the Church Act of 1869. But in its passage through Parliament both these liberal aims of its author were substantially defeated. The extension of the Ulster custom was pruned down to the grant of a sliding-scale compensation for improvements made by the tenant in the event of his eviction for any other reason than non-payment of rent. The practical value of even this was further reduced by the action of the landlords in promptly weeding out their smaller tenants before the law came into force, and by a provision of the Act itself which enables owners and tenants to contract themselves out of its operation. To, in effect, compel this, very general notice of an increase of rent was given throughout Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, and under pressure of this a large number of tenants submitted to the alternative of so bargaining themselves out of the Act, while those who refused to do so and have since made default with the increased rack-rent have, on eviction, equally forfeited their right to compensation under it.

So, too, as regards the 'Bright' clauses intended to facilitate the purchase of farms in the Encumbered Estates Court. The expectations on which these were founded that the estates brought into the Court would be sold in small lots to suit peasant purchasers, and that sales direct from landlord to tenant would be found practicable-have been completely disappointed; while the operation of this part of the Act has been still further defeated by the inadequacy of the advance made to intending buyers by the Board of Works-only two thirds as against three fourths given by the Church Commissioners--and by the inconvenient method under which purchases are conducted. From these various causes the measure has so signally failed that out of a total of some 600,000 yearly tenants only 900 odd had, up to last year, purchased their holdings under its provisions.

The fact of its failure was already clear in 1874, and in that year a Select Committee, moved for by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, began an inquiry, which lasted over two Sessions, into the whole question of Irish land tenure. The result appeared in a voluminous Bluebook in 1876, embodying the evidence of a whole host of witnesses— landlords, agents, lawyers, and tenant farmers-representing every interest concerned. A large majority of the Committee reported in favour of further liberal concessions to the tenant class, and especially recommended increased facilities for the creation of a large peasant proprietary. The monstrous inequities of the present relation between landlord and tenant in Ireland are frankly recognised, and the policy as well as justice of further legislation to bring the two interests into better agreement is urged with an emphasis rare in Blue-book literature. Still, in spite of this body of authoritative proof that both justice and policy demand large reforms, and of the rich suggestions of the report as to what these should be and how they should be carried out, the Government flatly refused even to promise any reform at all. In the same year, therefore, Mr. Butt introduced his Irish Land Tenure Bill, mainly framed on the lines of

than good. About one fourth of the whole area of the islanu has changed owners under it, passing into the hands of proprietors three times more numerous, and far more oppressive, than those whom they displaced. Similarly the primary object of the Church Act of 1869 was not to benefit the holders of Church lands, but to conciliate the Catholics by disestablishing the Irish Church. As in any sense a land reform, its beneficial effect was limited to 10,563 holdings, representing a rental of 225;622l., or less than 2 per cent. of the whole landlord revenue of the island. But its operation to even this fractional extent has been of real value in supplying at once an irrefragable argument and a precedent for much more sweeping reforms. One of the tritest commonplaces against the great reform of a peasant proprietary is, that the tenant purchasers would not pay up their instalments, and that even if they did, their unthrift and the inevitable subdivisions of their farms would certainly generate a mere warren of paupers.' The experience of the Church Temporalities Commissioners has been that more than 6,000 occupants of the Church lands have bought the fee of their holdings, and that although some applications have from time to time been made for postponements of payments, no greater difficulty has been met with from the small purchasers of farms than from the landowners who have bought the tithe rentcharge, and who have been dealt with on much more favourable terms. It has also been found that in nearly every case the farms so bought have been immensely improved by fencing, draining, reclamation of bog, and other industrial results, and, generally, that the new proprietors are better-to-do than they ever were before. But, as I have remarked, the agrarian effect of this Act was a subordinate incident of its operation, and touched merely the skirt of the gigantic wrong involved in the Irish land system. Under it some 6,000 odd tenants escaped from the helotry that still weighs on nearly 600,000 more, and to afford these latter relief was the object of Mr. Gladstone's Land Act of the following year. Generous, however, as was the original intention of that measure, it was only forced through a hostile Parliament with limitations that went far to deprive it of all real value. It proposed, in effect, to extend the Ulster tenant right to the other three provinces, and to create for the whole of the island facilities for fee purchases by occupying tenants somewhat similar to those provided on a smaller scale by

• Speaking before Mr. Lefevre's Committee, as to the effects of this Act, Judge Flanagan, of the Landed Estates Court, said of the new class of proprietors created under it: I think the small landlords are, as a rule, the most tyrannical: I hardly know what terms to use: they look upon it purely as a mercantile transaction in the extreme sense of the term, their sole object being to extract from the unfortunate small tenants, who have lost the protection of their former landlords, the very highest penny which by possibility they can extract from these tenants.' Sir W. Gregory gave still more emphatic testimony in the same sense.

Much of the money so invested by tenants in the south was borrowed from the Munster Bank, and I have authority for saying that in no single case has default

the Church Act of 1869. But in its passage through Parliament both these liberal aims of its author were substantially defeated. The extension of the Ulster custom was pruned down to the grant of a sliding-scale compensation for improvements made by the tenant in the event of his eviction for any other reason than non-payment of rent. The practical value of even this was further reduced by the action of the landlords in promptly weeding out their smaller tenants before the law came into force, and by a provision of the Act itself which enables owners and tenants to contract themselves out of its operation. To, in effect, compel this, very general notice of an increase of rent was given throughout Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, and under pressure of this a large number of tenants submitted to the alternative of so bargaining themselves out of the Act, while those who refused to do so and have since made default with the increased rack-rent have, on eviction, equally forfeited their right to compensation under it.

So, too, as regards the 'Bright' clauses intended to facilitate the purchase of farms in the Encumbered Estates Court. The expectations on which these were founded—that the estates brought into the Court would be sold in small lots to suit peasant purchasers, and that sales direct from landlord to tenant would be found practicable-have been completely disappointed; while the operation of this part of the Act has been still further defeated by the inadequacy of the advance made to intending buyers by the Board of Works-only two thirds as against three fourths given by the Church Commissioners--and by the inconvenient method under which purchases are conducted. From these various causes the measure has so signally failed that out of a total of some 600,000 yearly tenants only 900 odd had, up to last year, purchased their holdings under its provisions.

The fact of its failure was already clear in 1874, and in that year a Select Committee, moved for by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, began an inquiry, which lasted over two Sessions, into the whole question of Irish land tenure. The result appeared in a voluminous Bluebook in 1876, embodying the evidence of a whole host of witnesseslandlords, agents, lawyers, and tenant farmers-representing every interest concerned. A large majority of the Committee reported in favour of further liberal concessions to the tenant class, and especially recommended increased facilities for the creation of a large peasant proprietary. The monstrous inequities of the present relation between landlord and tenant in Ireland are frankly recognised, and the policy as well as justice of further legislation to bring the two interests into better agreement is urged with an emphasis rare in Blue-book literature. Still, in spite of this body of authoritative proof that both justice and policy demand large reforms, and of the rich suggestions of the report as to what these should be and how they should be carried out, the Government flatly refused even to promise any reform at all. In the same year, therefore, Mr. Butt introduced his Irish Land Tenure Bill, mainly framed on the lines of

the programme of the Dublin Tenant League of 1850, providing for the extension of the Ulster custom to the other provinces, and for the fixing of fair rents on the basis of a revaluation revisable every twenty-one years. But moderate as were these concessions, the Bill was denounced in the House of Commons by Sir Michael HicksBeach, then Secretary for Ireland, as 'ignoring the principles of right and justice,' by Mr. Plunkett as a bill to rob the landlord of his property,' by Mr. Gibson, the Irish Attorney-General, as 'monstrous,' and by Mr. Kavanagh as a programme of spoliation.' In short, the Government and their supporters declared tenant right to be landlord wrong,' and this attempt to grant some real protection to the Irish tenant was defeated by a vote of 290 against 56. Again, last year, Mr. Shaw renewed the effort, but with no better success; Mr. Lowther, the Irish Secretary, opposing the reintroduced Bill as 'pure, undiluted, unmitigated communism,' and of course negativing it with an official and landlord backing of 263 against 91. In the same month (May) Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, perceiving the hopelessness of any initiative on the part of the Government, moved the following resolution: That in view of the importance of any considerable addition to the owners of land in Ireland among the class of persons cultivating the soil, it is expedient that legislation should be adopted without further delay for increasing the facilities proposed for this object by the Land Act of 1870, and for securing to the tenants of the land offered for sale opportunities for purchasing consistently with the interest of the owner thereof.' At the request of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who assured the House that the matter was engaging the attention of the Government, the motion was withdrawn, but no further word was heard on the subject till the Session closed; and, barring the comparatively trifling changes made by the Act of 1870, the Irish land code remains as that less than halfmeasure found it.

6

The agricultural depression on both sides of the Channel occurred opportunely for renewed agitation against this weightiest and least defensible of Irish grievances, and the Home Rule leaders have shown wisdom in concentrating their energies upon it. Most other 'planks' of their platform divide even Irish public opinion, and in England are resisted by both Whig and Tory with equally uncompromising opposition. But on this subject of the land laws there is in Ireland -outside the landlords, and not a few even of them admit the justice of the tenants' cry for reform-a consensus of popular feeling as to the necessity for radical changes; while in England the great mass of Liberal opinion similarly recognises the policy and justice of further legislation in this direction. Nor is this all: a Committee of the House of Commons, after hearing exhaustive evidence pro and con, has, as I have said, condemned the existing system and pointed out the lines on which, with full fair play to all interests, it may be reconstructed. Seldom, in fact, has any party

proved intrinsic merit in its subject. It would not be practicable, within the limits of the few pages available for the remainder of this paper, to state in detail all the varieties of reform which were suggested to the Committee, or have been independently urged by influential members of the Irish party, but they may be grouped with approximate completeness into four-fair rents, fixity of tenure, free sale (tenant right), and the creation of a tenant proprietary. The first three of these formed the programme of the Dublin Tenant League, on the lines of which, as has been said, Messrs. Butt's and Shaw's subsequent Bills were mainly framed, and for the whole, facts in superfluous abundance make out, in my judgment, an unanswerable

case.

As regards the first of these, it is notorious that nearly all the land purchased under the Encumbered Estates Act, and much also of that which has escaped the operation of that measure, is now rackrented. Almost every change of ownership has been attended by a revaluation and increased rental of the estate, till over by far the greater part of the three southern provinces this has been carried to a point at which, in bad seasons like the present and the last three, either the cultivator must starve or the rent cannot be paid in full. Although no fewer than three systems of valuation are in force for imperial and other local purposes, none of these is in any way binding as between landlord and tenant, and, as a rule, the former therefore exacts just as much rent as the latter sees even a possibility of paying. He has merely to serve notice of eviction, and the helpless occupier has no choice but to submit to any terms he may impose. It is plain, therefore, that any scheme of reform worth the name must include an equitable revaluation, and a resettlement of the present scale of rents in accordance with it. Mr. Butt's Bill found a ready machinery for such a settlement in the existing county courts, with the aid of arbitrators, or a jury of tenant farmers.

Fixity of tenure is an equally obvious condition of justice to the farmer. Without this he is still at the mercy of the landlord's caprice, and has no motive for either industry or thrift beyond what may be absolutely necessary to enable him to pay rent and live. To improve his holding is to invite increased rent or eviction; and it is therefore in a sense his interest to keep it at the lowest point of productiveness compatible with these two conditions. Perpetuity leases on fines proportioned to the rent-as was strongly advocated

These are (1) the Townland Valuation, made in 1826, under 7 Geo IV. chap. 62, to provide for the more equal levying of the Grand Jury Cess and other county charges; (2) the Poor Land Valuation, made under the Act of 1836 by Sir Richard Griffiths, on the principle of the observed letting, without attempting to guide value, and which is annually revised after its English model; and (3) that of 1852, according to which the value is fixed with reference to the average prices of certain articles set out in the Act, amongst which, however, potatoes, the chief crop of the country, do not figure, while wages, another principal element in the calculation, are also not considered. This last valuation, too, includes all farm buildings, and most of the tenant's improvements, so that the more capital in money or labour he expends on his holding the higher are the rates assessed on it under the Act.