THE NEW RENT TROUBLE , IN IRELAND.
IT is useless to forget, annoying as the recollection may be, that inside the great Irish Question there is another, almost equally embarrassing, which must speedily be dealt with. The Legislature, in superseding free contract by judicial rents, has admitted that, in Ireland at least, it has some responsi- bility for the prices charged, and that a " fair rent " can be ascertained by other means than the higgling of the market. If, therefore, the rents now demanded in Ireland are unfair, the Legislature can justly be asked to enforce a mitigation of them. Whether such an occasion has in fact arrived, is, of course, an open question, and one complicated to the last degree by the party spirit imported into the answers. A land- lord always avers that his rents have already been reduced below any fair standard, and that his tenants can pay if they will ; while a tenant always affirms that with the great fall in prices, even the judicial rent strips him bare, or at least is only paid by a reduction of his capital. Without accusing either party of direct falsehood, it is certain that the misrepresentation all round is very great, and that an outsider who hears only one party may be justified in believing either that Irish tenantry are prosperous swindlers, or that Irish landlords are pitiless extortioners, preying on a poverty- stricken population. The truth is, we doubt not, that the districts of Ireland differ violently, that the grass lands are not suffering like the arable lands, and that rental is heavy or moderate according to a great many local peculiarities. But we confess, and we confess it with a sense of hopeless weariness, that we are unable to resist the conclusion that over a considerable part of Ireland. and that part often the least usually poor, the fall of prices has re- duced the money produce of the soil till even the judicial rents cannot be paid. If they are exacted, cultivation must
cease. The case of Lord Fitzwilliam. quoted by Mr. Parnell, is not the only one in which generous landlords acknowledge that the farmers are only partly in fault, and that landlords must continue to endure. In one case of which we have been informed, the landlord, lately well off, gets practically nothing, and though reduced to actual penury, tells sympathising English friends that the infliction is not of man's doing, and that his tenantry literally cannot pay. The trade of producing food is, in fact, in places bankrupt. Under these circumstances, we do not see how the Government is to avoid an alteration of the Land Act, and we would earnestly press on dispassionate men a suggestion long since made, which we see has the written approval of Sir James Stephen. We would propose to amend the Land Act and the Purchase Act together by sweeping away the idea of a fixed term, and granting perpetuity of tenure, the principle for which we con- tended throughout the discussions of 1870 as the ultimate counsel of perfection. We would make all holdings in Ireland copyholis, and so be rid altogether of the present necessity for legal agreements, and then introduce into their managemeet the principle of the Tithe Commutation Act. That is to say, the judicial rent should be taken to be the fair rent in an average year, but should be reduced in proportion to the fall in the money value of agricultural produce. The reduction should be to the extent which would enable an industrious farmer to exist, and should be calculated on the averages of five years, farming being essentially a trade of cycles. The Irish farmer would then always have in a bad year the aid which the English landlord now gives him, but which an Irish landlord, unless compelled by statute, simply cannot afford. He can do it under compul- sion, because he can plead that to his own creditors ; but he cannot do it voluntarily. To this new Act we would add clauses enabling any tenant who chose to redeem his quit-rent at a price to he fixed by Parliament, and made easier, though not easy, by moderate advances. We quite understand the grave objections to reopening the Land Act, which was intended to be final, and might, but for the commercial changes, actually have proved so. Those changes, however, have been independent of man's action, and act of God," even in English legal proceedings, is held to dissolve many contracts. We must have met a great drought by a relaxation of law ; and though the matter is complicated by the variety of local conditions, this fall of prices is over large districts equivalent to a great drought. If the new Act is a just one, the landlords will not be injured, for even in Ireland, where all things are perverse, no man may get more hay out of a field than there is grass in it, and the system of collecting arrears
only keeps up and embitters the agrarian war. The peasants
certainly have not behaved well. Thousands of them will not pay when they can, and a majority of them would accept a confiscation in their favour without repentance for an act
which, so far as they could pay, and had agreed to pay, would bo an act of theft. But if a law is to be strictly worked— and the strict working of law is the first necessity of Ireland— the law must be reconciled with natural facts ; and as the Legislature has abolished higgling, its responsibility for the statutory tariff, which is the only alternative, has become direct. As things have gone, we could find it in our hearts to wish that the Act of 1870 had never been passed, and that the struggle had been fought out round another pivot ; but it is useless to regret—even if there is cause for it—and statesmen must accept the past as ground for legislation. We can see no way out of it except the bankruptcy of the bad districts ; and that result would mean, in those districts where there is only one means of subsistence, an increase of rates which would crush owners more heavily than a new tariff of rents. The Tithe Act worked very well, and its principle is acted upon in every great English estate, where the owners, without legal com- pulsion, regulate their demands in reality by the price of the principal staples.
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