MR. GLADSTONE AND FREE-TRADE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Sra,—Allow me to thank you for your explanatory note in the Spectator of August 25th on the relation between Free- trade and the Irish Land Act of 1881 in the person of Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone is, then, to be considered a Free- trader, except as to Irish land, with regard to which he adopts what is, in fact, Fair-trade practice. Irish land is to be treated as something apart from other industry, including English and Scotch agriculture. The result is, that in a free system of national industry there is interpolated this one foreign element of State-regulated Irish land. Must it not prove a constant source of friction and confusion P And the reason for this separate treatment is the Irish tenant-farmer's want of the independence necessary for bargaining. But this weak- ness in bargaining is by no means confined to Irish tenants ; and if it were, the power to bargain is just as necessary to them now as it was before. The change effected by the Act is that the applicant for land has now to bargain with the outgoing tenant instead of with the landlord. Competition for land is not abolished, or even diminished; witness the very term " free sale." Efficient single-handed ownership is effectually destroyed, to the great detriment of Ireland's main industry.
Your editorial note further points out the difficulty of pro- viding a tribunal as a hindrance to applying Fair-trade policy to foreign commerce, implying that Parliament supplies the want for internal industry. I venture to submit that the task of regulating trade in a manner which shall be just to all, and which shall not hinder progress and improvement, is one alto. gether beyond the human intellect, or any other intelligence short of omniscience.
With many apologies for presuming to criticise a departure from principle which appears to enjoy your approval, I can only appeal—if my remarks contain some grains of truth—to the Spectator's high purpose and position.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Horeham Road, Sussex, August 27th. CHETWYND.
[We quite admit that to fix fair rents without fixing the rates at which tenant-right should be sold was a blunder, and that this shows the enormous difficulty of that kind of State interference.—ED. Spectator.]
Previous page
