers retained in the service of
+the Government of the United Kingdom.
+
+[Sidenote: As to existing pensions and superannuation allowances.]
+
+=29.= Any existing pension granted on account of service in Ireland as a
+judge of the Supreme Court or of any Court consolidated into that Court,
+or as a County Court judge, or in any other judicial position, or as an
+officer in the permanent Civil Service of the Crown other than in an
+office the holder of which is after the appointed day retained in the
+service of the Government of the United Kingdom, shall be charged on the
+Irish Consolidated Fund, and if and so far as not paid out of that fund,
+shall be paid out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom.
+
+_Police._
+
+[Sidenote: As to police.]
+
+=30.=--(1) The forces of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin
+Metropolitan Police shall, when and as local police forces are from time
+to time established in Ireland in accordance with the Sixth Schedule to
+this Act, be gradually reduced and ultimately cease to exist as mentioned
+in that Schedule; and after the passing of this Act, no officer or man
+shall be appointed to either of these forces; Provided that until the
+expiration of _six_ years from the appointed day, nothing in this Act
+shall require the Lord-Lieutenant to cause either of the said forces to
+cease to exist, if as representing Her Majesty the Queen he considers it
+inexpedient.
+
+(2) The said two forces shall, while they continue, be subject to the
+control of the Lord-Lieutenant as representing Her Majesty, and the
+members thereof shall continue to receive the same salaries, gratuities,
+and pensions, and hold their appointments on the same tenure as
+heretofore, and these salaries, gratuities, and pensions, and all the
+expenditure incidental to either force, shall be paid out of the Exchequer
+of the United Kingdom.
+
+(3) When any existing member of either force retires under the provisions
+of the Sixth Schedule to this Act, the Treasury may award to him a
+gratuity or pension in accordance with that Schedule.
+
+(4) Those gratuities and pensions and all existing pensions payable in
+respect of service in either force, shall be paid by the Treasury to the
+payees out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom.
+
+(5) Two-thirds of the net amount payable in pursuance of this section out
+of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom shall be repaid to that Exchequer
+from the Irish Exchequer.
+
+_Miscellaneous._
+
+[Sidenote: Irish Exchequer Consolidated Fund and Audit.]
+
+31. Save as may be otherwise provided by Irish Act--
+
+    (_a_) The existing law relating to the Exchequer and Consolidated Fund
+    of the United Kingdom shall apply with the necessary modifications to
+    the Exchequer and Consolidated Fund of Ireland, and an officer shall
+    be appointed by the Lord-Lieutenant to be the Irish Comptroller and
+    Auditor-General; and
+
+[Sidenote: 29 & 30 Vict. c. 39]
+
+    (_b_) The accounts of the Irish Consolidated Fund shall be audited as
+    appropriation accounts in manner provided by the Exchequer and Audit
+    Departments Act, 1866, by or under the direction of such officer.
+
+[Sidenote: Law applicable to both Houses of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=32.=--(1) Subject as in this Act mentioned and particularly to the
+Seventh Schedule to this Act (which Schedule shall have full effect), all
+existing election laws relating to the House of Commons and the members
+thereof shall, so far as applicable, extend to each of the two Houses of
+the Irish Legislature and the members thereof, but such election laws so
+far as hereby extended may be altered by Irish Act.
+
+(2) The privileges, rights, and immunities to be held and enjoyed by each
+House and the members thereof shall be such as may be defined by Irish
+Act, but so that the same shall never exceed those for the time being
+held and enjoyed by the House of Commons, and the members thereof.
+
+[Sidenote: Supplemental provisions as to powers of Irish Legislature.]
+
+=33.=--(1) The Irish Legislature may repeal or alter any provision of this
+Act which is by this Act expressly made alterable by that Legislature, and
+also any enactments in force in Ireland, except such as either relate to
+matters beyond the powers of the Irish Legislature, or being enacted by
+Parliament after the passing of this Act, may be expressly extended to
+Ireland. An Irish Act notwithstanding it is in any respect repugnant to
+any enactment excepted as aforesaid, shall, though read subject to that
+enactment, be, except to the extent of that repugnancy, valid.
+
+(2) An order, rule, or regulation, made in pursuance of, or having the
+force of, an Act of Parliament, shall be deemed to be an enactment within
+the meaning of this section.
+
+(3) Nothing in this Act shall affect Bills relating to the divorce or
+marriage of individuals, and any such Bill shall be introduced and proceed
+in Parliament in like manner as if this Act had not been passed.
+
+[Sidenote: Limitation of borrowing by local authorities.]
+
+=34.= The local authority for any county or borough or other area shall
+not borrow money without either--
+
+    (_a_) A special authority from the Irish Legislature, or
+
+    (_b_) The sanction of the proper department of the Irish Government;
+
+and shall not, without such special authority, borrow:
+
+    (i.) In the case of municipal borough or town or area less than a
+    county, any loan which together with the then outstanding debt of the
+    local authority, will exceed twice the annual rateable value of the
+    property, in the municipal borough, town, or area; or
+
+    (ii.) In the case of a county or larger area, any loan which together
+    with the then outstanding debt of the local authority, will exceed
+    one-tenth of the annual rateable value of the property in the county
+    or area; or
+
+    (iii.) In any case a loan exceeding one-half of the above limits
+    without a local inquiry held in the county, borough, or area by a
+    person appointed for the purpose by the said department.
+
+_Transitory Provisions._
+
+[Sidenote: Temporary restriction on powers of Irish Legislature and
+Executive.]
+
+=35.=--(1) During _three_ years from the passing of this Act, and if
+Parliament is then sitting until the end of that session of Parliament,
+the Irish Legislature shall not pass an Act respecting the relations of
+landlord and tenant, or the sale, purchase, or letting of land generally;
+Provided that nothing in this section shall prevent the passing of any
+Irish Act with a view to the purchase of land for railways, harbours,
+water-works, town improvements, or other local undertakings.
+
+(2) During _six_ years from the passing of this Act, the appointment of a
+judge of the Supreme Court or other Superior Courts in Ireland (other than
+one of the Exchequer judges) shall be made in pursuance of a warrant from
+Her Majesty countersigned as heretofore.
+
+[Sidenote: Transitory provisions.]
+
+=36.=--(1) Subject to the provisions of this Act Her Majesty the Queen in
+Council may make or direct such arrangements as seem necessary or proper
+for setting in motion the Irish Legislature and Government and for
+otherwise bringing this Act into operation.
+
+(2) The Irish Legislature shall be summoned to meet on the _first Tuesday
+in September, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four_, and the first
+election of members of the two Houses of the Irish Legislature shall be
+held at such time before that day as may be fixed by Her Majesty in
+Council.
+
+(3) Upon the first meeting of the Irish Legislature the members of the
+House of Commons then sitting for Irish constituencies, including the
+members for Dublin University, shall vacate their seats, and writs shall,
+as soon as conveniently may be, be issued by the Lord Chancellor of
+Ireland for the purpose of holding an election of members to serve in
+Parliament for the constituencies named in the Second Schedule of this
+Act.
+
+(4) The existing Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and the senior of the
+existing puisne judges of the Exchequer Division of the Supreme Court, or
+if they or either of them are or is dead or unable or unwilling to act,
+such other of the judges of the Supreme Court as Her Majesty may appoint,
+shall be the first Exchequer judges.
+
+(5) Where it appears to Her Majesty the Queen in Council, before the
+expiration of _one year_ after the appointed day, that any existing
+enactment respecting matters within the powers of the Irish Legislature
+requires adaptation to Ireland, whether--
+
+    (_a_) By the substitution of the Lord-Lieutenant in Council, or of any
+    departments or office of the Executive Government in Ireland, for Her
+    Majesty in Council, a Secretary of State, the Treasury, the
+    Postmaster-General, the Board of Inland Revenue, or other public
+    department or offices in Great Britain; or
+
+    (_b_) By the substitution of the Irish Consolidated Fund or moneys
+    provided by the Irish Legislature for the Consolidated Fund of the
+    United Kingdom, or moneys provided by Parliament, or
+
+    (_c_) By the substitution or confirmation by, or other act to be done
+    by or to, the Irish Legislature for confirmation by or other act to be
+    done by or to Parliament; or
+
+    (_d_) By any other adaptation; Her Majesty, by Order in Council, may
+    make that adaptation.
+
+(6) Her Majesty the Queen in Council may provide for the transfer of such
+property, rights, and liabilities, and the doing of such other things as
+may appear to Her Majesty necessary or proper for carrying into effect
+this Act or any Order in Council under this Act.
+
+(7) An Order in Council under this section may make an adaptation or
+provide for a transfer either unconditionally or subject to such
+exceptions, conditions, and restrictions as may seem expedient.
+
+(8) The draft of every Order in Council under this section shall be laid
+before both Houses of Parliament for not less than two months before it is
+made, and such order when made shall, subject as respects Ireland to the
+provisions of an Irish Act, have full effect, but shall not interfere with
+the continued application to any place, authority, person, or thing, not
+in Ireland, of the enactment to which the Order relates.
+
+[Sidenote: Continuance of existing laws, courts, offices, etc.]
+
+=37.=--Except as otherwise provided by this Act, all existing laws,
+institutions, authorities, and officers in Ireland, whether judicial,
+administrative, or ministerial, and all existing taxes in Ireland shall
+continue as if this Act had not passed, but with the modifications
+necessary for adapting the same to this Act, and subject to be repealed,
+abolished, altered, and adapted in the manner and to the extent authorised
+by this Act.
+
+[Sidenote: Appointed day.]
+
+=38.=--Subject as in this Act mentioned the appointed day for the purposes
+of this Act shall be the day of the first meeting of the Irish
+Legislature, or such other day not more than _seven_ months earlier or
+later as may be fixed by order of Her Majesty in Council either generally
+or with reference to any particular provision of this Act, and different
+days may be appointed for different purposes and different provisions of
+this Act, whether contained in the same section or in different sections.
+
+[Sidenote: Definitions.]
+
+=39.=--In this Act unless the context otherwise requires--
+
+    The expression 'existing' means existing at the passing of this Act.
+
+    The expression 'constituency' means a parliamentary constituency or a
+    county or borough returning a member or members to serve in either
+    House of the Irish Legislature, as the case requires, and the
+    expression 'parliamentary constituency' means any county, borough, or
+    university returning a member or members to serve in Parliament.
+
+    The expression 'parliamentary elector' means a person entitled to be
+    registered as a voter at a parliamentary election.
+
+    The expression 'parliamentary election' means the election of a member
+    to serve in Parliament.
+
+    The expression 'tax' includes duties and fees, and the expression
+    'duties of excise' does not include licence duties.
+
+    The expression 'foreign mails' means all postal packets, whether
+    letters, parcels, or other packets, posted in the United Kingdom and
+    sent to a place out of the United Kingdom, or posted in a place out of
+    the United Kingdom and sent to a place in the United Kingdom, or in
+    transit through the United Kingdom to a place out of the United
+    Kingdom.
+
+    The expression 'telegraphic line' has the same meaning as in the
+    Telegraphs Acts, 1863 to 1892.
+
+    The expression 'duties on postage' includes all rates and sums
+    chargeable for or in respect of postal packets, money orders, or
+    telegrams, or otherwise under the Post-office Acts or the Telegraph
+    Act, 1892.
+
+    The expression 'Irish Act' means a law made by the Irish Legislature.
+
+[Sidenote: 26 & 27 Vict. c. 112. 41 & 42 Vict. c. 76. 55 & 56 Vict. c. 59.
+7 Will. 4, and 1 Vict. c. 36. 32 & 33 Vict. c. 73. 48 & 49 Vict. c. 58.]
+
+    The expression 'election laws' means the laws relating to the election
+    of members to serve in Parliament, other than those relating to the
+    qualification of electors, and includes all the laws respecting the
+    registration of electors, the issue and execution of writs, the
+    creation of polling districts, the taking of the poll, the questioning
+    of elections, corrupt and illegal practices, the disqualification of
+    members, and the vacating of seats.
+
+    The expression 'rateable value' means the annual rateable value under
+    the Irish Valuation Acts.
+
+    The expression 'salary' includes remuneration, allowances, and
+    emoluments.
+
+    The expression 'pension' includes superannuation allowance.
+
+[Sidenote: Short title.]
+
+=40.=--This Act may be cited as the Irish Government Act, 1893.
+
+
+SCHEDULES.
+
+FIRST SCHEDULE: LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL--CONSTITUENCIES AND NUMBER OF
+COUNCILLORS.
+
+  ------------------------------------------
+  Constituencies.            | Councillors.
+  ---------------------------|--------------
+  Antrim County              |   Three
+  Armagh County              |    One
+  Belfast Borough            |    Two
+  Carlow County              |    One
+  Cavan County               |    One
+  Clare County               |    One
+  Cork County--              |
+    East Riding              |   Three
+    West Riding              |    One
+  Cork Borough               |    One
+  Donegal County             |    One
+  Down County                |   Three
+  Dublin County              |   Three
+    "    Borough             |    Two
+  Fermanagh County           |    One
+  Galway County              |    Two
+  Kerry County               |    One
+  Kildare County             |    One
+  Kilkenny County            |    One
+  King's County              |    One
+  Leitrim and Sligo Counties |    One
+  Limerick County            |    Two
+  Londonderry County         |    One
+  Longford County            |    One
+  Louth County               |    One
+  Mayo County                |    One
+  Meath County               |    One
+  Monaghan County            |    One
+  Queen's County             |    One
+  Roscommon County           |    One
+  Tipperary County           |    Two
+  Tyrone County              |    One
+  Waterford County           |    One
+  Westmeath County           |    One
+  Wexford County             |    One
+  Wicklow County             |    One
+  ---------------------------|--------------
+                             | Forty-eight
+  ------------------------------------------
+
+The expression 'borough' in this schedule means an existing parliamentary
+borough. Counties of cities and towns not named in this Schedule shall be
+combined with the county at large in which they are included for
+Parliamentary elections, and if not so included, then with the county at
+large bearing the same name.
+
+A borough named in this Schedule shall not for the purposes of this
+Schedule form part of any other constituency.
+
+SECOND SCHEDULE: IRISH MEMBERS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
+
+  ---------------------------------------------------
+                                |  Number of Members
+  Constituency.                 |     for House
+                                |    of Commons.
+  ------------------------------|--------------------
+  Antrim County                 |       Three
+  Armagh County                 |        Two
+  Belfast Borough (in divisions |}
+     as mentioned below)        |}      Four
+  Carlow County                 |        One
+  Cavan County                  |        Two
+  Clare County                  |        Two
+  Cork County (in divisions     |}
+     as mentioned below)        |}      Five
+  Cork Borough                  |        Two
+  Donegal County                |       Three
+  Down County                   |       Three
+  Dublin County                 |        Two
+     "   Borough (in divisions  |}
+     as mentioned below)        |}      Four
+  Fermanagh County              |        One
+  Galway County                 |       Three
+     "   Borough                |        One
+  Kerry County                  |       Three
+  Kildare County                |        One
+  Kilkenny County               |        One
+     "     Borough              |        One
+  King's County                 |        One
+  Leitrim County                |        Two
+  Limerick County               |        Two
+     "     Borough              |        One
+  Londonderry County            |        Two
+     "        Borough           |        One
+  Longford County               |        One
+  Louth County                  |        One
+  Mayo County                   |       Three
+  Meath County                  |        Two
+  Monaghan County               |        Two
+  Newry Borough                 |        One
+  Queen's County                |        One
+  Roscommon County              |        Two
+  Sligo County                  |        Two
+  Tipperary County              |       Three
+  Tyrone County                 |       Three
+  Waterford County              |        One
+     "      Borough             |        One
+  Westmeath County              |        One
+  Wexford County                |        Two
+  Wicklow County                |        One
+  ------------------------------|--------------------
+                                |       Eighty
+  ---------------------------------------------------
+
+(1) In this Schedule the expression 'borough' means an existing
+parliamentary borough.
+
+(2) In the parliamentary boroughs of Belfast and Dublin, one member shall
+be returned by each of the existing parliamentary divisions of those
+boroughs, and the law relating to the divisions of boroughs shall apply
+accordingly.
+
+(3) The county of Cork shall be divided into two divisions, consisting of
+the East Riding and the West Riding, and three members shall be elected by
+the East Riding, and two members shall be elected by the West Riding; and
+the law relating to divisions of counties shall apply to these divisions.
+
+THIRD SCHEDULE: FINANCE-IMPERIAL LIABILITIES, EXPENDITURE, AND
+MISCELLANEOUS REVENUE.
+
+_Liabilities._
+
+For the purposes of this Act, 'Imperial liabilities' consist of:--
+
+(1) The funded and unfunded debt of the United Kingdom, inclusive of
+terminable annuities paid out of the permanent annual charge for the
+National Debt, and inclusive of the cost of the management of the said
+funded and unfunded debt, but exclusive of the Local Loans Stock and
+Guaranteed Land Stock, and the cost of the management thereof; and
+
+(2) All other charges on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom for
+the repayment of borrowed money, or to fulfil a guarantee.
+
+_Expenditure._
+
+For the purpose of this Act Imperial expenditure consists of expenditure
+for the following services:--
+
+1. Naval and military expenditure (including Greenwich Hospital).
+
+2. Civil expenditure, that is to say--
+
+    (_a_) Civil list and Royal family.
+
+    (_b_) Salaries, pensions, allowances, and incidental expenses of--
+
+        (i.) Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.
+
+        (ii.) Exchequer judges in Ireland.
+
+    (_c_) Buildings, works, salaries, pensions, printing, stationery,
+    allowances, and incidental expenses of--
+
+        (i.) Parliament;
+
+        (ii.) National Debt Commissioners;
+
+        (iii.) Foreign Office and diplomatic and consular service,
+        including secret service, special services, and telegraph
+        subsidies;
+
+        (iv.) Colonial Office, including special services and telegraph
+        subsidies;
+
+        (v.) Privy Council;
+
+        (vi.) Board of Trade, including the Mercantile Marine Fund, Patent
+        Office, Railway Commission, and Wreck Commission, but excluding
+        Bankruptcy;
+
+        (vii.) Mint;
+
+        (viii.) Meteorological Society;
+
+        (ix.) Slave trade service.
+
+    (_d_) Foreign mails and telegraphic communication with places outside
+    the United Kingdom.
+
+_Revenue._
+
+For the purposes of this Act the public revenue to a portion of which
+Ireland may claim to be entitled consists of revenue from the following
+sources:--
+
+1. Suez Canal shares or payments on account thereof.
+
+2. Loans and advances to foreign countries.
+
+3. Annual payments by British possessions.
+
+4. Fees, stamps, and extra receipts received by departments, the expenses
+of which are part of the Imperial expenditure.
+
+5. Small branches of the hereditary revenues of the Crown.
+
+6. Foreshores.
+
+FOURTH SCHEDULE: PROVISIONS AS TO POST OFFICE.
+
+(1) The Postmaster-General shall pay to the Irish Post Office in respect
+of any foreign mails sent through Ireland and the Irish Post Office shall
+pay to the Postmaster-General in respect of any foreign mails sent through
+Great Britain, such sum as may be agreed upon for the carriage of those
+mails in Ireland or Great Britain, as the case may be.
+
+(2) The Irish Post Office shall pay to the Postmaster-General;
+
+    (i.) One-half of the expense of the packet service and submarine
+    telegraph lines between Great Britain and Ireland after deducting from
+    that expense of the sum fixed by the Postmaster-General as incurred on
+    account of foreign mails or telegraphic communication with a place out
+    of the United Kingdom, as the case may be; and
+
+    (ii.) Five per cent. of the expenses of the conveyance outside the
+    United Kingdom of foreign mails, and of the transmission of telegrams
+    to places outside the United Kingdom; and
+
+    (iii.) Such proportion of the receipts for telegrams to places out of
+    the United Kingdom as is due in respect of the transmission outside
+    the United Kingdom of such telegrams.
+
+(3) The Postmaster-General and the Irish Post Office respectively shall
+pay to the other of them on account of foreign money orders, of
+compensation in respect of postal packets, and of any matters not
+specifically provided for in this Schedule, such sums as may be agreed
+upon.
+
+(4) Of the existing debt incurred in respect of telegraphs, a sum of five
+hundred and fifty thousand pounds, two and three quarters per cent.
+Consolidated Stock shall be treated as debt of the Irish Post Office, and
+for paying the dividends on and redeeming such stock there shall be paid
+half-yearly by the Irish Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom
+an annuity of _eighteen_ thousand pounds for _sixty_ years, and such
+annuity when paid into the Exchequer shall be forthwith paid to the
+National Debt Commissioners and applied for the reduction of the National
+Debt.
+
+(5) The Postmaster-General and the Irish Post Office may agree on the
+facilities to be afforded by the Irish Post Office in Ireland in relation
+to any matters the administration of which by virtue of this Act remains
+with the Postmaster-General, and with respect to the use of the Irish
+telegraphic lines for through lines in connection with submarine
+telegraphs, or with telegraphic communication with any place out of the
+United Kingdom.
+
+FIFTH SCHEDULE: REGULATIONS AS TO GRATUITIES AND PENSIONS FOR CIVIL
+SERVANTS.
+
+SIXTH SCHEDULE:
+
+    PART I.--REGULATIONS AS TO ESTABLISHMENT OF POLICE FORCES AND AS TO
+    THE ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY AND DUBLIN METROPOLITAN POLICE CEASING TO
+    EXIST.
+
+(1) Such local police forces shall be established under such local
+authorities and for such counties, municipal boroughs, or other larger
+areas, as may be provided by Irish Act.
+
+(2) Whenever the Executive Committee of the Privy Council in Ireland
+certify to the Lord-Lieutenant that a police force, adequate for local
+purposes, has been established in any area, then, subject to the
+provisions of this Act, he shall within six months thereafter direct the
+Royal Irish Constabulary to be withdrawn from the performance of regular
+police duties in such area, and such order shall be forthwith carried into
+effect.
+
+(3) Upon any such withdrawal the Lord-Lieutenant shall order measures to
+be taken for a proportionate reduction of the numbers of the Royal Irish
+Constabulary, and such order shall be duly executed.
+
+(4) Upon the Executive Committee of the Privy Council in Ireland
+certifying to the Lord-Lieutenant that adequate local police forces have
+been established in every part of Ireland, then subject to the provisions
+of this Act, the Lord-Lieutenant shall within six months after such
+certificate, order measures to be taken for causing the whole of the Royal
+Irish Constabulary to cease to exist as a police force, and such order
+shall be duly executed.
+
+(5) Where the area in which a local police force is established is part of
+the Dublin Metropolitan Police District, the foregoing regulations shall
+apply to the Dublin Metropolitan Police in like manner as if that force
+were the Royal Irish Constabulary.
+
+
+PART II.--REGULATIONS AS TO GRATUITIES AND PENSIONS FOR THE ROYAL IRISH
+CONSTABULARY AND DUBLIN METROPOLITAN POLICE.
+
+SEVENTH SCHEDULE: REGULATIONS AS TO HOUSES OF THE LEGISLATURE AND THE
+MEMBERS THEREOF.
+
+_Legislative Council._
+
+(1) There shall be a separate register of electors of councillors of the
+Legislative Council which shall be made, until otherwise provided by Irish
+Act, in like manner as the Parliamentary register of electors.
+
+(2) Where, for the election of Councillors, any counties are combined so
+as to form one constituency, then until otherwise provided by Irish Act,
+
+    (_a_) The returning officer for the whole constituency shall be that
+    one of the returning officers for Parliamentary elections for those
+    counties to whom the writ is addressed, and the writ shall be
+    addressed to the returning officer for the constituency with the
+    largest population, according to the census of 1891.
+
+    (_b_) The returning officer shall have the same authority throughout
+    the whole constituency as a returning officer to a Parliamentary
+    election for a county has in the county.
+
+    (_c_) The registers of electors of each county shall jointly be the
+    register of electors for the constituency.
+
+    (_d_) For the purposes of this Schedule 'county' includes a county of
+    a city or town, and this Schedule, and the law relating to the
+    qualification of electors, shall apply, as if the county of a city or
+    town formed part of the county at large with which it is combined, and
+    the qualification in the county of a city or town shall be the same as
+    in such county at large.
+
+(3) Writs shall be issued for the election of councillors at such time not
+less than one or more than three months before the day for the periodical
+retirement of councillors as the Lord-Lieutenant in Council may fix.
+
+(4) The day for the periodical retirement of councillors shall, until
+otherwise provided by Irish Act, be the last day of August in every fourth
+year.
+
+(5) For the purposes of such retirement, the constituencies shall be
+divided into two equal divisions, and the constituencies in each province
+shall be divided as nearly as may be equally between those divisions, and
+constituencies returning two or more members shall be treated as two or
+more constituencies, and placed in both divisions.
+
+(6) Subject as aforesaid, the particular constituencies which are to be in
+each division shall be determined by lot.
+
+(7) The said division and lot shall be made and conducted before the
+appointed day in manner directed by the Lord-Lieutenant in Council.
+
+(8) The first councillors elected for the constituencies in the first
+division shall retire on the first day of retirement which occurs after
+the first meeting of the Irish Legislature, and the first councillors for
+the constituencies in the second division shall retire on the second day
+of retirement after that meeting.
+
+(9) Any casual vacancy among the councillors shall be filled by a new
+election, but the councillor filling the vacancy shall retire at the time
+at which the vacating councillor would have retired.
+
+_Legislative Assembly._
+
+(10) The Parliamentary register of electors for the time being shall,
+until otherwise provided by Irish Act, be the register of electors of the
+Legislative Assembly.
+
+_Both Houses._
+
+(11) Until otherwise provided by Irish Act, the Lord-Lieutenant in Council
+may make regulations for adapting the existing election laws to the
+election of members of the two Houses of the Legislature.
+
+(12) Annual sessions of the Legislature shall be held.
+
+(13) Any peer, whether of the United Kingdom, Great Britain, England,
+Scotland, or Ireland, shall be qualified to be a member of either House.
+
+(14) A member of either House may by writing under his hand resign his
+seat, and the same shall thereupon be vacant.
+
+(15) The same person shall not be a member of both Houses.
+
+(16) Until otherwise provided by Irish Act, if the same person is elected
+to a seat in each House, he shall, before the eighth day after the next
+sitting of either House, by written notice, elect in which House he will
+serve, and upon such election his seat in the other House shall be vacant,
+and if he does not so elect, his seat in both Houses shall be vacant.
+
+(17) Until otherwise provided by Irish Act, any such notice electing in
+which House a person will sit, or any notice of resignation, shall be
+given in manner directed by the Standing Orders of the Houses, and if
+there is no such direction, shall be given to the Lord-Lieutenant.
+
+(18) The powers of either House shall not be affected by any vacancy
+therein, or any defect in the election or qualification of any member
+thereof.
+
+(19) Until otherwise provided by Irish Act, the holders of such Irish
+offices as may be named by Order of the Queen in Council before the
+appointed day, shall be entitled to be elected to and sit in either House,
+notwithstanding that they hold offices under the Crown, but on acceptance
+of any such office the seat of any such person in either House shall be
+vacated unless he has accepted the office in succession to some other of
+the said offices.
+
+_Transitory._
+
+(20) The Lord-Lieutenant in Council may, before the appointed day, make
+regulations for the following purposes:--
+
+    (_a_) The making of a register of electors of councillors in time for
+    the election of the first councillors, and with that object for the
+    variation of the days relating to registration in the existing
+    election laws, and for prescribing the duties of officers, and for
+    making such adaptations of those laws as appear necessary or proper
+    for duly making a register;
+
+    (_b_) The summoning of the two Houses of the Legislature of Ireland,
+    the issue of writs and any other things appearing to be necessary or
+    proper for the election of members of the two Houses;
+
+    (_c_) The election of a chairman (whether called Speaker, President,
+    or by any other name) of each House, the quorum of each House, the
+    communications between the two Houses, and such adaptation to the
+    proceedings of the two Houses of the procedure of Parliament, as
+    appears expedient for facilitating the conduct of business by those
+    Houses on their first meeting;
+
+    (_d_) The adaptation to the two Houses and the members thereof of any
+    laws and customs relating to the House of Commons or the members
+    thereof;
+
+    (_e_) The deliberation and voting together of the two Houses in cases
+    provided by this Act.
+
+(21) The regulations maybe altered by Irish Act, and also in so far as
+they concern the procedure of either House alone, by Standing Orders of
+that House, but shall, until altered, have effect as if enacted in this
+Act.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE I
+
+FROM THE 'MEMOIRS OF THE LATE LORD SELBORNE'
+
+(Part ii. pp. 261-263).
+
+
+... Each new step Gladstone takes is, as it seems to me, more and more on
+the side of _moral_ as well as political evil. Much as I disapproved of
+his surrender of last year to Parnell, I disapprove very much more of his
+present endeavour to prevent the restoration in the present stage of the
+Home Rule question, of the reign of law in Ireland, and of the _means_ he
+is attempting to use for _that_ purpose. Deliberate and organised
+obstruction in the House of Commons, and an attempt to overrule a majority
+against him there, of more than one hundred, by violent appeals to popular
+passions outside,--those appeals being supported by representing the cause
+of anarchy and conspiring against law as the cause of liberty,--by denying
+the existence of any case for strengthening the law, in the face of a
+complete and manifest paralysis of law by the power of a seditious
+organisation, into whose scale he has now thrown his whole influence,--and
+by denouncing, in the most violent terms, the principle of measures for
+the protection of the loyal, and for securing the due administration of
+justice, which are the same (in their general character, for it is not
+necessary here to go into questions of detail) with those by means of
+which he himself governed Ireland for the last years of his power, and far
+more consistent with all real ideas of liberty than the suspension of the
+Habeas Corpus Act, which he introduced in 1881. It was quite open to him
+(of course) to contend that, by the acceptance of his Home Rule scheme,
+the necessity for any such measures might be prevented, and that he
+prefers and insists upon that alternative,--so much as _that_ was involved
+in his measures of last year; but it is quite a different thing to
+denounce the principle of maintaining law and government, and defending
+those who respect and obey law from the tyranny of conspirators against
+it, and making the ordinary criminal law of the country a reality and not
+a mere idle name,--'as coercion,' in the sense of an undue invasion of
+liberty. To do this, and to appeal _ad populum_ against it from an
+overwhelming majority in Parliament is _Acheronta movere_, with a
+vengeance.... For a man who, with his attainments, his experience, his
+professions, his fifty years' public service, his political education
+under some of the greatest and best men of the time, has three times
+filled the highest office in the State, and is now on the verge of the
+grave, so to end his career, seems to me more shocking and disheartening
+than anything else recorded in our history. It is only the old respect,
+and old attachment, which makes one search about for the possible
+explanations, in the workings of a very complex and intricate mind. If (as
+I trust) the Government and the House of Commons stand firm, all his
+efforts in the cause of anarchy will be in vain. The clause as to removing
+trials to England may have to be given up; but the _permanence_ of the
+Bill (its best feature of all) must remain, if any good is to be done.
+
+... I will spare you a long yarn about politics this time. The G.O.M.
+seems to be determined to pull the whole Irish house down, parliamentary
+government and all, unless he can have his own way. But I have no fear
+that he _will_ have his way, just at present, whatever harm he may do in
+the endeavour. But the struggle is very disagreeable, as well as sharp.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE II
+
+REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSION (Vol. iv. pp. 544, 545).
+
+_Conclusions of the Report of the Judges._
+
+
+We have now pursued our inquiry over a sufficiently extended period to
+enable us to report upon the several charges and allegations which have
+been made against the respondents, and we have indicated in the course of
+this statement our findings upon these charges and allegations, but it
+will be convenient to repeat _seriatim_ the conclusions we have arrived
+at upon the issues which have been raised for our consideration.
+
+I. We find that the respondent members of Parliament collectively were not
+members of a conspiracy having for its object to establish the absolute
+independence of Ireland, but we find that some of them, together with Mr.
+Davitt, established and joined in the Land League organisation with the
+intention by its means to bring about the absolute independence of Ireland
+as a separate nation. The names of these respondents are set out on a
+previous page.
+
+II. We find that the respondents did enter into a conspiracy by a system
+of coercion and intimidation to promote an agrarian agitation against the
+payment of agricultural rents, for the purpose of impoverishing and
+expelling from the country the Irish landlords who were styled the
+'English Garrison.'
+
+III. We find that the charge that 'when on certain occasions they thought
+it politic to denounce, and did denounce, certain crimes in public they
+afterwards led their supporters to believe such denunciations were not
+sincere' is not established. We entirely acquit Mr. Parnell and the other
+respondents of the charge of insincerity in their denunciation of the
+Phoenix Park murders, and find that the 'facsimile' letters on which
+this charge was chiefly based as against Mr. Parnell is a forgery.
+
+IV. We find that the respondents did disseminate the _Irish World_ and
+other newspapers tending to incite to sedition and the commission of other
+crime.
+
+V. We find that the respondents did not directly incite persons to the
+commission of crime other than intimidation, but that they did incite to
+intimidation, and that the consequence of that incitement was that crime
+and outrage were committed by the persons incited. We find that it has not
+been proved that the respondents made payments for the purpose of inciting
+persons to commit crime.
+
+VI. We find as to the allegation that the respondents did nothing to
+prevent crime and expressed no _bona fide_ disapproval, that some of the
+respondents, and in particular Mr. Davitt, did express _bona fide_
+disapproval of crime and outrage, but that the respondents did not
+denounce the system of intimidation which led to crime and outrage, but
+persisted in it with knowledge of its effect.
+
+VII. We find that the respondents did defend persons charged with agrarian
+crime, and supported their families, but that it has not been proved that
+they subscribed to testimonials for, or were intimately associated with,
+notorious criminals, or that they made payments to procure the escape of
+criminals from justice.
+
+VIII. We find, as to the allegation that the respondents made payments to
+compensate persons who had been injured in the commission of crime, that
+they did make such payments.
+
+IX. As to the allegation that the respondents invited the assistance and
+co-operation of and accepted subscriptions of money from known advocates
+of crime and the use of dynamite, we find that the respondents did invite
+the assistance and co-operation of and accepted subscriptions of money
+from Patrick Ford, a known advocate of crime and the use of dynamite, but
+that it has not been proved that the respondents, or any of them, knew
+that the Clan-na-Gael controlled the League or was collecting money for
+the Parliamentary Fund. It has been proved that the respondents invited
+and obtained the assistance and co-operation of the Physical Force Party
+in America, including the Clan-na-Gael, and in order to obtain that
+assistance, abstained from repudiating or condemning the action of that
+party.
+
+
+
+
+Index
+
+
+  A
+
+  Administration of the affairs of Ireland: its nature and defects, 28, 29.
+
+  Agrarian crime in Ireland, 12, 29, 128, 135, 146. _See_ Whiteboyism
+
+  Agriculture, state of, in Ireland, 3, 7, 204, 205, 206, 234
+
+
+  B
+
+  Balfour, Mr. Arthur: his successful policy when Chief Secretary for
+        Ireland, 58;
+    he establishes light railways in Ireland, and the Congested Districts
+        Board, 35, 36
+
+  Belfast, improvement in, within the last sixty years, 2
+
+  Bewley, Mr. Justice, the head of the Second Land Commission: his theory
+        of occupation right in the Irish land, 219, 220
+
+  Bureaucracy, the, of the Castle, 28, 29
+
+  Butt, Isaac: the true author of the conception of Home Rule, 41;
+    his work on Irish Federalism, 42
+
+
+  C
+
+  Chicago, the Convention at, in 1886: speeches of two of Parnell's
+        envoys, 57
+
+  Code, the Irish Penal: its effects on the Irish land, 99, 100. _See_ the
+        Question of the Irish Land, Chap. III., in several places
+
+  Commissions appointed for considering and administering Irish affairs:
+    (1) the Devon Commission and its Report--the mistake it made as to
+        Irish land tenure, 116;
+    (2) the Childers Commission and its Report on Irish finance, 288-291
+        (_see_ chapter on the Present Question of Irish Finance, _passim_);
+    (3) the Land Commission appointed to carry out the Land Act of 1881
+        and its supplements, 166, 190, 191. _See_ Chaps. IV., V., VI., on
+        the Question of the Irish Land, in many places
+
+  Confiscations of the Irish Land, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96. _See_ Chap.
+        III., on the Question of the Irish Land, in several places
+
+  Cork has not prospered within the last sixty years, 2
+
+  Cromwell, Irish policy of, especially as to the land, 93, 94
+
+
+  D
+
+  Davitt, Michael, inaugurates the Irish Land League, 44
+
+  Derby, the Administration of Lord, brings in Irish Land Bills in 1852,
+        which do not become law, 123
+
+  Dublin, improvements in, within sixty years, 2
+
+
+  E
+
+  Emancipation, Catholic: its effects on Irish landed relations, 113, 114
+
+  Encumbered Estates Act: an iniquitous measure of confiscation, and its
+        results, 121, 122
+
+  Exodus, the, of the Irish race after the Famine, 120. _See_ Chap. III.,
+        the Question of the Irish Land, in several places
+
+
+  F
+
+  Famine, the Great Irish, of 1845-47, 117, 118, 119;
+   and _see_ Chap. III., on the Irish land, in several places
+
+  Fenian outbreaks in Ireland, 128, 129;
+    the consequences, 129;
+    the influence of Fenianism in Ireland after 1870, 147
+
+  Finance, the question of Irish: the financial relations between Great
+        Britain and Ireland a subject of long controversy, 271;
+    what they were before 1782, 273,
+    and under Grattan's Parliament, 274;
+    increase of the debt and the taxation of Ireland by the close of the
+        eighteenth century, 274, 275;
+    the financial arrangements made at the Union, the work of Pitt, 275,
+        276;
+    his object was to 'assimilate Great Britain and Ireland in finance,'
+        but this was impossible, and why, ibid.;
+    the financial settlement effected at the Union--Ireland to pay a
+        contribution, but not to be taxed beyond her means, ibid.;
+    the seventh article of the Treaty of Union and its constitutional
+        meaning, 277, 278;
+    the settlement denounced in the Irish Parliament, especially by Foster
+        and Grattan, 279;
+    protest of the twenty peers, 279, 280;
+    the Union left Ireland financially a distinct country, 280;
+    the settlement made at the Union reduced her to bankruptcy, and how,
+        281, 282;
+    the compromise of 1816, 282, 283;
+    the real objects of this measure, 283, 284;
+    though theoretically to 'be assimilated' in finance, Ireland remained
+        for many years financially a completely distinct country, and the
+        reasons, 284;
+    this fully recognised by Peel in 1842, 285;
+    he refused to extend the income tax to Ireland, and permanently to
+        increase her spirit duties, ibid.;
+    Mr. Gladstone in 1853 suddenly disregards this policy, and imposes the
+        income tax on Ireland, and raises her spirit duties, 286;
+    gross injustice of this increase of taxation, especially under the
+        circumstances of Ireland, 286, 289;
+    Ireland to a considerable extent 'assimilated in finance' to Great
+        Britain, but not completely, even to the present day, a fact that
+        should be kept in mind, 287;
+    the Committee of 1863-64 on Irish finance, ibid.;
+    it fails to get Ireland justice, 288;
+    Mr. Goschen appoints a Committee to investigate the subject, ibid.;
+    this followed by the Childers Commission, appointed by Mr. Gladstone
+        in 1893, ibid.;
+    scope of the inquiry, 288, 289;
+    the work of the Childers Commission, 289;
+    it reports that Ireland has been overtaxed at the rate of between two
+        and three millions a year, and that for a very considerable space
+        of time, 290;
+    view of Sir R. Giffen that even this estimate falls short of the real
+        truth, 291, 292;
+    this overtaxation especially severe in the case of Ireland, a poor
+        country, 292-295;
+    the attempts that have been made to answer and refute the Report of
+        the Childers Commission have been grotesque failures, 295;
+    examination of these arguments and reply to them--they are either
+        fallacious, or mischievous and dangerous, 295-305;
+    question of a counterclaim against Ireland in finance, 306;
+    financial redress which Ireland has a right to demand, 307;
+    the question should be settled, 308
+
+  Foster, Mr., Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, opposes the
+        financial arrangements of the Union, 272
+
+
+  G
+
+  Galway in decay, 6
+
+  Gladstone, Mr.: he ridicules Butt's scheme of Home Rule, 44;
+    fall of his Administration in 1885, 46;
+    his attitude at the General Election of that year, ibid.;
+    he becomes a convert to Home Rule and the probable reasons, 47, 48;
+    the best members of the Liberal Party break away from him, 48;
+    he introduces his first Home Rule Bill, ibid.;
+    he dissolves Parliament after the rejection of that measure by the
+        House of Commons, 56;
+    he allies himself with the party of disorder in Ireland, 58, 59;
+    he negotiates with Parnell about Home Rule, 59;
+    he returns to office in 1892 with a small majority, 61;
+    he introduces his second Home Rule Bill in 1893, 62;
+    his Irish policy in 1868, 131;
+    he disestablishes and disendows the Protestant church in Ireland,
+        ibid.;
+    he makes no provision for the Irish Catholic clergy, a capital
+        mistake, 132;
+    he introduces the Land Act of 1870 for Ireland, 139, 140;
+    he declares against the Three F's, and announces that this measure is
+        to be final, ibid.;
+    he becomes Minister for the second time in 1880, 154;
+    he introduces the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, 155;
+    he surrenders to the Land League and introduces the Land Act of 1881,
+        169;
+    he makes the Kilmainham treaty with Parnell, 170;
+    the fiscal wrong he does to Ireland in 1853-60, 286;
+    he appoints the Childers Commission in 1893 to investigate the subject
+        of Irish finance, 288;
+    his scheme of Irish University Reform, 343, 344.
+    And _see_ Chap. VIII., on Other Irish Questions
+
+  Goschen, Mr., refers the question of the financial relations of Great
+        Britain and Ireland to a Committee, 288
+
+  Grattan: he denounces the financial settlement made at the Union for
+        Ireland, 279
+
+
+  H
+
+  Henry VII.: his Irish policy, 89
+
+  Henry VIII.: his wise policy for Ireland unhappily prevented, 89, 90
+
+  Home Rule, the question of: Home Rule not dead, 39;
+    the present attitude of the Liberal and the 'Nationalist' parties
+        towards Home Rule, 40;
+    it is a 'Present Irish Question,' 41;
+    Isaac Butt inaugurated this policy, ibid.;
+    his plan of Home Rule, 42;
+    the Irish Home Rule party, 43;
+    Butt's proposals powerfully attacked in Parliament, notably by Mr.
+        Gladstone, ibid.;
+    Butt is gradually supplanted by Parnell, 44;
+    Michael Davitt and the 'New Departure,' ibid.;
+    Parnell the head of the Land League, 44, 45;
+    Mr. Gladstone succumbs to it, 45;
+    Home Rule condemned by statesmen of all parties in 1880-84, ibid.;
+    Mr. Gladstone accepts Home Rule, 47;
+    the first Home Rule Bill of 1886, 48;
+    its characteristics and the objections to it, 48-50;
+    what its results would have been, 51-54;
+    the Bill is rejected in the House of Commons, 55;
+    attitude of the Fenians in America, 55, 56;
+    causes that promoted the Home Rule policy in Great Britain, 59, 60;
+    results of the General Election of 1892, 61;
+    the Home Rule Bill of 1893, 62;
+    its characteristics and vices, 62-64;
+    it is a much more objectionable measure than that of 1886, and why,
+        65;
+    strong opposition to it in the country, 68;
+    the in-and-out plan given up, 69;
+    the Bill passes the House of Commons by a small majority through the
+        expedient of 'closure by compartments' 69;
+    it is rejected in the House of Lords by an overwhelming majority, 70;
+    Home Rule is scattered to the winds at the General Election of 1895,
+        ibid.;
+    it is not a prominent question at that of 1900, ibid.;
+    the subject cannot be dismissed, 71;
+    different forms of Home Rule, 71-73;
+    separation a better policy than Home Rule, 73;
+    'Home Rule all round,' 73, 74;
+    conclusive objections to this scheme, 74-77;
+    the Union must be maintained, and Home Rule rejected by the nation, 78;
+    the rule of the Imperial Parliament has had some bad effects in Irish
+        affairs, and why, 79, 80;
+    proposal that the Imperial Parliament should occasionally sit in
+        Dublin, and the advantages of this, 81;
+    royalty should sometimes visit Ireland, 82;
+    necessity, in order to guard against Home Rule, and for other reasons,
+        to reduce the over-representation of Ireland in the House of
+        Commons, 82, 83
+
+
+  I
+
+  Ireland in 1901: a revolution has passed over Ireland, 2;
+    she has made some material progress, 2;
+    Dublin and Belfast, ibid.;
+    improvement in the habitations of the community and in Catholic places
+        of worship, 2, 3;
+    material progress of the community, 3-5;
+    the dark side of the picture, 5;
+    decline of several towns in Ireland, of manufactures, of fishing
+        industry, and of agriculture, 6, 7;
+    Ireland a poor country, 7;
+    excessive emigration, 8;
+    great increase of local and general taxation, 8;
+    the progress of Ireland as nothing compared to that of England and
+        Scotland, 9;
+    the Irish land system at the beginning of the reign of Victoria, 11;
+    sketch of it from that to the present time, 11-17 (and _see_ the
+        Question of the Irish Land, Chap. III., in many places);
+    Ireland and her three peoples, 18;
+    Catholic Ireland remains for the most part disaffected, despite the
+        great reforms effected in its interest, 19-21;
+    the Catholic democracy of Ireland, 21;
+    failure of the policy of conciliation, 22;
+    Presbyterian Ireland--its sentiments and demands, ibid.;
+    Protestant Ireland--its position in the community, 22, 23;
+    discontent of the landed gentry, 23;
+    character of the Irish legislation of the Imperial Parliament, 23-25,
+    and of its administration of Irish affairs, 28, 29;
+    the Anglican Church of Ireland, 30;
+    the Presbyterian Church, ibid.;
+    the Catholic Church, 31;
+    the administration of justice in Ireland, 31, 32;
+    Irish literature and education, 32, 33;
+    _resume_ of the general condition of Ireland, 33-35;
+    the Irish policy of Lord Salisbury's Government during the last six
+        years, 35, 36;
+    Ireland still 'the vulnerable part near the heart of the Empire,' 37,
+        38
+
+
+  L
+
+  Lalor, John Finton, a rebel of 1848: his teaching with respect to the
+        Irish land, 148
+
+  Land, the question of the Irish: importance of the subject, 184, 185;
+    the Celtic tribal land system in Ireland, 86, 87;
+    the tribes, clans, and septs, 87;
+    the partial feudalisation of the land system, 87;
+    collective ownership of which traces still exist, 87;
+    the Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland and the Colony of the Pale, 88;
+    the land falls into the hands of great families, ibid.;
+    miserable state of Ireland at the close of the fifteenth century, 89;
+    Henry VII. and Poynings, ibid.;
+    sagacious policy of Henry VIII., especially as regards the land, 90;
+    this, unfortunately, was not carried out, ibid.;
+    the era of conquest begins, and of the confiscation of the Irish land,
+        ibid.;
+    confiscation of the territories of the O'Connors of Offaly, of Shane
+        O'Neill, and of the Earl of Desmond, 90, 91;
+    rebellion of Tyrone, 91;
+    all Ireland made shireland, and the old Celtic land system is effaced
+        by law, ibid.;
+    English modes of land tenure imposed on the people, 91, 92;
+    confiscation of the territories of Tyrone and of O'Donnell, 92;
+    the Plantation of Ulster, ibid.;
+    further confiscation in times of peace, ibid.;
+    Strafford marks out Connaught for confiscation, 92;
+    beginning of Protestant ascendency in the land, 93;
+    vast confiscations effected by Cromwell, 93;
+    his scheme of a general colonisation of Ireland fails, 93-95;
+    results of the Cromwellian conquest in the land, 95;
+    policy of Charles II. as regards the land, ibid.;
+    confiscations after the Boyne and the fall of Limerick, 96;
+    state of the Irish land system when the period of violent confiscation
+        ends, 97, 98;
+    the era of Protestant ascendency and of Catholic subjection in
+        Ireland, 98, 99;
+    the Penal Code and its effects on the land, 99, 100;
+    mournful period in Irish history, 100-102;
+    gradual improvement in Irish landed relations, 102-104;
+    evil traces of the past: Whiteboyism, 105;
+    traditions of the ancient land system survive, 106;
+    Edmund Burke on Irish land tenures--he indicates a grave economic vice
+        in the land system, 107;
+    progress of Ireland after 1782, ibid.;
+    its effects on the land, 108;
+    evil results of the Rebellion of 1798, 109;
+    the Union Speech of Lord Clare on Irish landed relations, 109;
+    revolution in the land system in the first years of the nineteenth
+        century, 110;
+    the important social and economic results, 110, 111;
+    want of a poor-law, 111;
+    the concurrent rights of tenants in the land not protected by the law,
+        ibid.;
+    period of distress after the Peace of 1815, 112, 113;
+    evictions and clearances of estates, 113;
+    agrarian disorder, 113;
+    Catholic Emancipation, ibid.;
+    its results as regards Irish landed relations, 114;
+    Peel and the Irish land, 115;
+    the Devon Commission and its Report, 115, 116;
+    its recommendations as to land tenure ill conceived and condemned in
+        Ireland, 117;
+    the Famine of 1845-47, and its effects on the Irish land, 118, 119;
+    the exodus, 120;
+    the Encumbered Estates Act, and the effects of this scheme of
+        confiscation, 121, 122;
+    agrarian agitation of 1852 in Ireland fails, 123;
+    false ideas of British statesmen as regards the land, 129;
+    partial prosperity in Ireland for some years, 125;
+    this largely deceptive, 126;
+    growth of Fenianism, 128;
+    the Fenian outbreak, 128, 129;
+    change of opinion in England as regards Ireland, 129;
+    Mr. Gladstone Prime Minister, 130;
+    state of the Irish land system before the Land Act of 1870, 132-138;
+    the Land Act of 1870 and its provisions, 141-143;
+    merits and defects of this measure, 144, 145;
+    state of Irish landed relations after the Act, 146, 147;
+    origin of the Land League, 151, 152;
+    distress in Ireland, and the Land League, 152-154;
+    the Compensation for Disturbance Bill rejected by the House of Lords,
+        155;
+    frightful state of Ireland and of landed relations in 1880-81, 155-161;
+    the Land Act of 1881, 165;
+    the provisions of the measure, 165, 166;
+    the Act is directly opposed to that of 1870, 168;
+    the no-rent movement, 179;
+    the National League replaces the Land League, 171, 172;
+    state of Irish landed relations in 1886 and 1887, 175;
+    the Land Act of 1887, 175;
+    the Land Act of 1891, 178, 179;
+    the land purchase section in the Irish Land Act, 183;
+    the principle of this system false and dangerous, ibid.;
+    the Land Purchase Act of 1891, 184;
+    recent legislation on the Irish land unjust and tending to
+        confiscation, 186, 187.
+    The administration of the Irish Land Acts, 188;
+    of the Act of 1870, 189;
+    of the Act of 1881, and its supplements, 190;
+    the first Land Commission--allowances to be made for it, 191;
+    principles it should have followed and course it should have pursued
+        in fixing 'fair rents,' 192-197;
+    the Sub-Commission--nature of these tribunals, 197, 198;
+    how they ought to have fixed 'fair rents,' 199, 203;
+    criticism of Mr. Lecky, 203, 204;
+    examples of injustice, 204, 209;
+    faulty methods of fixing 'fair rents,' 209, 213;
+    appeals to the Land Commission rendered almost nugatory, 215, 218;
+    the second Land Commission: Mr. Justice Bewley and his theory of
+        occupation right, 219, 221;
+    instance of a gross mistake, 222;
+    the Fry Commission--its Report a masked censure on the proceedings of
+        the Land Commission, 222, 224;
+    Mr. Justice Meredith head of the present Land Commission, 224;
+    conduct of the Government as regards the Report of the Fry Commission,
+        225;
+    results of the labours of the Land Commission and the Sub-Commission
+        in fixing 'fair rents,' 225, 227;
+    confiscation of the property of landlords, 227;
+    excuses made for this false, 228, 229;
+    results of the system of land purchase so far, ibid.;
+    mischievous and dangerous consequences of all this legislation on the
+        Irish land;
+    a retrospect of it on the side of occupation, 230-237;
+    judgment of Mr. Lecky, 237, 238;
+    retrospect of it on the side of ownership, especially with regard to
+        the subject of 'compulsive purchase,' which the system of
+        'voluntary purchase' has necessarily made a grave question,
+        238-256;
+    judgment of Mr. Lecky, 256, 257;
+    the Irish land system in a deplorable state, 257-259;
+    plan of the author for the reform of this system approved by Mr.
+        Gladstone and by Parnell, 259-266;
+    the compensation of the Irish landlords must be accomplished if public
+        faith is to be kept and common justice done, 266-270
+
+  Land League, the: Reign of Terror caused by, 14;
+    its teaching and that of the National League, 20;
+    ascendency of the Land League in ten or eleven Irish counties, 45;
+    frightful state of Ireland due to it, 158-162
+
+  Law, Mr., the Irish Attorney-General of Mr. Gladstone in 1881: his
+        definition of 'fair rent,' 192
+
+  Limerick in decay, 6
+
+  Litton, Mr. E. F., a member of the first Land Commission, 192
+
+  Local Government, sketch of, in Ireland, 309-329. _See_ Chap. VIII.,
+        Other Irish Questions, in several places
+
+
+  M
+
+  Macaulay, Lord: speech on the state of Ireland in 1844, 36
+
+  Meredith, Mr. Justice, head of the present Land Commission: a capable
+        lawyer, but bound by the precedents of his forerunners, 229
+
+
+  N
+
+  National League, the: it replaces the Land League, 47, 48;
+    its leaders set on foot 'The Plan of Campaign,' 57;
+    it was founded by Parnell, 171;
+    its character, 172;
+    agrarian side of the National League movement, 174, 175;
+    decline of the power of the National League in 1889, 177;
+    it is at its lowest ebb in 1895, ibid.
+
+  National system of education, 332-336. _See_ Chap. VIII., on Other
+        Present Irish Questions
+
+
+  O
+
+  O'Connell: his evidence on the state of Ireland in 1825, 5;
+    he wrings Catholic Emancipation from a reluctant Government, 113;
+    leader of the Repeal movement of 1843-44, 115
+
+  O'Hagan, Mr. Justice, head of the first Land Commission, 190
+
+  'Other Present Irish Questions,' Chap. VIII.
+    I. Local Government in Ireland, 309;
+    the grand juries, their composition and functions, 311-314;
+    the administration of the poor law and the Boards of Guardians,
+        314-315;
+    the administration of cities and towns--its history, 315-318;
+    character of, in recent times, 318-320;
+    how the reform of 1898 was brought about, 320, 321;
+    sketch of the Local Government Act of 1898, 321-326;
+    and of its working up to the present time, 326-329.
+    II. Education in Ireland, history of, 330 _seqq._:
+    primary education, 330-332;
+    the National system founded by Mr. Stanley--its principles and
+        history, 332-336.
+    Secondary education, diocesan schools, 336;
+    Royal schools, ibid.;
+    Erasmus Smith schools, 337;
+    other schools; the system has not been successful, and why, 337, 338.
+    University education, Trinity College, its history and the character
+        of the institution, 338-341;
+    Peel founds the Queen's Colleges and University, 341;
+    character of these institutions, 392;
+    the Catholic University, ibid.;
+    Mr. Gladstone's scheme of Irish University reform, 343, 344;
+    grave objections to it, 345, 346;
+    it is rejected by the House of Commons, 346;
+    Trinity College "opened," ibid.;
+    the Royal University, 347;
+    injustice of the present system of University education in Ireland,
+        347-351;
+    two plans of reform suggested, the second to be preferred, 351-360
+
+
+  P
+
+  Palmerston, Lord: he condemns Irish tenant right, 124
+
+  Parnell: supplants Butt, 44;
+    leader of the Land League, 44, 45;
+    he denounces the Conservative party in 1885, 46;
+    he pretends to accept the Home Rule Bill of 1886, 55;
+    the special commission and Parnell, 59;
+    he negotiates with Mr. Gladstone on Home Rule, ibid.;
+    his fall, 59
+
+  Peel: his remarks on the Constitution in Ireland, 32;
+    he appoints the Devon Commission, 115;
+    his policy during the famine, 117;
+    he refuses in 1842 to extend the income tax to Ireland, 285;
+    he founds the Queen's Colleges and the Queen's University in Ireland,
+        341
+
+  Pitt: the author of the financial arrangements made at the Union, 275
+
+  Primary education in Ireland, 330-336. _See_ Chap. VIII., on Other
+        Present Irish Questions
+
+
+  Q
+
+  Queen's Colleges and Queen's University: founded by Peel, 341. _See_
+        Chap. VIII., on Other Present Irish Questions
+
+
+  R
+
+  Rebellion of 1798: its effects on the Irish Land, 109
+
+
+  S
+
+  Salisbury, Lord: character of the Irish policy of his ministry, 35, 36
+
+  Stanley, Mr., founds the system of National Education in Ireland, 332
+
+  Strafford: his Irish policy, 92
+
+
+  T
+
+  Trinity College, 338-341. _See_ Chap. VIII., on Present Irish Questions
+
+
+  U
+
+  Ulster Custom, the, 111, 123, 137, 141
+
+  Union, The, 78, 79, 109
+
+  United Irish League, the: fills the place of the Land and the National
+        Leagues, 26;
+    speeches and conduct of its leaders, 26, 27
+
+
+  V
+
+  Vernon, Mr. I. E., one of the members of the first Land Commission, 190
+
+
+  W
+
+  Whiteboyism in Ireland, 12, 105, 160, 161
+
+
+  Y
+
+  Young, Arthur: his tour in Ireland, 109, 110
+
+
+  APPENDICES
+
+  I. The Irish Government Bill, 1886, 361-387
+
+  II. The Irish Government Bill, 1893, 388-424
+
+  III. Note I. From the 'Memoirs of the late Lord Selborne,' 425, 426
+
+  IV. Report of the Special Commission, vol. iv. pp. 544, 545. Conclusion
+      of the Report of the Judges, 426-428
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+  LONDON:
+
+  PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
+  STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] It considerably exceeds 300,000 by the figures of the census of 1901.
+
+[2]
+
+                                    1841         1891
+  Houses of the first class        40,080       70,740
+      "         second class      264,184      466,632
+      "         third class       533,297      312,589
+      "         fourth class      491,278       20,617
+
+These figures are taken from that most valuable publication, 'Thom's Irish
+Directory for 1901,' p. 631. It contains the statistics of Ireland
+carefully compiled from official sources.
+
+[3] There has been a small decrease since 1895.
+
+[4] Evidence taken before a Select Committee of the House of Commons,
+1824-25, vol. i. p. 49. The whole of O'Connell's evidence should be
+studied.
+
+[5]
+
+                                      1894             1900
+  Funded Debt held in Ireland      L22,917,530      L18,303,627
+
+  Government Funds and other securities:
+  India Stock, Land Stock,
+  War Stock, Joint Stock Banks,
+  Trustee Savings Banks, and Post
+  Office Savings Banks             L67,432,000      L77,494,000
+
+  'Thom's Directory, 1901,' p. 718.
+
+
+[6] See the remarkable evidence of Mr. Booth, a high authority, taken by
+the Childers Commission, 'Minutes of Evidence,' vol. ii. pp. 212, 213.
+This should all be studied.
+
+[7] 'Thom's Directory, 1901,' p. 699.
+
+[8] Report of Childers Commission, p. 43--
+
+                      1851-55         1889-93
+  Crops            L58,537,000      L34,643,000
+  Stock            L39,348,000      L53,312,000
+
+
+[9] 'Thom's Directory, 1901,' p. 684.
+
+[10] 'Thom's Directory, 1901,' p. 629.
+
+[11] See the striking observations of Mr. Childers, well worth serious
+attention: 'Report of the Childers Commission,' pp. 186, 187.
+
+[12] 'Thom's Directory, 1901,' p. 662. Number of paupers relieved in 1890,
+454,178; in 1898, 525,104. Charge in 1890, L856,008; in 1898, L981,333.
+These are the latest returns.
+
+[13] 'Thom's Directory, 1901,' p. 674. Assessment of lands, in 1890, under
+Schedule A, L12,736,967; in 1899, L11,664,453. Funded property at the same
+periods, L803,300 and L615,630. These, too, are the latest returns.
+
+[14] 'Report of the Childers Commission,' p. 72. I cite also the following
+from the Report, p. 43: 'The income-tax figures are, perhaps, the best and
+most complete test of the comparative growth of the wealth of the two
+countries. Taking the two years, 1854 and 1892, we find that the net
+assessment for Great Britain was, in 1854, L245,389,931; and in 1892,
+L570,971,740. The net assessment for Ireland was, in 1854, L21,334,448;
+and in 1892, L26,851,585. In these thirty-eight years the net assessment
+for Great Britain is more than two and a third times as great as it was in
+1854, whilst that for Ireland has only increased by one quarter. Put in
+percentage form, the figures are still more striking: In 1854 Great
+Britain was assessed at 92 per cent. of the whole; Ireland 8 per cent. In
+1892 Great Britain was assessed at 95.50 per cent, of the whole; Ireland
+4.50 per cent. In other words, Ireland's assessment was to that of Great
+Britain as 1 to 11 in 1854, and as 1 to 21 in 1892.'
+
+[15] See on this subject the true and indignant remarks of Mr. Lecky,
+'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. pp. 27, 28.
+
+[16] The tone of disaffected opinion in Ireland can only be thoroughly
+understood by a careful study of the conduct and the language of
+'Nationalist' leaders. I select a few specimens out of hundreds of
+instances. Mr. William O'Brien, the Corypheus of the United Irish League,
+spake thus at Letterkenny in January, 1900: 'If ten thousand Frenchmen, or
+Russians, or Germans were to land in Bantry Bay, with a supply of arms for
+the people, they would walk over the country and drive the English
+garrison into the sea.' The same worthy exclaimed at a monster meeting in
+Dublin in September, 'English rule in Ireland was so bad that they would
+be justified in chasing the English out of Ireland bag and baggage. What
+was wanting to them, unfortunately, were the guns and artillery to do it.'
+Mr. Michael Davitt, of Land League renown, speaking in the Queen's County
+about the same time, said, 'England is unquestionably the greatest empire
+of liars (loud cheers and laughter), of hypocrites, and of poltroons,
+judged by its achievements in South Africa, that has ever postured before
+mankind with a civilising mission.' Because the Corporation of Dublin
+voted, by a small majority, an address to Queen Victoria when she paid her
+last visit to Ireland, Mr. John Redmond, the chairman of the 'Irish
+Parliamentary Party,' said, in January, 1901, 'It rests with the people
+themselves to say whether they will redeem the reputation of Dublin from
+the stain that has been cast on it.' So Mr. John Dillon, M.P., spoke in
+the same sense, a few months ago, 'The voice of the capital will be the
+voice of the rest of Ireland (applause), that we will not tolerate in this
+old city that new type of politics which thinks it consistent with Irish
+nationality to cringe and crouch before a foreign queen.' At least two
+County Councils in Ireland, and more than one Local Board, refused to vote
+an expression of condolence when the Queen died. It is painful to contrast
+these sentiments with the loyalty of O'Connell when the Queen ascended the
+throne.
+
+[17] Since the above lines were written, there has been a serious outbreak
+of agrarian crime in Ireland in the form of incendiary fires, which may be
+distinctly traced to the operations of the United Irish League.
+
+[18] Speech in the House of Commons, February 19, 1844.
+
+[19] The figures were 1,238,342 against 1,316,327: Dicey, 'England's Case
+against Home Rule,' p. 35.
+
+[20] Butt maintained, in his place in Parliament (Hansard, March 20,
+1874), that this was the true import of his project.
+
+[21] Speech on receiving the freedom of Aberdeen, September 26, 1871.
+
+[22] See Mr. Gladstone's 'History of an Idea,' an apology for his attitude
+towards Home Rule at this time, which seems to me to be his condemnation.
+
+[23] For an admirable analysis of the Bill, see Dicey's 'England's Case
+against Home Rule,' pp. 223-273. The text of the Bill will be found in the
+Appendix to this volume.
+
+[24] For a full statement of Mr. Gladstone's 'conditions,' see his speech
+in the House of Commons, April 8, 1886.
+
+[25] 'Reflections on the Revolution in France,' vol. i. p. 384, ed. 1834.
+
+[26] Report of the Special Commission, vol. iv. p. 542.
+
+[27] 'The Queen's Enemies in America,' p. 24.
+
+[28] For a scathing condemnation of Mr. Gladstone's public conduct in
+these years, see several great speeches of Lord Hartington and Mr.
+Goschen. See also 'The Memoirs of Lord Selborne,' Part II. vol. ii. pp.
+261, _et seq._, and note in Appendix to this volume. See, too, Dicey's
+'Leap in the Dark,' p. 190. Lord Selborne's sketch of Mr. Gladstone's
+character as a statesman, 'Memoirs,' Part II. vol. ii. pp. 339-359,
+deserves careful study. Mr. Lecky's admirable account, 'Democracy and
+Liberty,' introduction to vol. i., second edition, is well known.
+
+[29] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. pp. 544, 545. See the note at the end
+of this volume in the Appendix.
+
+[30] For a very able analysis of and commentary on the Bill of 1893, see
+Professor Dicey's 'Leap in the Dark.' For the text of the Bill, see the
+Appendix to this volume.
+
+[31] Dicey's 'Leap in the Dark,' p. 57.
+
+[32] 'England's Case against Home Rule,' p. 168.
+
+[33] The German Empire, in which Prussia is the leading State, may seem an
+example to the contrary; but the German Empire is hardly a Federation
+properly so called; it is a great military monarchy ruling subject
+kingdoms.
+
+[34] I feel obliged to refer to these authorities; not in order to stir up
+resentment against England in Ireland, but to point out a most important,
+if unfortunate, fact in the relations between the two countries. Swift, in
+his 'View of the State of Ireland,' Works, vol. ii. 8vo ed. 1890, says,
+'We are in the condition of patients, who have physic sent them by doctors
+at a distance, strangers to their constitution and the nature of the
+disease.' Burke, 'Correspondence,' vol. iii. p. 438, has remarked, 'I have
+never known any of the successive Governments of my time influenced by any
+other feeling relative to Ireland than the wish that they should hear of
+it and of its concerns as little as possible.' So Grattan, cited by Mr.
+Lecky, vol. vii. p. 108, exclaimed, 'It is a matter of melancholy
+reflection to consider how little the Cabinet knows of anything relating
+to Ireland. Ireland is a subject it considers with a lazy contumely, and
+picks up here and there, by accident or design, interested and erroneous
+intelligence.' I quote this passage from one of the speeches of Lord
+Clare: 'The people of England know less of this country than of any other
+nation in Europe;' and this passage from one of the speeches of O'Connell:
+'We are governed by foreigners; foreigners make our laws.... As to
+Ireland, the Imperial Parliament has the additional disadvantage springing
+from want of interest and total ignorance. I do not exaggerate; the
+ministers are in total ignorance of this country.' This want of knowledge
+of Ireland, too often associated with indifference, has, I repeat, been
+distinctly made manifest of late years.
+
+[35] These figures are taken from the Irish census of 1891. By the census
+of 1901, the population of Antrim and Down has increased, and that of
+every other county in Ireland, except Dublin, has declined. The
+over-representation of Ireland has thus become more than ever an unjust
+anomaly.
+
+[36] For an admirable account of the ancient land system of Celtic
+Ireland, see Maine's 'Early History of Institutions.' I may be allowed to
+refer to an article on this work, from my pen, in the _Edinburgh Review_
+of July, 1875, and to the first chapter of my 'History of Ireland,' in the
+Cambridge 'Historical Series.'
+
+[37] In the case of this, as of all the chapters, a list of the principal
+authorities and sources of information will be found in the preface to
+this book. For the conquest and confiscations of the Irish land, from the
+Norman Conquest to the end of the reign of William III., see 'The Statute
+of Kilkenny,' edited by James Hardiman; 'The Discoverie of Sir John
+Davies;' 'The Carew Papers,' edited by J. S. Brewer and William Bullen;
+Spenser's 'View of the State of Ireland;' Holingshead's 'Chronicles of
+Ireland;' Carte's 'Life of Ormond;' Lord Clanricarde's 'Memoirs;' Sir
+William Petty's 'Political Anatomy of Ireland;' 'Macariae Excidium;' and
+King's 'State of the Protestants of Ireland.' As regards modern
+authorities, numerous, and some very valuable, the reader may be referred
+to Froude's 'History of England,' vol. ii. ch. viii.; vol. v. ch. xxviii.;
+vol. viii. chs. vii., xi.; vol. x. ch. xxiv.; vol. xi. ch. xxvii.; to Mr.
+Lecky's 'History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' vol. ii. ch. vi.;
+and to the Irish chapters in Mr. Gardiner's 'History of England,' from the
+Accession of James I. to the outbreak of the Civil War; to his 'History of
+the Great Civil War,' vol. i. chs. vi., xi.; vol. ii. chs. xxvii.,
+xxxvii., xliv.; and to the Irish chapters of his 'History of the
+Commonwealth and Protectorate.' Other modern works on the subject are
+Sigerson's 'History of Land Tenure in Ireland;' 'An Historical Account of
+the Plantation of Ulster,' by the Rev. George Hill; 'The Cromwellian
+Settlement of Ireland,' by John P. Prendergast; and the 'Life of Sir
+William Petty,' by Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice. See a review by me of this
+last work in the _Edinburgh Review_ of July, 1895; and also chs. iii.,
+iv., and v. of my 'History of Ireland, 1494-1868,' referred to before.
+There are innumerable minor authorities; and Hallam's 'Chapter on
+Ireland,' vol. iii., may be studied.
+
+[38] 'Letter to Sir Hercules Langriche:' 'Works,' vol. i. p. 560, ed.
+1834.
+
+[39] For an account of the penal laws of Ireland, see Vincent Scully on
+'The Irish Penal Laws;' Howard's 'Popery Laws;' and Burke's 'Tracts on the
+Popery Laws,' a short but masterly work.
+
+[40] For the state of Ireland and of the Irish land at this period, see
+the Irish Statute Book from 1700 to about 1750, and especially the
+writings of Swift and Berkeley on Irish affairs. Swift, however, is not
+just to the Irish landed gentry, many as were their faults. See also the
+'Letters' of Archbishop Boulter, the virtual ruler of Ireland during a
+series of years, and of Archbishop Synge. Reference, too, may be made to
+Molyneux's 'Case of Ireland,' and to Hutchinson's and Caldwell's
+'Restraints on the Trade of Ireland.' For modern authorities, consult
+Lecky's 'History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' vol. ii. ch. vii.;
+vol. iv. chs. xvi., xvii. Froude's 'English in Ireland' is very inaccurate
+and one-sided for this period; but his fine romance, the 'Two Chiefs of
+Dunboy,' contains a brilliant, and, in the main, a true account of the
+state of Irish social life in those days.
+
+[41] By far the best account of the state of Ireland, at this period, is
+to be found in the celebrated 'Tour' of Arthur Young, who wrote in
+1776-78. See also Mr. Lecky's 'History of England in the Eighteenth
+Century,' vol. vi. chs. xxiv., xxv.; vol. vii. ch. xxvii. The 'Irlande,
+Sociale, Politique, et Religieuse' of Gustave de Beaumont may also be
+consulted; but though a very able work, it is that of a democratic
+doctrinaire. For the Whiteboy movements, see the Irish Statute Book, and
+Sir George Lewis on 'Irish Disturbances.'
+
+[42] See Burke's 'Tracts on the Popery Laws,' vol. ii. pp. 445, 446.
+Arthur Young, too, often dwells on this subject.
+
+[43] For an account of this period nothing can be compared to Mr. Lecky's
+'History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' vols. vii., viii. These
+contain all the information that can be obtained, collected from every
+available source. I may refer to my 'Ireland, 1798-1898,' chs. i., ii.
+
+[44] There is no complete history of Ireland from the Union to the present
+time, though the materials for such a work are abundant. I may refer to my
+'Ireland, 1798-1898,' from the second chapter to the end. An excellent and
+elaborate description of Ireland from 1800 to 1812 will be found in the
+volumes of Edward Wakefield.
+
+[45] The best account of this period--the forerunner of one even more
+calamitous--will be found in the proceedings of a Parliamentary Committee
+on the state of Ireland in 1824-25, and in the mass of evidence collected
+by it. The evidence of O'Connell is full of interest.
+
+[46] I perfectly recollect, though quite a boy, this strong and widespread
+expression of sentiment.
+
+[47] Mitchel's 'History of Ireland,' vol. ii. p. 213. Mitchel was a rebel,
+but an honourable man, superior to the falsehoods disseminated by later
+agitators against Irish landlords.
+
+[48] Every one acquainted with the history of Irish titles, from about
+1790 to 1820, knows that this was the case.
+
+[49] 'Clarendon,' wrote Greville, 'told me he expected the Encumbered
+Estates Act would prove the regeneration of Ireland.'
+
+[50] That great lawyer, Lord St. Leonards, protested. He had been Lord
+Chancellor of Ireland.
+
+[51] For the state of Ireland during the Famine and the years that
+followed, see 'The Irish Crisis,' by Sir Charles Trevelyan, reprinted from
+the _Edinburgh Review_; and the 'Letters' of Mr. Campbell Foster, the
+Commissioner of the _Times_. Valuable information will also be found in
+the Greville 'Memoirs,' vols. v., vi. I may refer to my 'Ireland,
+1798-1898,' chs. v. and part of vi.
+
+[52] For an account of these machinations of party, see Greville,
+'Memoirs,' vol. vii. p. 33.
+
+[53] I heard several of these most injudicious and ill-informed
+expressions of a false opinion.
+
+[54] For the state of Ireland from the end of the Famine to 1868,
+reference may be made to 'Two Centuries of Irish History,' edited by Mr.
+Bryce; to the Greville 'Memoirs,' vols. vii. and viii.; to Greville's
+'Policy of England towards Ireland;' to the 'Recollections and Suggestions
+of Earl Russell;' to parts of the 'Life of Lord Palmerston;' to 'Journals,
+Conversations, and Essays relating to Ireland,' by Nassau Senior; to the
+'Young Ireland,' the 'Four Years of Irish History,' and 'The League of the
+North and South,' by Sir C. G. Duffy; to the 'New Ireland' of Mr. A. M.
+Sullivan; and to the 'Parnell Movement' of Mr. T. P. O'Connor. Valuable
+information as to this period will also be found in Mr. Barry O'Brien's
+works, 'Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland' and 'Irish Wrongs and
+English Remedies;' and there are many other authorities. This period is
+dealt with in my 'Ireland, 1798-1898.' ch. vi.
+
+[55] From the mass of literature on this subject reference may especially
+be made to 'The Irish Land,' by the late Sir George Campbell; Judge
+Longfield's essay in 'Systems of Land Tenure;' the 'Irish Land and the
+Irish People,' by Butt; and the 'Ireland, Industrial, Political, and
+Social,' of the late Mr. J. N. Murphy. As Special Commissioner of the
+_Times_, I went into the Irish land question at length on the spot; and it
+would be affectation to deny that my letters, since republished,
+powerfully contributed to the legislation which ere long followed. See,
+for further information, 'The Irish Land Question' of John Stuart Mill;
+'Emigration and the Tenure of Irish Land,' by Lord Dufferin; 'The New
+Ireland' of the late Mr. A. M. Sullivan; parts of Mr. Barry O'Brien's
+'Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland'; 'Ireland in 1868,' by the late
+Mr. G. Fitzgibbon, a Master of the Court of Chancery in Ireland; and Mr.
+Lecky's 'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. ch. ii.
+
+[56] This fact has been established by conclusive and impartial evidence,
+which hardly admits of question. It should be steadily kept in the
+reader's mind; for an idea, largely countenanced by iniquitous legislation
+badly administered, has prevailed of late years, that rack-renting in
+Ireland was common, nay, general. Exactly the contrary has been the case
+during the last half century. Butt, in his 'The Irish People and the Irish
+Land,' published in 1867, hardly alludes to over-renting; he properly
+dwells on the insecurity of Irish land tenure. Master Fitzgibbon, a great
+authority on the subject, in his 'Ireland in 1868,' p. 268, pointedly
+remarked, '452 estates are under my jurisdiction, in the Court of
+Chancery, the rents of which amount to L330,809, paid by 18,287 tenants. I
+have been now nearly eight years in office, during which time the rents
+have been paid without murmuring or complaint worth noticing.... It is
+well known that my ears are open to any just complaint from any tenant.'
+The testimony of Judge Longfield, another great authority, is nearly to
+the same effect. In 'Systems of Land Tenure,' published in 1870, he wrote
+thus (p. 21): 'This complaint of high rents has been made without ceasing
+for more than three hundred years. There was never less ground for it than
+at the present day, although in some instances the rent demanded is still
+too high; but this chiefly occurs where the landlords are middlemen, or
+where the property is very small.' These views are fully confirmed by
+evidence of a later period, to which I shall refer. I may add that, in
+1869, I examined the rentals of many scores of Irish estates, and was
+convinced that over-renting was very rare. See my 'Letters on the Land
+Question of Ireland,' republished from the _Times_, _passim_. I quote a
+single instance, from many to the same purpose (p. 221): 'It may be
+asserted, too, without fear of contradiction, that if in some districts
+rents are too high, they are not so as a general rule.' I have managed an
+Irish estate for upwards of fifty years, and have some claim to be an
+agricultural expert.
+
+[57] For the characteristics of the Ulster tenant right, see Butt's
+'Landlord and Tenant Act, 1870,' ch. xv. pp. 296-310. As to the legal
+authorities on the subject, reference may be made to the learned treatise
+of Messrs. Cherry and Wakley, 'The Irish Land Law and Land Purchase Acts,'
+pp. 150-152. A popular account of the Ulster custom will be found in my
+'Letters on the Land Question of Ireland,' pp. 242-247, and a more
+technical account in a legal treatise from my pen on the Land Act of 1870,
+pp. 30-56. The best definition I have seen of the right is one made by the
+late P. J. Blake, Q.C., C.C.J. of a northern county, 'Cherry and Wakley,'
+p. 150: 'The right or custom in general of yearly tenants, or those
+deriving through them, to continue in undisturbed possession so long as
+they act properly as tenants and pay their rents. The correlative right of
+the landlord periodically to raise the rent, so as to give him a just,
+fair, and full participation in the increased value of the land, but not
+so as to extinguish the tenant's interest by paying a rack rent. The usage
+or custom of the yearly tenants to sell their interest, if they do not
+wish to continue in possession, or if they become unable to pay the rent.
+The correlative right of the landlord to be consulted, and to exercise a
+potential voice in the approval or disapproval of the proposed assignee.'
+
+[58] I quote a few passages from the speeches of Mr. Gladstone, and
+others, on this subject. Mr. Gladstone said, March 11, 1870, 'If you value
+rents you may as well, for every available purpose, adopt perpetuity of
+tenure at once. It is perpetuity of tenure only in a certain disguise....
+The man who becomes a mere annuitant loses all general interest in the
+prosperity of the land.' And again, February 15, 1870: 'Perpetuity of
+tenure on the part of the occupier is virtually expropriation of the
+landlord.... The mere readjustment of rent can by no means dispose of all
+contingencies the future may produce in his favour.' Sir Roundell Palmer,
+afterwards Lord Selborne, said, March 10, 1870, 'Fixity of tenure, in
+plain English, means taking away the property of one man and giving it to
+another.' So Lord Granville, June 14, 1870, said in the House of Lords,
+'They might have introduced a Bill--which they were determined not to
+do--adopting fixity of tenure, taking away his property from the landlord,
+and establishing a valuation rent.' Passages of this kind, at least as
+strong, might be multiplied a hundred-fold.
+
+[59] It is impossible, in a sketch like this, to describe in detail the
+agrarian legislation for Ireland, which Parliament has enacted from 1870
+to this time. The work of Butt referred to before is an admirable
+commentary on the Bill of 1870, which soon became law. A brief account of
+all this legislation will be found in Mr. Lecky's 'Democracy and Liberty,'
+vol. i. ch. ii. The legal treatises of Messrs. Cherry and Wakley, pp.
+149-448, and of Mr. Justice Barton, are elaborate and complete.
+
+[60] Judge Longfield and Mr. Lecky are much the most distinguished of
+these numerous censors.
+
+[61] By this time I was an Irish County Court Judge; and I had some
+experience of reprehensible acts of this kind, extremely few as they were.
+
+[62] It is very remarkable that the stringent provisions of the Act
+against exorbitant rents seem to have been almost unknown to the
+peasantry, though exorbitant rents were, no doubt, existing here and
+there.
+
+[63] Report of the Judges of the Special Commission, vol. iv. pp. 478-480.
+
+[64] By many degrees the best account of the Land League movement will be
+found in the 'Report of the Proceedings of the Special Commission of
+1888-89,' republished by the _Times_ in four volumes. Reference may also
+be made to 'Parnellism and Crime,' a series of essays in the _Times_; to
+the 'Truth about the Land League,' by Mr. Arnold Foster; to 'The
+Continuity of the Irish Revolutionary Movement,' by Professor Brougham
+Leech; and to a pamphlet called 'The Queen's Enemies in America.' A kind
+of apology for the conspiracy will be found in 'The Parnell Movement,' by
+Mr. T. P. O'Connor, M.P.; but the Irish 'Nationalists' have judiciously
+been reticent on the subject. I may refer to my 'Ireland, 1798-1898,' ch.
+viii.
+
+[65] These infamous speeches, worthy of Marat and Hebert, were continued
+for years, and fill a large part of the evidence in the proceedings of the
+Special Commission. I select a sample or two taken at random. Mr. M.
+Harris said, 'If the tenant farmers of Ireland shoot down landlords as
+partridges are shot in September, Mat Harris would never say a word
+against them' (vol. ii. p. 38). The same worthy, afterwards an M.P.,
+exclaimed on another occasion (vol. i. p. 26), 'Mrs. Blake of Keenoyle is
+no better than a she-devil.... Mr. Robinson called the people of Connemara
+vermin; the people of Connemara ought to treat him as vermin. Leonard of
+Tuam I will say nothing about. I will denounce him at his own door.' So,
+too, a Mr. Boyton said (vol. iv. p. 277), 'We have seen plenty of them,
+landlords and agents, that deserve to be shot at any man's hand. I have
+always denounced the commission of outrages by night, but meet him in the
+broad daylight, and if you must blow his brains out, blow them out in the
+daytime.' Multiply such speeches addressed to an excitable peasantry, and
+the results which followed can easily be understood.
+
+[66] This has been established by conclusive evidence, and should be
+carefully borne in mind. Mr. Egan, one of the treasurers of the League,
+said, 'On my own behalf, and on behalf of my friends of the League, both
+in prison and outside, I can say that we regard the land question only in
+the light of a step towards national independence, which is, and shall
+continue to be, the goal of all our efforts.' Mr. Healy, M.P., said, 'This
+is a movement to win back from England the land of Ireland, which was
+robbed from the people by the confiscating armies of Elizabeth and
+Cromwell.... But I would remind you that Mr. Parnell ... explained the
+basis of the movement when he told the Galway farmers that he would never
+have taken off his coat in this movement were it not with Irish
+nationality as its object.' Parnell occasionally let out the truth; he
+said, 'Let every farmer, while he keeps a firm grip of his holding,
+recognise also the great truth that he is serving his country and the
+people at large, and helping to break down English misrule in Ireland'
+(Report of the Proceedings of the Special Commission, vol. iv. pp. 203,
+204). These speeches were, in hundreds, imitated and followed by other
+speakers.
+
+[67] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 486.
+
+[68] I was at this time judge of the County Kerry; these demands increased
+more than twofold at a single Quarter Sessions.
+
+[69] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. pp. 522-525.
+
+[70] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522.
+
+[71] Some of the cynical and wicked utterances of Parnell in proclaiming
+and expounding the new policy of 'boycotting' must be quoted. These, it is
+needless to say, were exaggerated in scores of speeches by orators of the
+League. In view almost of the corpse of a land agent who had been foully
+murdered, the arch-conspirator coolly remarked (Proceedings of the Special
+Commission, vol. iv. p. 257): 'I had wished in referring to a sad
+occurrence which took place lately, the shooting or attempted shooting of
+a land agent in the neighbourhood (uproar)--I had wished to point out that
+recourse to such measures of procedure is entirely unnecessary and
+absolutely prejudicial where there is a suitable organisation amongst the
+tenants themselves.' The methods to be adopted in 'boycotting'--the word
+was so named from a Captain Boycott, who was one of the first
+sufferers--were those set forth by Parnell (Report of the Judges, vol. iv.
+p. 498): 'Now, what are you to do to a tenant who bids for a farm from
+which his neighbour has been evicted? (Various shouts, among which, "Kill
+him!" "Shoot him!") Now, I think I heard somebody say "Shoot him" ("Shoot
+him!"); but I wish to point out to you a very much better way, a more
+Christian and charitable way, which will give the lost sinner an
+opportunity of repenting. (Hear, hear.) When a man takes a farm from which
+another has been evicted, you must show[A] him on the roadside when you
+meet him, you must show him in the streets of the town, you must show him
+at the shop counter, you must show him in the fair and in the
+market-place, and even in the house of worship, by leaving him severely
+alone, by putting him into a moral Coventry, by isolating him from the
+rest of his kind as if he was a leper of old. You must show him your
+detestation of the crime he has committed, and you may depend upon it, if
+the population of a county in Ireland carry out this doctrine, that there
+will be no man so full of avarice, so lost to shame, as to dare the public
+opinion of all right-thinking men within the county, and to transgress
+your unwritten code of laws.'
+
+    [A] In other, possibly more correct, reports, the word is 'shun,' not
+    'show.'
+
+[72] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522.
+
+[73] It is very important to bear this in mind, regard being had to the
+circumstances of the time, which have been shamefully misrepresented, and
+to subsequent legislation and its administration. I quote a few words from
+the Report, p. 3: 'It was unusual in Ireland to exact what in England
+would have been considered as a full or fair commercial rent. Such a rent
+over many of the larger estates, the owners of which were resident, and
+took an interest in the welfare of their tenants, it has never been the
+custom to demand. The example has been largely followed, and is, to the
+present day, rather the rule than the exception in Ireland.' M. de
+Molinari, a very competent foreign observer, wrote to the same effect in
+1881: 'Le taux general des rentes est modere; autant que j'ai pu en juger,
+il est a qualite egale de terrain de moitie plus bas que celui des terres
+des Flandres' ('L'Irlande, le Canada, Jersey,' p. 138). See for further
+authorities, Mr. Lecky's 'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. p. 179.
+
+[74] Mr. Gladstone, speeches in the House of Commons, July 22, 1881, and
+May 10, 1881. Lord Carlingford, and notably Lord Selborne, said nearly the
+same.
+
+[75] This I know to be the fact on the very best authority.
+
+[76] A good popular account of the law of 1881 will be found in Mr.
+Lecky's 'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. pp. 182-197. See for an elaborate
+and technical description, 'Cherry and Wakley,' pp. 217-343.
+
+[77] 'Systems of Land Tenure,' p. 59.
+
+[78] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522.
+
+[79] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 532: 'We consider that the National
+League, like the Ladies' Land League, was substantially the old Land
+League under another name.'
+
+[80] I quote a few words from hundreds of these detestable writings, which
+should be studied. Mr. William O'Brien, the editor of one of Parnell's
+newspapers, and now the leader of the 'United Irish League,' published
+this in _United Ireland_, April 18, 1885: 'It would be still more
+gratifying if the Irish millions, scattered over the globe, should wake up
+one of these mornings to hear the war chimes joyfully ringing the
+declaration that would drive England on to downfall and destruction.' And
+again, September 19, 1885: 'We cannot fight England in the open. We can
+keep her in hot water. We cannot evict our rulers neck and crop. We can
+make their rule more insupportable for them than for us.... It is no fault
+of ours if we cannot organise Waterloos to decide our quarrels.' As to
+personalities, I quote two passages. December 15, 1883: 'Monstrous and
+incredible, surely, six hundred Irish gentlemen could not eat their dinner
+without pouring out libations to the adoration of an old lady who is only
+known in Ireland by her scarcely decently disguised hatred of this
+country, and by the inordinate amount of her salary.' Again, June 13,
+1885: 'With all the stubborn force of a cruel, narrow, dogged nature, Lord
+Spencer struck murderous blow after blow at the people under his rod. He
+stopped at nothing; not at subsidising red-handed murderers, not at
+knighting jury-packers, not at sheltering black official villainy with a
+coat of darkness, not at police quarterings, blood taxes, the bludgeoning
+of peaceful meetings, the clapping of handcuffs and convict jackets on
+M.P.'s, mayors, and editors, not at wholesale battues of hangings and
+transportations by hook or crook.'
+
+[81] Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522. Mr. Gladstone in the House of
+Commons, April 8, 1886.
+
+[82] For an elaborate account of the Act of 1887, see 'Cherry and Wakley,'
+pp. 367-420. Reference, too, may be made to Mr. Lecky's 'Democracy and
+Liberty,' vol. i. pp. 198-200.
+
+[83] For an account of this legislation, which has not received the
+attention it deserves, as it is limited in its scope, see 'Cherry and
+Wakley,' pp. 468-472, and 'Barton,' pp. 104-106.
+
+[84] Upwards of thirty years ago, when the question of compensating Irish
+tenants for their improvements was coming fully to the front, a wealthy
+middleman, who held a large demesne in perpetuity, at a rather high rent,
+and had built a valuable mansion on it, in addition to planting hundreds
+of acres of woodland, asked me 'if I thought Parliament would compensate
+him, for, in that case, he could make his landlord pay him L30,000.' My
+reply was that 'Parliament would not be so insane.' I should be sorry to
+make such a reply now, having regard to recent legislation.
+
+[85] I believe I may claim some credit for having contributed to this
+provision. I had had large experience of the injustice of keeping tenants
+subject to long-standing arrears; and, as a judge, had taken strong
+measures to prevent and defeat the practice.
+
+[86] For an elaborate account of the Act which was the result of this
+Bill, see the work of Mr. Justice Barton, 'The Land Law (Ireland) Act,
+1896.'
+
+[87] 'Letter to a Member of the National Assembly,' vol. i. p. 478.
+
+[88] A Committee of the House of Lords sate, in 1872, to consider the
+administration of the Land Act of 1870. The report and the evidence were,
+in the main, in favour of the judges.
+
+[89] Rushe _v._ Whitney, Roscommon Quarter Sessions, October, 1895.
+
+[90] Lord Salisbury in the House of Lords, August 1, 1881: 'They are all
+three strong Liberals, with strong views of tenant right.... There is no
+doubt that all three are appointed with a strong prepossession in favour
+of views which are advocated by the representatives of the tenantry in
+Ireland, and which are deprecated by the landlords.... It is not the
+relegation of landlord and tenant to an impartial tribunal.'
+
+[91] Mr. Gladstone, July 22, 1881: 'I shall be bitterly disappointed with
+the operation of the Act if the property of the landlords of Ireland does
+not come to be worth more than twenty years' purchase on the judicial
+rent.' Mr. W. E. Forster, same date: 'I think the final result of the
+measure will be, within a few years, that the landowners of Ireland, small
+and large, will be better off than they are at this moment.' Lord
+Carlingford, August 1, 1881: 'My Lords, I maintain that the provisions of
+this Bill will cause the landlords no money loss whatever. I believe that
+it will inflict upon them no loss of income, except in those cases in
+which a certain number of landlords may have imposed upon their tenants
+excessive and inequitable rents.'
+
+[92] Hansard, vol. 260, p. 1399.
+
+[93] The nature and character of these two classes of evidence has been
+thus well described in the Report of the Edward Fry's Commission, p. 18:
+'If the matter were perfectly open, it appears to us that two independent
+lines of evidence might be pursued by a person inquiring what is the fair
+rent to be fixed for a holding. One class of evidence may for shortness be
+called the popular evidence; the other the technical. The popular evidence
+would comprise the prices obtained by the tenant for a sale of his
+interest or _bona fide_ offers which he had received for it, evidence of
+the letting value or judicial rents of similar holdings, evidence of the
+sums paid for conacre or agistment, evidence of the long and punctual
+payment of a real rent, or of the long arrears of a nominal rent, and
+evidence of the prosperity or poverty of the persons who had successively
+lived off the produce of the holding. The technical evidence would be that
+more familiar to professional valuators. They would inspect the land,
+ascertain the acreages of the different classes of land on the farm, and
+what they would produce or carry; they would consider the quantity and
+value of the produce and the cost of production, and the shares of the
+surplus remaining after the cost of production divisible between landlord
+and tenant respectively. The popular evidence would be affected by all the
+motives which make men in Ireland desirous to occupy land; the technical
+evidence would assume the desire of making a money profit out of the
+occupation of land as the sole motive of such occupation. The eighth
+section of the Act of 1881 seems to admit of both lines of evidence with a
+single exception. It provided that in fixing the fair rent consideration
+should be given not to some but to all the circumstances of the case, the
+holding and the district, with the single exception that (sub-sec. 10) the
+price paid for the tenancy otherwise than to the landlord or his
+predecessors was not of itself, apart from other considerations, to be
+taken into account; though, conjoined with other considerations, it still
+remains admissible.'
+
+[94] Report of the Fry Commission, p. 13.
+
+[95] Ibid., p. 14: 'Some specific charges of misconduct or negligence have
+been made against lay Assistant Commissioners and Court valuers; as _e.g._
+visiting the land without due notice to the landlord; visiting the holding
+when lying under snow or water, or when suffering from prolonged drought,
+and refusing to wait whilst a trench was dug to show the condition of the
+alleged drainage. We have investigated many of these cases, and the
+explanations given have generally been satisfactory to us.'
+
+[96] Evidence taken by Mr. Morley's Commission on the Irish Land Acts, p.
+236.
+
+[97] Ibid., p. 397.
+
+[98] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 131.
+
+[99] Ibid., p. 208.
+
+[100] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission: Mr. Campbell, p. 41.
+
+[101] Ibid., p. 682.
+
+[102] 'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. pp. 205, 206.
+
+[103] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 692. As a County Court
+judge I have a concurrent jurisdiction, happily seldom exercised, in
+fixing 'fair rents.' I had a somewhat similar case before me some
+seventeen or eighteen years ago, and I adjourned the hearing for four
+years to allow the land to recover. I believe I am the only official who
+did anything of the kind until quite recently.
+
+[104] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 836.
+
+[105] Evidence taken by the Morley Commission, 1894-95, p. 333.
+
+[106] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 952.
+
+[107] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 607. The procedure of the
+Sub-Commissions has, since 1896, been somewhat improved with respect to
+deterioration and waste, but many years too late.
+
+[108] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 677.
+
+[109] Ibid., p. 842.
+
+[110] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, pp. 478, 476.
+
+[111] Ibid., p. 476.
+
+[112] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 129.
+
+[113] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 339.
+
+[114] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission: Mr. Campbell, p. 25.
+
+[115] Mr. Vernon, the Lay Commissioner, was, of course, not responsible
+for this.
+
+[116] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 156.
+
+[117] Ibid., p. 615.
+
+[118] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 33.
+
+[119] Ibid., p. 30.
+
+[120] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission: Mr. Campbell, p. 30.
+
+[121] Report of the Fry Commission, p. 18. I entirely dissent from the
+above opinion of the head Commissioner.
+
+[122] Evidence taken by the Morley Commission, p. 507.
+
+[123] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 461.
+
+[124] Ibid., p. 616.
+
+[125] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 628.
+
+[126] Ibid., p. 631.
+
+[127] Ibid., p. 941.
+
+[128] Report of the Fry Commission, p. 22.
+
+[129] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 676.
+
+[130] Report of the Fry Commission, p. 20.
+
+[131] Ibid., p. 21.
+
+[132] Ibid., p. 9.
+
+[133] Ibid., p. 14.
+
+[134] Report of the Fry Commission, pp. 18, 19.
+
+[135] Ibid., pp. 12-26.
+
+[136] Ibid., p. 15.
+
+[137] Report of the Irish Land Commission to March, 1900, p. 64.
+
+[138] It is but just to the Land Commission to state that the reductions
+of rent made by the County Courts were somewhat higher than those it made.
+But this was notoriously because rack-rented tenants, for the sake of
+expedition, rushed first to these tribunals.
+
+[139] Report of the Irish Land Commission, p. 64.
+
+[140] Report of the Irish Land Commission, p. 3.
+
+[141] See a remarkable instance in the Evidence taken by the Fry
+Commission, p. 683: 'The holding was let in 1771 at 30_s._ the Irish acre,
+equal to about L1 per statute acre. The Sub-Commissioners have now cut it
+down to less than 12_s._ 6_d._ per acre.'
+
+[142] Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, pp. 496, 609, 670.
+
+[143] 'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. pp. 202, 203.
+
+[144] Letters to the _Manchester Guardian_, written in 1890, and since
+republished. This little work was much noticed at the time; attempts to
+answer it were made to no purpose. The facts now speak for themselves.
+
+[145] Swift's 'Works,' vol. ii. p. 82, ed. 1870.
+
+[146] 'Reflections on the Revolution in France,' vol. i. p. 440.
+
+[147] The _Manchester Guardian_, 1890. I quote this passage, for I think
+its substance was referred to by the late Mr. Rathbone, member for
+Liverpool.
+
+[148] Mr. Lecky, 'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. ii. pp. 487-489, rather
+favours the policy of creating and extending peasant ownership in Ireland,
+and, to a certain extent, approves of the so-called 'Land Purchase' Acts,
+but only as a doubtful experiment, to endeavour to escape from a
+hopelessly bad land system. The distinguished historian and thinker, in my
+opinion, is not sufficiently alive to the iniquity of these measures as
+they affect landlords who wish to retain their estates, or, rather, what
+remains of them; but he clearly perceives some of the objections to this
+vicious legislation. I quote his remarks at some length: 'In Ireland, as
+is well known, great efforts are made to create such a proprietary; but
+the conditions of Ireland are unlike those of any other part of the
+civilised globe. It has been the deliberate policy of the Government to
+break down, by almost annual Acts, the obligation of contracts, and the
+existing ownership of land has been rendered so insecure, the political
+power attached to it has been so effectually destroyed, and the influences
+tending to anarchy and confiscation have been made so powerful, that most
+good judges have come to the conclusion that it is necessary to force into
+existence by strong legislative measures a new social type, which may,
+perhaps, possess some elements of stability and conservatism. In order to
+effect this object, the national credit has been made use of in such a way
+that a tenant is enabled to purchase his farm without making the smallest
+sacrifice for that object, the whole sum being advanced by the Government,
+and advanced on such terms that the tenant is only obliged to pay for a
+limited number of years a sum from 20 to 30 per cent. less than his
+present rent. In other words, a man whose rent has been fixed by the Land
+Court at L100 a year, can purchase his farm by paying, instead of that
+sum, L70 or L80 a year for forty-nine years. The arrangement sounds more
+like burlesque than serious legislation; but the belief that political
+pressure can obtain still better terms for the tenant, and that further
+confiscatory legislation may still more depreciate the value of land to
+the owner who has inherited it, or purchased it in the open market, has
+taken such deep root in Ireland that the tenants have shown little
+alacrity to avail themselves of their new privilege. What may be the
+ultimate issue of the attempt to govern a country in complete defiance of
+all received economical principles remains to be seen. The future must
+show whether a large peasant proprietary can be not only called into
+existence, but permanently maintained, under these conditions, and whether
+it will prove the loyal and conservative element that English politicians
+believe. According to all past experience, peasant proprietors rarely
+succeed, except when they possess something more than an average measure
+of industrial qualities, and the Irish purchase laws give no preference to
+the energetic, the industrious, and the thrifty. On the contrary, it is
+very often the farmer who is on the verge of bankruptcy who is most eager
+to buy, in order to reduce his annual charge. The tendency of the new
+proprietors to mortgage, to sublet, and to subdivide, is already manifest,
+and some of the best judges of Irish affairs, who look beyond the present
+generation, are very despondent about the future. They believe that a
+peasant proprietary, called into existence suddenly and artificially, with
+no discrimination in favour of the better class, in a country where
+industrial qualities are very low, and where the strongest wish of the
+farmer is either to divide his farm among his children, or to burden it
+with equal mortgages for their benefit, must eventually lead to economic
+ruin, to fatal subdivision, to crushing charges on land. The new policy
+must also, they contend, almost wholly withdraw from the country life,
+where it is peculiarly needed, the civilising and guiding influence of a
+resident gentry. Whether or not these apprehensions are exaggerated time
+only can show. Two predictions may, I think, with some confidence be made.
+The one is, that the transformation is likely to be most successful if it
+is gradually effected. The other is, that a great part of the influence
+once possessed by the landlord will, under the new conditions, pass to the
+money-lender.'
+
+[149] I quote these remarks of Burke, a striking instance of his political
+wisdom ('Tracts on the Popery Laws,' vol. ii. p. 446): 'It is on this
+principle (to get rid of short and unprofitable tenures) that the Romans
+established their _emphyteusis_, or fee-farm. For though they extended the
+ordinary term of their creation to nine years only, yet they encouraged a
+more permanent letting to farm, with the condition of improvement, as well
+as of annual payment where the land had lain rough and neglected.' So John
+Stuart Mill ('Irish Land Question,' p. 31, ed. 1870): 'The idea of
+property does not, however, necessarily imply that there should be no
+rent, any more than that there should be no taxes. It merely implies that
+the rent should be a fixed charge, not liable to be raised against the
+farmer by his own improvements, or by the will of a landlord. A tenant at
+a quit rent is, to all intents and purposes, a proprietor; a copyholder is
+not less so than a freeholder. What is wanted is permanent possession on
+fixed terms.' Mr. Morley said not long ago, in his place in Parliament,
+that, as things now stand in Ireland, the landlord must become a
+rent-charger and the tenant a copyholder, a true utterance.
+
+[150] 'Principles of Political Economy,' book ii. chap. ii. p. 6. I may
+refer, too, to these pregnant remarks of Bentham ('Theory of Legislation,'
+chap, xv.): 'The principle of security requires that reform should be
+attended with complete indemnity.... I cannot yet quit the subject, for
+the establishment of the principle of security demands that error should
+be pursued in all its retreats.... The interest of individuals, it is
+said, ought to yield to the public interest; but what does that mean? Is
+not one individual as much a part of the public as another? The public
+interest which you introduce as a person is only an abstract term; it
+represents nothing but the mass of individual interests.... Individual
+interests are the only real interests. Take care of the individuals; never
+molest them, never suffer any one to molest them, and you will have done
+enough for the public.... I shall conclude by a general observation of
+great importance. The more the principle of property is respected, the
+stronger hold it takes on the popular mind. Slight attacks on this
+principle prepare the way for heavier ones. A long time has been necessary
+to carry property to the point where we now see it in civilised societies;
+but a fatal experience has shown with what facility it may be shaken, and
+how easily the savage instinct of plunder gets the better of the laws.'
+
+[151] For the constitutional position of the British and Irish Parliaments
+before the Union, see Hallam's 'Constitutional History,' vol. iii.,
+chapter on Ireland, and Ball's 'Legislative Irish System,' chaps. v., xv.
+See also Lecky's 'History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' vol. ii.
+chap. vii.; vol. iv. chaps. xvi., xvii. As to the financial position of
+the two countries, see the opening pages of each of the Reports of the
+Childers Commission.
+
+[152] Grattan described this vicious state of things in his inimitable
+style ('Speeches,' p. 258, ed. published by Duffy): 'The Union is not an
+identification of the two nations; it is merely a merger of the parliament
+of one nation in that of another.... There is no identification in
+anything save in legislature, in which there is complete and absolute
+absorption. It follows that the two nations are not identified, though the
+Irish legislature be absorbed, and by that act of absorption the feeling
+of one of the nations is not identified, but alienated. The petitions on
+our table bespeak that alienation.'
+
+[153] Report of the Childers Commission, p. 20.
+
+[154] I transcribe this part of the seventh article of the Treaty of
+Union; I believe that I have fairly described its purport (Report of
+Childers Commission, p. 140): 'That if at any future day the separate debt
+of each country respectively shall have been liquidated, or if the values
+of their respective debts ... shall be to each other in the same
+proportion with the respective contributions of each country
+respectively.... And if it shall appear to the Parliament of the United
+Kingdom that the respective circumstances of the two countries will
+thenceforth admit of their contributing indiscriminately by equal taxes
+imposed on the same articles in each, to the future expenditure of the
+United Kingdom to declare that all future expense thenceforth to be
+incurred, together with the interest and charges of all joint debts
+contracted previous to such declaration, shall be so defrayed
+indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed on the same articles in each
+country, and thenceforth from time to time, as circumstances may require,
+to impose and apply such taxes accordingly, subject only to such
+particular exemptions or abatements in Ireland, and in that part of Great
+Britain called Scotland, as circumstances may appear, from time to time,
+to demand.'
+
+[155] Grattan's speeches, quoted in a memorandum supplied to the Childers
+Commission by Sir Edward Hamilton, p. 9.
+
+[156] 'Minutes of Evidence,' Childers Commission, vol. i. p. 329.
+
+[157] Memorandum of Sir Edward Hamilton, p. 9.
+
+[158] Report of the Childers Commission, p. 143.
+
+[159] Ibid., p. 32.
+
+[160] Report of the Childers Commission, pp. 147, 148.
+
+[161] Ibid., p. 33.
+
+[162] Report of the Childers Commission, p. 158.
+
+[163] I think it necessary to set out verbatim the terms of reference to
+the Commission; I have for the sake of clearness changed their order: 'To
+inquire into the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland,
+and their relative taxable capacity, and to report: I. Upon what
+principles of comparison, and by the application of what specific
+standards, the relative capacity of Great Britain and Ireland to bear
+taxation may be most equitably determined. II. What, so far as can be
+ascertained, is the true proportion, under the principles and specific
+standards so determined, between the taxable capacity of Great Britain and
+Ireland. III. The history of the financial relations between Great Britain
+and Ireland, at and after the Legislative Union, the charge for Irish
+purposes on the Imperial Exchequer during that period, and the amount of
+Irish taxation remaining available for contribution to Imperial
+expenditure; also the Imperial expenditure to which it is considered
+equitable that Ireland should contribute.'
+
+[164] Report of the Childers Commission, p. 26.
+
+[165] Since 1896, when the Childers Commission made its report, the
+overtaxation of Ireland has increased.
+
+[166] Report of Childers Commission: 'Minutes of Evidence,' vol. i. p. 17.
+
+[167] Report of the Childers Commission, p. 16.
+
+[168] Report of the Childers Commission, p. 89.
+
+[169] Report of the Childers Commission, pp. 159, 160.
+
+[170] 'Minutes of Evidence,' Childers Commission, vol. ii. p. 218.
+
+[171] I quote from the Report of the Childers Commission, p. 68, these
+valuable remarks on the subject: 'Neither can there then be any question
+that a system of equal rates of taxes on the same subjects is compatible
+with the utmost inequality of burdens between two countries contributing
+to one exchequer. All that need be done in order to exact an undue
+proportion--unlimited in extent--of the means of either of the countries
+is to tax the commodities most consumed in that country, and in fixing the
+rate of the tax on each commodity, to fix the higher rates on the
+particular commodities most generally in use in that country, and the
+lower rates on those most consumed in the other. The same kind of effect,
+of course, may be produced, and the same discrimination exercised, by
+totally exempting some commodities and taxing others, however lightly. In
+fact, a system of equal rates of taxes may thus be rendered more easily
+unjust and burdensome to the country discriminated against than one of
+differential taxes, because in the latter case, the unequal treatment, and
+the mode of it being manifest, are more liable to criticism and
+limitation; whilst in the former, the true effect of the system is
+disguised by the circumstances that each particular head of tax is at the
+same rate in both countries.'
+
+[172] Report of the Childers Commission, p. 39.
+
+[173] Ibid., p. 166.
+
+[174] Report of the Childers Commission, p. 11.
+
+[175] Ibid.: Evidence of Mr. Munough O'Brien, pp. 12, 13: 'The system of
+Imperial loans for temporary emergencies and charity tends to increase the
+poverty of Ireland, whose future income is mortgaged to pay interest on
+expenditure from which there is no return. There is no surer road to ruin
+for an individual than borrowing money to live upon, and most of these
+Imperial loans are practically made from time to time to enable the Irish
+people to live or relieve acute distress and disorder. Loans are almost
+annually made to keep the people quiet or to keep them alive. Yet this
+expenditure does not prevent the recurrence of famine, distress, and
+discontent; it rather tends to cause their recurrence.'
+
+[176] Report of the Childers Commission: Report of Mr. Sexton and others,
+pp. 102, 103.
+
+[177] Report of the Childers Commission: 'Evidence,' vol. ii. p. 18.
+
+[178] Report of the Childers Commission, pp. 194, 195.
+
+[179] 6 & 7 Will. IV. c. 116. The works of Messrs. Vanston and Foote on
+the grand juries of Ireland may be referred to.
+
+[180] The reader may be referred to Mr. Moore's work on the Irish poor
+law.
+
+[181] See the Report of a Committee of the House of Lords, and especially
+of the Evidence, taken in 1884-85, with respect to the administration of
+the Irish poor law at the time.
+
+[182] For a further account of local government in Ireland, a reader may
+consult the Report of Mr. W. P. O'Brien on Local Government, 1878, and
+reports on the towns of Ireland and their taxation about the same date. An
+excellent tract on the subject was published by Mr. William J. Bailey in
+1888, called 'Local and Centralised Government in Ireland.' With respect
+to the system of municipal government in Ireland as it existed before
+1840, nothing is so valuable as the Reports of the Commissioners, very
+able men, charged to inquire into the subject in 1834-35. A useful and
+well-informed account will also be found in Mr. Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty
+Years of Concessions to Ireland,' vol. i. book v.
+
+[183] I have only been able to sketch the outlines of the measure, the
+Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, p. 1, 62 Vict. cap. 37. A good
+commentary on it has been written by Mr. Brett of the Irish Bar.
+
+[184] Mr. Lecky, 'Democracy and Liberty,' Cabinet Edition, Introduction,
+p. 13, has well described this vaunted reform: 'It was a measure
+introduced in fulfilment of distinct pledges, and it contains very skilful
+provisions intended to protect existing interests. But, after all is said,
+it means a great transfer of power and influence from the loyal to the
+disloyal, and it goes in the direction of democracy far beyond anything
+that a few years ago would have been accepted by the Conservatives, or by
+the moderate Liberals.'
+
+[185] For a description of elementary education in Ireland up to 1812, see
+passages in Wakefield's 'Account of Ireland;' and for a description in
+earlier and later times, see Mr. Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty Years of
+Concessions to Ireland,' book i. chs. i.-xiv.; Mr. Graham Balfour's
+'Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland,' pp. 80-128; the Report
+of the Commissioners of Irish Education, 1810-21; the important Report of
+the Powis Commission, 1870-71; and the Reports of the Commissioners of
+National Education in Ireland. Mr. Froude, in his 'English in Ireland,'
+vol. i. p. 514; vol. ii. p. 491, has characteristically eulogised the
+Charter Schools; but he stands alone; Mr. Lecky, 'History of England in
+the Eighteenth Century,' vol. ii. pp. 200-304, has commented on this
+odious system as it deserved.
+
+[186] Barry O'Brien, 'Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,' vol. ii. p.
+322.
+
+[187] See Wakefield's 'Account of Ireland' for the state of her secondary
+schools in 1812; Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,'
+book x. chs. i., ii., iii.; Graham Balfour's 'The Educational System of
+Great Britain and Ireland,' pp. 203-218; and the Reports of the two
+Commissions of 1854-57 and of 1878-80, of which the heads were Lord
+Kildare and the Earl of Rosse.
+
+[188] See the resolutions in Duffy's 'Young Ireland,' pp. 713, 714. There
+has been much misrepresentation on this subject.
+
+[189] See 'The Problem of Irish Education,' by Butt, a masterly and
+impartial tract.
+
+[190] See for the figures 'The Irish University Question,' by Archbishop
+Walsh, _passim_.
+
+[191] For further information on the history and the present state of the
+University system in Ireland, see 'The History of the University of
+Dublin,' by the Rev. J. W. Stubbs, and 'The Constitutional History of the
+University of Dublin,' by D. C. Heron; Howley on 'Universities;' 'What is
+meant by Freedom of Education,' by the O'Conor Don; 'University
+Education,' by an Irish Protestant Celt; and especially 'The Problem of
+Irish Education,' by Butt. See also the Irish University Debates in
+Hansard for 1873, and the very able debate in Trinity College. The reader,
+too, may be referred to Mr. Barry O'Brien's 'Fifty Years of Concessions to
+Ireland,' book xi.; to Mr. Graham Balfour's 'Educational Systems of Great
+Britain and Ireland,' pp. 273-288; to Mr. Godkin's 'Education in Ireland;'
+and to Archbishop Walsh's 'The Irish University Question.'
+
+[192] Too much is not to be made of 'Nationalist' clamour; but these
+remarks of Mr. Dillon, M.P., are significant (_Freeman's Journal_, April
+13, 1901): 'I do not believe that these movements will ever succeed ...
+until that fortress of English domination and anti-Irish bigotry, Trinity
+College, is for ever swept away, or there is placed opposite to it a truly
+National University, where the most honoured classes will be the classes
+of Irish literature and Irish history.' Archbishop Walsh, a much abler
+man, has written in the same sense in his work, 'The Irish University
+Question.' The question, he contends, in many passages, must be settled by
+levelling up or by levelling down, that is, by raising the Catholic
+University to the position of Trinity College, or by disestablishing and
+disendowing Trinity College. The evil precedent of the Act disestablishing
+the Anglican Church in Ireland, will, it is hoped, be eschewed.
+
+[193] See on this subject Mr. Lough's 'England's Wealth, Ireland's
+Poverty,' pp. 88-94.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
+
+Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=.
+
+The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these
+letters have been replaced with transliterations.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Present Irish Questions, by William O'Connor Morris
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