LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
AN AMERICAN VIEW OF THE IRISH QUESTION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."" Sia,—Observant Americans will hardly challenge the accuracy of the English side of the "Bird's-eye View" article in the last Spectator, but they will be apt to regard the Irish side of the picture as drawn too darkly and despairingly. The Irish ques- tion is undoubtedly a difficult one to deal with, but where there is a will, there is a way. It will require time, and sacri- fice, and patience, but it is a solvable problem, if attacked in the right way. The alternative is not forced on your Government of separation of Ireland from the British Empire, or an eternity of discontent and misery. England has not yet exhausted remedial measures, nor waited long enough on the last one tried, the Land Act of 1881, to see the effect it may produce.
Your Government spent some twenty-five millions sterling to emancipate three-quarters of a million of West-India blacks from domestic servitude. How much has the same Government given to emancipate six times as many whites in the sister-island from bondage to poverty and hunger P The root of the Irish question is starvation and eviction. A land system exists in that country which renders life a burden. When that land system is reformed, the Irish question will give England very little more trouble. As the bad. land tenure of Ireland is of English making, so it must be corrected by British legislation. The remedy is completely within the control of your Parliament. England has tried six centuries of misrule and coercion in Ireland, and should not now grow impatient because six months of Gladstone's Land Act have not pacified the entire island; but I venture to assert that not 1 per cent. of the 25,000 tenant- farmers who have already secured the "three F's" under its provisions are now engaged in the commission of agrarian out- rages, or in resisting the laws. And if this be so, does it not forecast very clearly the improved condition that will prevail throughout the island, when this first measure of justice to the cultivators of the soil becomes universally enjoyed P The Irish are alleged to desire national independence, and it is asserted by Englishmen that nothing short of it will ever satisfy them ; but do they not seek it as a means to an end P 'They see no other road of escape from the crushing constriction of landlordism. The longing for independence among the farmers would soon fade into the domain of abstractions, once they found themselves in possession of a satisfactory tenure of their holdings. A freehold title instead of a rack-rent lease would work an enormous change in the sentiments of the Irish farmer towards the British Government. And to the extent that the Irish peasantry become pacified, the American-
Irish would quiet down, and cease revolutionary agitation. The most anti-communistic, law-abiding, loyal, and Conserva- tive class of people iu any nation are the cultivators of the soil, who own their farms and enjoy the fruits of their toil ; vide the freehold farmers of Jersey, of France, Belgium, Scandinavia, the German Rhine provinces, and the States of America, Canada included. The Ulster Irish are more peaceable and better disposed towards the British Government than the Connaught and Munster Irish, in the degree that their land tenure has been more satisfactory. Abolish the " Ulster Custom" of leaseholds and tenants' ownership of his im- provements, and substitute the landlord practice of rack-renting and eviction in Connaught, and England would be obliged to double her military force in Ireland, to keep down Orange insurrections ; Prevention of Crime Bills would avail but little in reconciling the• Ulsterites to the tenant-at-will system pre- vailing in the other Provinces.
Mark the prediction that when the Land Act of 1881 is made effectual by proper amendments, and is carried into general use, the three discontented Provinces will become almost as peace- able and law-abiding as Ulster. When a farmer has secured a satisfactory tenure of his acres, he feels but little further interest in treasonable plots, and ceases to foment or take part in agrarian outrages or revolutionary schemes. When the farmers of Ireland are thus detached by self-interest from the support of the city professional agitators, the work of the latter will be impotent and fall to pieces for want of popular support, and the "pieces" can readily be dealt with by the Courts and the Constabulary.
England is powerful and contented, as you truly describe, because her people are rich and prosperous, and her working. classes well fed, clad, and housed. Ireland is weak and miser- able, because her people are steeped in poverty, under-fed, covered with rags, and housed in hovels. It is not gifts of meal and bowls of soup in time of famine that will render the Irish grateful towards England or happy in their homes, but the right to enjoy the fruits of their own labour, under their own vine and fig-tree,—none making them afraid. The one thing needful is the abolition of the blighting land system, which destroys every incentive to industrial energy and the hope of reward for toil, by confiscating the tenant's improvements, and charging him rent on the betterments he puts on the land. The Irish farmer is thus actually fined and punished if he ventures to improve his tillage and increase his crops ! Think you how long the American farmers would stand such agand system, before rising en mane to overthrow it. Not long, I can assure you.
Change the rack-rented, starved, and rebellious tenantry into landowners, cultivating their own freeholds, and then thrift and prosperity will replace the present squalor and stagnation. The land will quickly be made to yield double the crops it now does. The people, under the new incentive to labour and enter. prise, will pay for their holdings in half the time now supposed to be necessary, and be rid of the pest of landlordism for ever. Ireland will then become a source of strength and support to the British Empire, instead of weakness and obstruction.—I
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