THE TORIES AND THE TENURE.
THE Tories are changing their tactics with some adroitness. They see very clearly that their chance of resisting the Irish Church Bill in the Commons is very slender, and they are afraid of want of "firmness" in the Lords. The Peers, to do them justice, are beyond the influence of a No-Popery cry, and not particularly moved, except as proprietors, by the woes of any ecclesiastical body ; and the friends of the Church are anxious, therefore, to link the Bill for its abolition with some measure which will arouse a more deadly feeling of hostility, and thus ensure the rejection of both. They think they can find such a measure in the Land Bill, which Mr. Gladstone has promised to bring forward next year, and are, therefore, urging the Government to introduce it prematurely. They how that the master grievance of Ireland, Protestant as well as Catholic, is the condition of the tenure, and they calculate very clearly that if the Bill is too " weak " the Irish will be alienated from Mr. Gladstone, while if it is too " strong" the Lords will be eager to throw him out upon a question in which they will not appear to be so directly interested. They imagine apparently, to judge from the language held by their organs,—who forget that the county voters in Great Britain are also tenants,—that the coming measure will be strong, and strive therefore with all their might to induce Government to break through its reserve. Lord Westbury, who, it appears, is about to honour the Irish Church with his advocacy, and who will, we trust, be henceforth found siding openly with Tories, almost admitted this in his vitriolic little speech of Tuesday, hinting that he feared interference with the rights of property, because he saw from the other bill how Government regarded them. Lord Clanricarde, therefore, and Lord Grey, push forward a Bill which, on some points, protects the tenant, not because they want to pass the Bill, but because they desire to embarrass the Administration, which is thus compelled either to resist the Bill without disapproving it, or to accept it, and thus destroy all hopes of a wider measure. These tactics are clever, and visibly embarrass the official Peers ; and they are the more troublesome because, as we mentioned last week, exaggerated anticipations about a good time coming are entertained in parts of Ireland. Those anticipations are not the fault of the Government, which has repeatedly repressed them, which has asserted through Mr. Gladstone that the forthcoming measure will content the landlord as well as the tenant, through Mr. Bright that it will contain nothing contrary to the principles of political economy, and through Lord Kimberley that "it will be consistent with the rights of property and just rights that must be maintained throughout the United Kingdom." They are due mainly to that swell of the public mind which always follows any great change in the relation between a Government and its subjects. It is known that "Irish grievances are to be redressed," and of course assumed that the grievance which the peasant considers the greatest one, namely, his liability, to capricious evieMon, will be among them, and there is consequently excitement of a kind not likely to be diminished by delay. The extent of this excitement may be, and will be, matter of controversY, but as far as it exists it justifies the desire of the Tory lords to compel the Government to state the policy they will pursue, even at the risk of inconvenience to themselves. The Government have refused, and though upon some accounts we regret the refusal,—believing that a satisfactory measure would increase the chance of the Disestablishment Bill, by showing the Lords the futility of forcing a dissolution which would only destroy the Tory party in the counties,—we can believe that it may at this moment be absolutely unavoidable. Of all conceivable questions, this one of the tenure is the most delicate, the one most dangerous to parties, to statesmen, and even to institutions ; the one which requires the nicest elaboration, the most finished and thorough exposition, it may be, also, the most exhaustive discussion. None of these requisites can now by possibility be secured, and to bring forward a great measure without securing them would be worse than folly, would perhaps endanger the peace of the country as well as the Bill for the disestablishment of the Church. The Tory Lords forget that it is not only by them that such a bill has to be digested, but by a peasantry ignorant, suffering, and blinded by traditions which are none the less powerful because they are most of them unfounded. To bring forward a little bill might, indeed, be possible, but, as Lord Kimberley said, that would "not be accepted in Ireland as a settlement of the land question ;" and it is a settlement of the land question, a large policy upon which it is possible to stand, to dissolve, or, if need be, to repress, which Ireland and Britain now hope to receive from Mr. Gladstone. The Peers know well the stages through which any such measure must pass before it can be presented to Parliament, the draftings, and revisings, and discussions in the Cabinet, and to call on the Government to commence such a task after Easter with an immense Bill still on their hands, the Budget hardly through, and everybody overloaded with work, is to show themselves as unreasonable as the peasantry. Of course there is danger in waiting, but it is a danger which has existed for years, and is a much less danger than would be caused either by an imperfect or misunderstood measure, infinitely less than that which would follow on the production of a pro fonnd Bill, or any Bill that the Government was not prepared to support with its whole strength.
But, asks Lord Clanricarde, where is the evidence that the Government is going to do anything ? Why should not my Bill pass, if, as they say, the Ministry approve its principle ? The answer to that is the counter-question, Why should it pass ? It will not, Lord Kimberley says, on behalf of his colleagues, effect a settlement of the land question, and a Bill which, while raising that question, does not settle it, is not only a useless, but an injurious Bill,—useless because it allays no disaffection, injurious because it intensifies disappointment. Even if the Ministry were not about to bring forward a measure, this would be reason enough to stifle such a Bill as Lord Clanricarde's ; but they clearly are going to bring forward one. Mr. Gladstone promised one at Liverpool, and Lord Hatherley one during this very debate on Tuesday, while the very ferment in Ireland, strongly as we deprecate it, proves that hope of a settlement is reviving there. Indeed, no assurances are necessary. Nobody who knows Ireland, whatever his party, doubts for a moment that behind, and below, and above all questions is this of the land ; that it must be settled, if Ireland is ever to be contented ; and Mr. Gladstone, who of all men best knows this, is also of all men the one least likely to shrink from his clear duty. He may fail, of course,--we do not pretend to have any inkling of his Plao,—but reasonable men will, we think, do well to remember two or three things before they make up their minds to expect failure. Every land question is a finance question. If there is a man alive competent to frame a plan which must be half legislative, half financial, to provide for details without end, yet never lose sight of his principle, to introduce large economic innovations, yet diminish burthens alike on the people and on Classes, it is Mr. Gladstone. The measure, whatever it is, must be one of arbitration between the peasants and the landlords ; and if there is an economist in England who is as certain to follow an economical principle as if he believed it a religious one, yet equally certain to pity the poor, to listen to even unreasonable complaints, when they indicate real stzffering,— it is the Premier. It is within the lunge of ordinary probability, of a probability based on the successes of a life, that his scheme may not only prove a success, but may be accepted as sure to prove one ; that landlord ,rid tenant may equally acknowledge that he has discovered a 'settlement" which will end for good the Irish agrarian civil war. It is worth while, for landlords as well as tenants, for Peers as well as cottiers, to risk something rather than risk the loss of such a possibility, a loss which would, the Government says, be involved in any premature indication of their plans. As for Lord Westbury's hints of confiscation, they are merely party hits. If Irish landlords are too bigoted to believe in Mr. Gladstone, they may, at least, believe in the richest House of Commons which ever came together, a House in which the strongest Radicals are also the strongest adherents of the doctrines of economy. They are starting at shadows. Nobody is going to rob them of their money, or put them in any position in which the rest of their class within the Empire would not be content to remain. All that can come, if they will wait, is a well-considered measure,— which must pass Mr. Lowe, and pass Mr. Bright, and pass Lord Dufferin, as well as Mr. Gladstone, before it is oven proposed,—to secure to landlord and tenant a relation under which they can live at peace, the tenant more independent, the landlord more secure of his revenue and his position than he has ever been before. That it will be broad enough to content us we doubt ; but Irish landlords may at least take comfort in this, that the broadest measure yet proposed by English politicians,—our own Perpetual Settlement,—would leave them far richer, and, except for purposes of electoral corruption, more powerful than they are.
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