SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY ON THE LAND ACT.
THE Irish Land Act of 1881 has received the Royal Assent, and on the same day on which this happened there appeared in the Freeman's Journal a letter to Canon Doyle from Sir Charles Gavan Duffy,—the leader, in conjunction with John Davis, of the party of " Young Ireland,"—the sharer of O'Connell's prison in 1844,—the quadruply indicted rebel of 1848,—the chief founder of the Tenant League of 1852,—on the merits of the new Act, and the spirit in which patriotic Irish- men ought to accept and work it. The letter is as timely as it is admirable in tone. We need not say that we differ from its author in supposing that because the Australian Colonies can safely be made legislatively and administratively independent of Great Britain, it would be either safe or possible to make Ireland, which is not at the Antipodes, either legis- latively or administratively independent of the British Legislature and Government. There are circumstances which are too strong for local aspirations. If Wales or Cornwall desired independence, we should be obliged to refuse it, and to meet the grievances which induced them to desire inde- pendence in some other way. We believe that the same must be said of Ireland. But the more absolute are the reasons which render a dissolution of the Union impossible, the more absolute also are the reasons which render it a mere matter of justice to legislate for, and govern, Ireland in the interests, not of Great Britain, but of Ireland. Mr. Gladstone's Land Acts of 1870 and 1881, together with his Irish Church Disestablishment Act of 1869, are very great and very noble steps in this direction, and though we would willingly have seen even the last and greatest of these steps more absolutely complete, more calculated to strike the Irish imagination as the very thing which an Irish Parliament would pass, we feel fresh confidence in the great step actually taken, when we read the powerful and yet discriminating eulogy on it which Sir Charles Duffy has pronounced. Ire- land, says Sir Charles Duffy, was, during the years of his own agitation, a country " where the majority of the people were forbidden by law to be prosperous or contented," and he draws a vivid picture of the tenant's grievances as they were in the time of his own youth. Let us hear what he says to Canon Doyle of the new Act :— " Is it not something, my dear friend, is it not much, that all these arbitrary powers and unjust practices have been swept away ? The power of raising the rent at will has ceased. The landlord can recover only such rent as the Land Commission pronounces to be a fair one. The tenant's improvements are secured to him as effec- tually as his fees to a lawyer or his profits to a merchant. And be can sell them along with his right of possession, at the best price that can be got for the same, ` as freely as the landlord can sell his estate.' He cannot be ejected for fifteen years, and in the bulk of cases he can never be ejected while he complies with certain not unreasonable conditions, and pays the fair rent fixed by the Land Commission. This, indeed, is not enough. Absolute .security of tenure is the first condition of agricultural prosperity. I have seen farmers who were indolent and thriftless in Ireland, because they bad no such security, become vigilant and industrious in Australia, where they owned the land ; and only a possession which does not admit of question will work the same charm in Ireland. In the contest with the Lords, the tenure provided by the Bill was im. paired by concessions which for certain purposes (and, perhaps, on -certain pretences) will enable the landlord to resume portions of the land at the end of fifteen years, if the Commission, whose assent is necessary, does not exercise a jealous watchfulness. But when I note the spirit in which this measure was framed, when I remember the progress made in agrarian reform daring the last dozen years, when I estimate the power the Irish people will become, as they grow prosperous and resolute under this protecting law, I venture to believe that before the fifteen years have run out, the present tenure will be replaced by one under which the tenant, while he pays a fair rent, will be as immovable as the Rock of Cashel."
And Sir Charles Duffy feels as strongly about the clauses for creating a peasant proprietary as about the clauses establishing security of tenure. "Here, for the first time," he says of the proprietary clauses, "the Irish farmer has a reproductive in- vestment for his savings, and a new motive to save. He can invest them in what has been called the bank that will not break,—a bank of earth. What an enormous stimulus to thrift and industry the change supplies ! Used we not to say of old,' Give us a Belgian tenure, and we will show you Belgian industry /' I long to see the energy which is conquering the prairie and the bush, but which is often also sweating under the meanest labours in America and Australia, let loose on our own soil. Irishmen are sometimes prosperous in other countries, but they are contented and happy, I think, only in the land which God gave them as a birthrignt and an inherit- ance." And he declares frankly to Canon Doyle that the new law embodies a policy which the Tenant League of 1850 would have received " with joy and gratitude." Moreover, Sir Charles Duffy is not only deeply impressed with the legislative provisions of the new Act ; he evidently thinks that the Land Commissioners themselves could hardly have been better chosen :—" The Court is constituted as no Irish institution under the control of the State within my memory has been manned before. The northern farmers see on it a gentleman who has their special confidence ; a witness who proposed one of the leading provisions of the Act is appointed to administer what he designed ; and between them sits the Judicial Commissioner. Of Mr. Serjeant O'Hagan I will only say this, that if the responsibility lay upon me of appoint- ing the members of this Commission, I do not know in the island any man I would prefer to him for the office he holds. No one knows better than he does what the land system of Ireland is, and in a long life I have not become acquainted with a man whom I could trust to do justice between con- flicting interests with more complete confidence. When I heard of his appointment, I said, 'Here is the ideally fit man for a generous and laborious task, which he will die in performing, rather than fail to perform adequately.' " That is a judgment of which no man can doubt the complete inde- pendence, and which ought to go far to secure in Ireland for the new tribunal a cordial predisposition to trust and abide by its decisions.
Now, let us see in what spirit Sir Charles Duffy advises the Irish people to use the new Act :—
" To me, nothing is clearer than that all the productive energy, all the generous enthusiasm of our people, ought to be immediately directed to this task, that we ought to seize all points of vantage without delay. If I were a Bishop, I would write a pastoral ; if I were a priest, I would deliver a discourse ; if I were a journalist, I would make myself heard from that rostrum ; if I could do no better, I would beat a drum on the highway, in order to fix the at- tention of the Irish people on the splendid opportunity they possess of becoming prosperous and powerful. I remember, in 1852, a friend saying to Father Tom O'Shea, in the rooms of the Tenant League, The cause we are labouring for is as holy as that preached by Peter
the Yes,' he replied, it is as holy as that preached by Peter the Apostle, for what we are protecting is the lives of the people, which are the seed of the Church.' And so it is to-day. Here is the first great agency for restoring Ireland to the Irish. If we cannot take possession of the inheritance which at last lies wide open to us, it will be one of the gravest reproaches which we will have to endure in history."
And this advice is all the more valuable, because Sir Charles Duffy does not take a view in any degree English as to what ought to be the political results of the Act. He is as eager for a repeal of the Union as ever :—" The Irish race," he says, " will never make peace with England till their rights as a nation, shamefully snatched away, shall be frankly re- stored." He even justifies,—and we heartily regret to find him justifying,—the outbreaks of last autumn and winter against eviction, without discriminating, so far as his language goes, the many cases of just from those of unjust eviction. While condemning the murders, and the mutilation of dumb animals, he states his belief that " in the main, the movement was a just and necessary one. It has been con- temptuously likened to the gambols of helots broke loose ; but for my part, I rejoice that the people stood firmly at bay against the Exterminator ; that at last,-
' The trampled worm sprang up a serpent ;' for, to my thinking, there is something worse than the gam- bols of helots broke loose,—the base patience and slavish sub- mission of helots who have not broken loose." If that is meant,—as it appears to be meant,—to justify the refusal of tenants generally to pay rent, whether they believed their rent to be a just one or not, and the unscrupulous intimidation exercised throughout Ireland, Sir Charles Duffy seems to us to make very light of common morality where it appears to stand in the way of a beneficial political revolution. But this passage, at all events, shows that his advice to Irishmen is not conceived in the English spirit, but is the advice of a man as passionately Irish in his aspirations as ever was O'Connell himself. And as regards the future, we ask nothing better than that Irishmen should follow his advice,—should accept and co- operate with the new Land Court, as if it were, what in spirit it really is, an institution created by Irishmen for Ireland ; and that they should do so without in the least abating their legiti- mate agitation for the repeal of the Union, or for any other form of Irish independence under which they may think that Ireland would prosper most. No doubt, we hope, and earnestly hope, that if the Land Act works as it ought to work, the Irish people may be at last convinced that the Union is not so incompatible as they think it with the real interests of Ireland, or with such a sufficient measure of local self-government as Great Britain would be willing to concede, if Ireland would but accept it. But what Englishmen may venture to hope from the new Land Act, and what wise Irishmen should actually make of it, are entirely distinct subjects, between which there is no necessary connec- tion at all. No Irishman who thinks an independent Irish Legislature absolutely essential to Irish prosperity and happi- ness, need abate one jot of his demands because he makes the best use in his power of the new Land Act. No Irishman is bound to suppress a single bitter or even violent denunciation of British rule which he thinks just, only because he regards the Land Act as an exception to the spirit of that rule. But what, in common patriotism, he does seem bound to do, is not to delay availing himself of the benefits of this great measure, solely because it has been passed by a British Legislature, and carried by the authority of a great English statesman. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy is not merely an eloquent adviser on this head, but also an adviser of whose thoroughgoing Irish sym- pathies there is unimpeachable and demonstrative evidence. We only hope that the Irish nation will accept the counsel of one who has both suffered severely on their behalf, and has won fresh laurels for the Irish genius and the Celtic race.
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