ME. MOBLEY'S PHILANTHROPY.
WE trust the public has read the extraordinary letter which the Chief Secretary for Ireland addressed on the 21st inst. to Mr. W. O'Brien, M.P., and which was published textually in the Times of Monday. It is a perfect illustration of the divorce between ability and firmness, between justice and philanthropy, which is spoiling half the work of this generation: Mrs. ICetteriek, a part-tenant of twenty acres on Lord Sligo's estate, who was sitting at a rent below the legal valuation, but who for two years had not paid her rent, was evicted, and the grass of the evicted farm was cut by a man named Foy, then under police protection. The neighbours, moved by Mrs. Ketterick's extreme poverty, and by a general dislike of eviction, stoned Foy, and he was rescued by the police who were looking on in order to preserve the peace. Mr. O'Brien thereupon as champion of all tenants, complained of this rescue to Mr. Morley, alleging it would appear that the police had encouraged Foy to cut the grass. Inquiry showed that the police had done nothing of the kind, but simply prevented a breach of the peace ; but Mr. Morley, instead of stating that fact and there leaving the matter writes to Mr. O'Brien a long letter palpably intended tc: apologise to that gentleman for obeying the law in defiance of Irish feeling. He does indeed defend his police who, as he confesses, "would have been guilty of an indictable misdemeanour," if they had not intervened, but he practically throws the whole blame upon the landlord, who probably, though that has little to do with the matter, never heard of one of the parties in his life. Although the rent demanded was less than the legal rent,Mr. Morley hints that the agreement to pay it was not voluntary— the agreement, he says, was "called voluntary "—he describes with literary skill the wretched poverty of the unhappy woman who was suckling a child in its third year because she could not buy milk, and he ends with an amazing sentence. Mrs. Ketterick had, some time before this occurrence, sold her only cow to pay the rent ; and Mr. Morley says :—" This horrible picture is painted, not by an excitable politician, but by a cool, matter-of-fact official. It is not for me on this occasion to draw the moral, nor to decide whether a landlord might not rather have been expected to make the woman a present of a cow than to take the one cow she had away from her." In other words, a landlord because he cannot get payment for the goods he supplies, is specially bound to support the tenant who does not pay him. It is not tnlugh to forego rent, or even to avoid eviction, but he is bound out of his poverty.— for a landlord without his rents is as poor as anybody else without income—to make a large present to the defaulting tenant. Observe that Mr. Morley does not plead Mrs. Ketterick's claim upon the community, which is acknowledged even by the law, or her special right to the sympathy of the charitable, which no Christian could for a moment deny, but solely her right to a large present from her landlord, the greatest sufferer except herself by her default. He, and he only, ought to be • fined for going without his due, the hire-money of his goods. Let us apply that principle to another article than land, and see how it would work. A poor music-mistress in London hires a. piano, and not being able to pay the rent, the manufacturer takes it away, and sues for the arrears. The music-mistress cannot pay, and cannot retain her pupils because she has no instrument, and is therefore driven either into the workhouse or to accept charity. That is a. case of constant occurrence, and Mr. Morley's cure for it is that the manufacturer should forego his hire, leave his piano with the music-mistress, and present her moreover with another one, and should do this, not out of charity, but under the pressure either of law, or of opinion, or of reproof from a Minister of State. Or take another case, which is, we believe, still more frequent. A struggling little shopkeeper, on the verge of bankruptcy, is finally ruined by a demand for rates or taxes. Mr. Morley holds that the State, or the Municipality, should not only forego its demand, which is reasonable enough on the ground of expediency, but that it should present that shopkeeper, on the ground that it has caused his ruin, with a new shop and business. Why should not the manufacturer of pianos be as generous as the Peer who owns land, or the Municipality as lenient ? It is a novel kind of Socialism which Mr. Morley is preaching, a Socialism in which the poor and unfortunate—and Mrs. Ketterick is both—are not to be the care of the community or of the charitable, or of any organisation for their benefit, but solely of those to whom, at the moment of ruin, they may happen to owe money. The Londoner who is starving is not to be fed out of rates or out of subscrip- tions, but out of the till of any baker whom he happens not to have paid for weeks ! That is not states- manship, surely, or altruism, or Christianity. It is simply an effort to shift a burden which ought to fall upon ail men, arbitrarily on to the shoulders of a single class which is morally no more liable for that burden than any dealer is for the poverty of any customer.
Mr. Morley may say, as we see one newspaper says for him, that he was only preaching common charity ; but why in that case does he confine his preaching solely to landlords ? Surely if that is his business as Secretary of State, instead of preaching obedience to law, he should. extend the range of his sermon, and. inspire all with pity for the poor. Why limit himself to Lord Sligo P If that Peer, who has already presented his tenant with £15, is also to present her with £4, why should not Lord Rose- bery or Lord Rothschild, or any other millionaire, present her with £20 What is the tie which, in Mr. Morley's opinion, binds Lord Sligo specially to Mrs. Ketterick ? That she was terribly poor,—so poor that it is a pain to read about her poverty That tie binds her equally to any person with money to spare and a belief that charity is a duty. That she had paid Lord Sligo the rent he lives by ? That is precisely what, by the admission of all, Mr. Morley included, she had. not done,—indeed, had she been able to do it, the incident could never have arisen ; or is it perhaps because he thinks that eviction being harsh, the person guilty of the harsh- ness is the person to be primarily held responsible ? Mr. Morley will find that very dangerous doctrine, for clearly it applies, first of all to those who refuse to sell food without money in return ; and we all know—Mr. Morley specially knows from his studies of the Terror—what in- terference with them speedily involves. Fine the London bakers as he wishes to fine Lord Sligo for not being generous, and in a week London will be without bread ; and probably, if he were the author of the calamity, will be in full rush to lynch Mr. Morley. It is a doctrine, too, as much opposed to experience as to common-sense. It stands to reason that if eviction is disallowed, all rents must rise to make up for the increased risk, just as interest on mortgages must rise if foreclosure is for- bidden to mortgagees, while the whole experience of the charitable is that rigour in exacting rent is the truest kindness. There are in London at this moment more than twenty charitable syndicates engaged in trans- forming slums into habitable streets or courts, and the testimony of all their managers is the same, You must, to do any permanent good, evict for non-payment of rent, or the place will be a slum again, the bad flocking to it, and the good growing demoralised by the spectacle of the advantage their neighbours gain by not paying their debts. Charity often benefits ; liberty to leave debts unpaid never does. In this very case of Mrs. Ketterick, which seems at first sight so extreme a case, there has been no true kindness in suffering her to remain upon her farm, for she has only slid in the years of non- payment from one depth of poverty to another till at last a point has been reached when, as inmate of a work- house, Mrs. Ketterick would be better off than as co-tenant of her farm. Mr. Morley replies to that, that Irish people abhor the poor-house; and we not only believe that to be true, but respect the desire for personal dignity which prompts the feeling ; but the argument, thought it may be a. good one for outdoor relief, is utterly bad as a claim upon Lord Sligo. Ho is at least a co-victim with Mrs. Ketterick-. He did not cause her poverty, but only suffers from its effects.
We do not suppose that Mr. Morley meant any mischief by his reply to Mr. O'Brien, or indeed meant anything except to conciliate indispensable Parliamentary votes ; but his letter is an extreme instance of the levity with which modern thinkers allow themselves to be carried off their feet by sentiment. Some miners are badly paid, therefore let the State take all mines, and either pay the workmen less, for the State is a bad manager, or force the community to pay more. Some wife is oppressed by her husband, therefore abolish marriage, even if morals go to pieces, and the majority of women are made wretched slaves. A great many poor defaulters are in prison for debt, therefore abolish imprisonment for debt, and so deprive the poor of their only guarantee for credit. A spasm of reckless, thoughtless pity has seized on the public mind, and bids fair to render the task of all sane social reformers nearly hopeless. Fortitude, justice, honesty, industry, all the old civic virtues are giving way, and being replaced by a flaccid compassion which produces nothing, which equalises the claim of all character and all conduct, and which will, in the end, we may rely on it, turn in the reac- tion all hearts to iron. We have watched the rise of this sentiment for years with dismay, but we did not think till thia letter was written that it could have drowned the common-sense of a man like Mr. Morley, who has not only intelligence, but the knowledge of history without which intelligence hardly helps us in the govern- ment of men. He knows, if any man does, what would be the fate of a country in which every poor man, on account of his poverty alone, was entitled to " Born " upon the rich ; yet he, to the extent of his powers, encourages all the agricultural poor to think such sorning a right, if not indeed a virtue.
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