TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE CHIEF OBJECTIONS TO THE LAND BILL.

IT is too early to cast the horoscope of the Irish Land Bill, but up to the present moment it would be hardly possible even for Mr. Gladstone himself to wish it a more promising reception. Of course, the Duke of Argyll's secession was a grave misfortune ; but that was known before the principles of the Bill were mastered by the country, and we are speaking not of that aspect of its fate which was already determined before the Bill was published, but of that aspect of it which depended solely on its reception by the public. And even with relation to the Duke of Argyll's secession, there is this important deduction from the influence which it will exercise over the Liberal party :—the Duke has ex- plained the general nature of his scruples, and we feel very sure that they will not commend themselves to the vast majority either of moderate Irish Liberals or of moderate English Liberals. The Dike says that it has become one of the chief objects of Liberal policy in England to remove the legal restrictions on the ownership of land, while it is the chief object of the new Irish Land Bill to increase the re- strictions on the ownership of land. " Under this scheme," he says, " neither the landlord nor the tenant will be owner. In Ireland, ownership will be in commission or in abeyance. My Lords, I regard this as injurious to the agricultural in- dustry of any country, and especially injurious to a country in the condition of Ireland." Now, in saying that, the Duke no doubt appeals to a very strong Liberal conviction. But he misleads himself, though he will not mislead the public, when he suggests, as the form of his sentence does suggest, that the objection.which he feels to this Bill is founded on its tendency to paralyse the cultivation of the soil in Ireland, instead of on its tendency to restrain the interference of land- lords who do not cultivate the soil with the tenants who Flo. It is perfectly true that the Liberal party is identified with the policy of abolishing those laws which, by limiting the power of the tenant for life to deal with his landed property in the way best suited to set it free from incumbrances, cripple the cultivation of the soil. But the whole drift of the Irish Land Bill is in the same direction with this Liberal policy, and not in the opposite direction. If it puts the ownership into Commission, it does so that the actual culti- vator may be more secure of the return for his capital and labour, not less secure ; that the embarrassments of the land- lord, if he have embarrassments, may not cripple the farmer as they do now, but leave him quite unembarrassed. It is quite true, of course, that the tendency of the early portion

of the Irish Land Bill is to restrict ownership. But its tendency is to restrict ownership which is not the ownership of the cultivator, and to restrict it in the interests of the cultivator, not in the interests of the proprietor of the sur- plus produce. And that is the true reply to the Duke. The Liberal party do wish to simplify the land-laws, so far as their simplification promotes the best possible cultivation of the soil ; and they desire to promote this simplification both in England and Ireland. But under the peculiar condi- tions of the Irish land-tenure, they believe that, pending such a simplification of our land-laws, the proposed Irish Land Bill, if passed into law, would protect the actual farmers of the land from the mischievouaencroaehments of the owners, and so neutral- ise the bad effect of the legal restrictions which still continue.

A more formidable objection has been brought against the Land Bill by the Times of Wednesday,—that it confiscates the property of a certain class of landlords, and confiscates it without compensation ; so that it may force a certain number of encumbered landlords into bankruptcy, by a direct transfer of their property to their tenants. Let us look more closely at this rather formidable objection. The gist of it is this :- The tenant may ask the new Land Court to revise his rent, and that Court, in revising his rent, is to fix such a rent " as a solvent tenant would undertake to pay one year with another." So far, the Times does not object. But it says the Land Court is also directed to take into account, in thus revising the rent, what is the tenant's interest in the holding, measured either by the Ulster Custom or by the " compensation for disturbance" on the scale settled by the Bill. And the Times suggests that the meaning of this direc- tion is that the rent is to be so far lowered, that instead of representing what a solvent tenant-farmer would be willing to give " one year with another," it would represent something

so much less, that it would be worth such a tenant-farmer's while to pay a fine, equivalent to the Ulster-Custom price, or the "com- pensation for disturbance," for the right to have it at so low a

rent. But in making this suggestion, the Times appears to• forget that whatever the incoming tenant buys in the way of tenant-right, he must have the power of selling when he quits. the holding ; nay, possibly, even of selling as increased by the additional value he may himself have added to it. Doubt- less, as Lord Monteagle points out, in the very able letter published in yesterday's Times, the Bill does intend' to recognise that the whole interest of any holding is not in the landlord, that the tenant has had ever since 1870 a. right to 'be compensated for " disturbance," which, so far as it goes, is a qualification of the landlord's absolute ownership, and diminishes its value. Unquestionably, the Court will be' bound to ask themselves, " Is the rent such as to admit of a solvent Irish tenant's paying the average Ulster-Custom price fon it, or where there is no Ulster-Custom, paying the rate of com- pensation for disturbance for it,—and yet continuing to pay

the rent too, and making a fair average profit on it, assuming,. of course, that whenever he gives up his tenancy, he will re-

cover from his successor all that he pays on coming in ?"—and. as Lord Monteagle says, where the rent is really a fair rent,. the answer will be certainly in the affirmative. Where is the' confiscation here,—unless, indeed, the original Act of 1870,. which recognised for the first time the principle of compensa- tion for eviction, were a confiscation tool This Bill only extends very gently the principle accepted by the whole Conservative party in 1870, and only extends it so far as is necessary to make that principle really effective. No doubt, the blunder in 1870 was that it left the landlord power, by getting the tenant to agree year by year to very small but regular increases of rent, to screw up the rent again to a rack-

rent which made it impossible to pay anything for the tenant- right and yet leave a profit on the cultivation. The new Bill rectifies that great blunder. But assuredly, if the Act of 1870 did not involve confiscation, the passing of this Bill will not involve confiscation. It adopts, and so far extends as to render effective, the principle of the Act of 1870,. but it does not confiscate unless that Act confiscated, or only in the sense in which that Act confiscated, which was in so mild a sense that the Act was welcomed by genuine Irish Conservatives..

And it does not even impair the interest of any Irish land- lord except those who, contrary to the spirit of the Act of 1870, have employed themselves ever since that Act in, gradually screwing up their rents, so as to extinguish the• virtual tenant-right which that Act introduced.

The last question which we have to ask is,—how far the• objections of the Land-leaguers will be fatal to the Bill ? No' doubt Mr. Parnell objects to the clause defining the meaning of " fair rent" from the tenant's point of view. He thinks it ought to be definitely less than what a solvent Irish tenant would

offer to give, " one year with another," even after taking into,

account that he must pay something for the tenant's interest in the holding, which will not be recouped till he gives it up‘ again. But though he presses this objection very sturdily,— as the Land-leaguers, of course, could not help doing,—it seems obvious to us that, from the tenant's point of view, the Land-leaguers must accept the Bill, only endeavouring, of course, to amend it, say, by extending the fifteen years' security. to twenty-one years, and eliminating, perhaps, or trying to eliminate, the grounds of objection which a landlord is to be allowed to take to the admission of any purchaser of the- tenant-right to whom the out-going tenant wishes to sell it.

Mr. Parnell and his friends do not dare openly to assail the Bill. They are well aware that if they did, they would lose. all their substantial Irish support, and become the mere repre- sentatives of the violent American Fenians.

On the whole, therefore, we hold that the prospects of the Irish Land Bill have materially brightened during the week. Certainly, our own estimate of this great, difficult, and most comprehensive feat of statesmanship grows steadily the longer we consider it, and the more carefully we view the

objections brought against it. We believe that it will prove that, in preparing this Bill, Mr. Gladstone has far surpassed, both in its boldness and in the carefulness of its equities, all the statesmanship of our generation with which it can fairly be compared.