LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
IS A LAND-PURCHASE SCHEME IN IRELAND NOW POSSIBLE ?
[To TEE EDITOR OP TEE " BPECTATOR."] SIR,—There is a growing conviction that the agrarian die- culties of Ireland cannot mach longer be neglected with ,ssifety. That the new kind of tenure established by Mr. Gladstone's Land Acts of 1870 and 1881 cannot be left where it is, may be taken for granted. If it cannot be perfected, the only alterna- tive seems to be a huge scheme of Land-purchase. And apparently, by general consent, this is assumed to be the only remedy. Are we sure that it would be a remedy P And even if it would, is it fairly within the range of what is reaaonahly possible ? I confess I am inclined to answer these questions in the negative. What would have been the result already of Mr. Gladstone's Land-purchase Bill, if it had passed into law last year? Apart from any political question, judging purely from an economic point of view, would it not have transferred the loss in the value of land consequent upon the fall in the value of stock from the seller to the buyer—from the landlords to the purchasing tenants P The latter would have contracted to pay for the rest of their lifetime what are now supposed to be im-
possible rents-20 per cent. or 25 per cent. more than the fair value of the landlords' interest in the land. In the dales of Yorkshire and Westmoreland, where the small farmers and " statesmen " are breeders of stock, like so many of the Irish farmers, the price of land fairly held its own till lately, notwithstanding the low prices of wheat ; but it has fallen daring the past two or three years almost as much as that of corn-land. It can hardly be otherwise in Ireland. This one fact of a falling value of land seems to me to make almost impossible any heroic and wholesale scheme of Land-purchase where, as in Ireland, the purchase- money has to be provided on a fine calculation by throwing its payment by instalments, practically equal to the old rents, over a long period of years. Who can tell what the value of land in Ireland may be five, ten, or twenty years hence ? Can it be trusted to fall no more ?
The laws of political economy seem to be silently securing for the millions cheap bread, cheap meat, cheap wool and flax, and therefore also cheap land. They have already silently overridden Mr. Gladstone's first attempt to fix a fair rent for fifteen years before a third of the term has expired. And had his Land- purchase Bill become law, they would have torn it to pieces before its ink was dry. Even if the horrible land-hunger of Irish tenants, who have no resource but the land, should help us to succeed in shifting the loss involved in the fall of land to its natural value from the shoulders of the owners, who ought to bear it, on to those of the peasantry, with or without Home-rule, would it save Ireland Might it not rather end, even speedily, in disappointment and ruin ? Dare we ran the risk ?
But what are we to do ? We are thrown back on the other alternative,—viz., to try honestly to perfect the exceptional form of tenancy which during long years has grown up in Ire- land, owing to the false policy of landlords in throwing upon the tenants the cost of buildings and improvements. Mr. Glad- stone's Land Acts, however noble their intention, failed because, whilst recognising the justice of the tenant's claim not to be rented on his own improvements, their methods of legally pro- tecting the claim were halting and imperfect. His Bills were drawn with a set purpose to avoid, out of deference, perhaps, to his landowning friends, any legal recognition of a double owner- ship in the land. Compensation for disturbance only half covered the tenant's right. The fixing, ten years after, of the fair rent for fifteen years was, again, an imperfect expedient, and one which flew in the face of political econony, as the result is showing.
May it not be that the real solution of the difficulty lies in a complete and full recognition of the reality of the double owner- ship P Will no one devise a clear legal form of land-tenure or settlement ander which the two owners—one of the bare land, the other of the tenant-right and improvements—can live side by side in peace, neither of them overriding the other's rights, each of them taking his proper share in the rise or fall in the value of the land, and both of them contributing to the welfare of the State, whose tenants in strictness they both of them are? Where there is a joint ownership, the valuer or the Judge who is called in to value or decide upon what is just between them, is performing a useful function without any such breach of the laws of political economy as is involved in the attempt to fir judicially a rent which, after all, must follow in the end the laws of supply and demand.
I do not give up all hope that a solution short of wholesale Land-purchase may yet be found. And if only the Irish Members would find this for us, it might be a real message of peace and good-will between the two countries. They would be doing more to cure the sores of Ireland, and to prepare for her true and right self-government, and healthy economic develop- ment, than by the greatest successes they can possibly achieve in the way of organising anarchy.—I am, Sir, &c., F. SEEBOHM.
[The proposal of our experienced correspondent is, in fact, to substitute copyhold tenure in perpetuity, with rents varying according to prices for the present dual ownership. That is the scheme for which we have contended for years, and our only fear is that it would not satisfy the peasants' excited imagina- tions. If it could be worked without evictions, it would be an ideal scheme.—ED. Spectator.]
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