THE TORY ALTERNATIVE FOR THE LAND ACT.
IF the signs abroad be not deceptive, Mr. Parnell has edu- cated the Tories to some purpose. It is very difficult to believe that the leaders of that party intend to propose the total extinction of landlordism in Ireland ; but if they do not, their constantly repeated hints have very little meaning. As we understand Sir Michael Hicks-Beach's proposal for a Land Bank, and Mr. Smith's resolution for the extension of the Purchase Clauses of the Land Act, and Lord Salisbury's ad- missions at Liverpool that "a revolution having occurred, it must be accepted as a point of departure," and that, deeply as he regrets it, the development of peasant-proprietorship must be "hurried on," and the suggestion of many Tory writers that the State should advance the whole purchase-money of Irish holdings, the Tory leaders intend to advocate a scheme which, as they think, will terminate "double ownership," will interest the numerical majority in the safety of landed property, and will incidentally secure to its authors the unbroken strength of the Irish vote. They shrink as yet from details, though, we suppose, details will be contained in Mr. Smith's forth- coming speech on the first Monday in May ; but they admit that they wish to cover the whole ground of the Land Act, and abolish "double property," and must, therefore, intend to make the tenants, or enable the tenants to make them- selves, actual proprietors throughout Ireland. As, further, they are certain to compensate proprietors, and as Lord Salis- bury acknowledges a certain large risk, they must intend that the State should advance the whole money, on the security of the whole body of holdings,—that is, should occupy, for a certain space of time, which could not be less than forty years, the landlords' place. The Treasury is to take the risk of a loan to purchase Ireland, on the security of its hold- ings. They must mean this, if they really propose, as we interpret their sayings, to extinguish double proprietorship, for although other security than the land, in the shape of a special tax on Ireland, has often been talked of, that is, as we shall show, practically a dream. Not to speak of the outrageous injustice of taxing everybody for the benefit of a class, even if the " class " includes all rural tenants and landlords, the sum required would be too large to be raised by extra taxation in so small and poor a country. It would amount on the very lowest computation to an additional levy of six pounds per annum from every household in Ireland, in addition to existing taxes, and either would not be paid, or would involve a crushing of the people which would reproduce all existing evils in a worse form. The money must come from the tenants, either in rates equal to the judicial rent, but more imperiously levied ; or in a quit-rent payable to the single and supreme landlord, the State. Of course, when the scheme comes to be formu- lated, it may prove indefinitely smaller than this ; but if it does, it will not fulfil the conditions claimed for it, viz., that it will compensate the landlords, abolish double proprietorship, and restore the sanctity of property, by interesting the bulk of the agricultural population in its defence. If it is small, it will be meaningless ; if it is large, it must in essence be what we have described.
We are not, of course, about to discuss in detail a plan which is not yet formulated, which may be found too wide for the party, and which the leaders may abandon, or whittle away into a mere improvement of a detail of the Land Act. But that some such proposal, however inchoate as yet, is passing through the minds of the Tory chiefs, as the only one by which they could maintain their own ideas of property, yet terminate the agrarian contest, and secure the whole Irish vote, is unmistakable ; and if it is passing, we have two pre- liminary remarks to make. One, of little importance perhaps, is that there must be an end of the Tory imputation against Liberals of being Revolutionary. The Tories themselves will have proposed a Revolution more wide-spread than any ever effected in any State in modern times, and more directly opposed to every principle that the party proposing it have ever pro- fessed. If the Tories have a fixed idea, it is that landlordism is much more than a question of property; that it is the soundest, indeed, the only sound form of social organisation, and ought, when possible, to be protected by the whole force of the State. They are proposing, if this is their scheme, to sweep it away utterly, to remove, painlessly, no doubt, but to remove, the whole class to which, as they declare, a country must look for all social, civilising influences. They, to whom a peasant de- mocracy is a bite noire, an evil system of society, will be estab- lishing one in its most complete and universal form. It is . open to Liberals to say that wealth, culture, and pedigree will have their influence, their great, perhaps excessive influence, in a peasant democracy, as they still have in many countries of Europe—for example, Germany ; but it is not open to Con- servatives, who have maintained, for a century at least, that these influences should never be divorced from the possession of the soil. They may say they will not be divorced, but they must know that, the scheme being granted, they are using meaningless words. They may talk of permissive plans, but they know perfectly well that if Irish tenants accept such a scheme at all—which is doubtful—they would accept it in a mass and eagerly ; and that the landlord who refused to agree to it would get no rent,—would, perhaps, out of Ulster find it impossible to live in Ireland. It is a vast scheme of expropriation they contemplate, if their hints are not meaningless, and expropriation directed against the class which throughout their history as Conservatives they have declared to be the one most essential to the prosperity of Ireland and the safety of the kingdom. Even now, this very week, they declare at Liverpool that without the landlords the British have no foothold in Ireland, and yet they prepare, gently and amiably, to bow all landlords out !
The other remark we have to make is that the pecuniary risk to the State involved in any such proposal likely to be efficacious must be of the largest kind. The Conservatives will not offer the landlords less than twenty years' purchase of the judicial rent—the only possible basis of calculation, as the alternative, the existing rent, would make the scheme enrich the bad landlord, and impoverish the good one—and at that rate, the amount to be risked would be at least equal to the French indemnity of £200,000,000. We are quite aware that large -differences of opinion exist as to what propor- tion of Irish rental is strictly agricultural, but the Statist, which warmly advocates this plan, or one akin to it, after a series of calculations, fixed £150,000,000 as the irre- ducible minimum ; and we all know that the State, in buying anything, never touches that line. Mr. Bright; no bad
authority, intimated that the amount required might reach £300,000,000; but even at the figure we assume, the addi- tional outlay in interest to be risked will be £6,500,000 a year, for which the sole security will be the willingness of Irish tenants to pay the judicial rent. How much is that security worth ? The Tories say that it is worth nothing at all, for that the rent having once been reduced by the Legislature as a consequence of agitation, tho peasants will seek incessant reductions until they have arrived at prairie value ; and, undoubtedly, the Tories are thus far right, that whatever reluctance there is to pay rent to .individuals will be greatly increased when the creditor is the State, and when agitators will be able to say that Secession would extin- guish the whole debt. Few men feel the obligation to the State which they feel to private creditors, and among those few, Irishmen certainly cannot be reckoned. The whole force of the Irish representation would be directed to insist on re- missions, and every political demand would be enforced by a No-rent manifesto. It is true, the State is impersonal and very strong ; but no Government—certainly no Parliamentary Government—could evict a nation, even if its rulers were willing to make the effort, rather than put on more taxes, which, in a country like Britain, they certainly would not be. No claim of the Treasury could live against a population in despair. The losses might be gradual, part of the rent being paid in good years ; but they would be constant, and with the immense expenditure of collection provided for, very little of the great sum would ever reach the Treasury. The English people, who must guarantee the landlords' bonds, would, in fact, risk a sixpenny income-tax for the sake of turning Irish tenants into freeholders, before they know that those tenants accept the political system which it is one great object of all these huge sacrifices to preserve. We are not, be it understood, just now opposing the plan, or even dis- cussing the plan, but only trying to warn our readers of the immense magnitude which, if proposed at all as an efficacious alternative scheme to the Land Act, it must assume.
They are competent for themselves to compare it with Mr. Gladstone's proposal, which demands of the tenant the same annual payment, and offers him nearly the same advantages, but involves the State in no embarrassment, and leaves the hierarchical order of society untouched. They may be attracted or repelled by the alternative, but, at least, they will make no further mistake as to which of the two proposals is the Revolutionary one.
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