OUTLINES OF A REMEDIAL MEASURE. 337 is usually considered entirely apart from the general question of tenure between landlord and tenant, and as a thing to be sought for by entirely different means. Propositions are made for the simplification of existing machinery, for advance by the government of a larger proportion of the purchase money, for an extension of the powers of limited owners and other such plans. It is doubtful, however, whether any such means will be sufficient without a very considerable modification in the general law of real property by adapting it to the requirements of dealing in small properties. Mr. Charles Russell has, however, the credit of having devised a simple and exhaustive scheme for combining a remedial measure with regard to land tenure generally, with the gradual and extensive creation of an occupying proprietary. This plan was founded upon a thorough application of the three F's in their most extensive meaning. The following are the main outlines :— (1.) Every actual occupier of a farm who has been in occupation for a certain time, say ten years, would have the right to demand from his landlord a lease for ever, subject only to forfeiture for non-payment of rent, (in extreme cases where the rent could not be otherwise recovered,) and perhaps for subdivision, sub-letting, and waste. (2.) The rent would be a fixed rent, to be fixed either by agreement or by arbitration. The basis of this rent would be neither the government valuation nor the actual rent, but a fair valuation, taking into account, in the tenant's favour, improvements made by him or his predecessors in title. The rent so fixed would be in the nature of a fee farm rent or rent charge, with powers for its recovery usually incident to such rents and well defined. (3.) Mines and minerals would be reserved for the landlord. (4.) There would be no restriction upon the tenant's charging or selling his interest, but in certain cases of breach of covenant the landlord might have a right of pre-emption. (5.) After fixture of the rent, the tenant would have the right at any time to buy up the rent or a portion of it at a fixed number of years' purchase, say 25 years. But he would not be allowed to buy up less than £1 of the rent at each instalment. Thus a tenant holding at £10 a-year rent would be enabled by a payment of £25 after proper notice to diminish his rent by £1 a year and to hold in future subject to a rent of £9 a-year only. This he might repeat until by ten payments of £25 he has extinguished the whole of his rent and become the owner of the land, subject only to the reservation of mines and minerals to the landlord. It will be seen that this scheme goes the whole way of satisfying the demands of the most ardent supporters of the three F's and provides a self-acting machinery for the creation of peasant proprietors. In the first portion of it, it aims at replacing the peasants of Ireland in the position in which they were actually placed by the settlement carried out under Sir John Davis, at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries. It is open to the charge which has been made against it of injustice to the landlords in the fixing of the rent once for all, thereby shutting them out from what is called the "unearned increment," in the progressive value of land. But it has already been shown that from a historical point of view they are not entitled to this, and that they have for two centuries and and a half since the settlements of Sir John Davis had all the advantage of this increment which would have belonged to the tenants if those settlements had not been upset in the confusion of wars and rebellions which followed. From an economical point of view, too, it would seem that in Ireland this unearned increment should of right belong to the tenants, who, by their expenditure of labour and money, have in most instances actually produced the increase in value so far as it has been earned. There should then be no objection in theory to handing over this benefit to the tenants for the future. And there is a great weight of argument from practical considerations which would support such a measure. For the unearned increment would go into the pockets of some 600,000 families of tenants, instead of some 10,000 families of landlords, and would tend to produce a great amount of competency and content in the whole population of Ireland. There is another advantage in Mr. Russell's scheme. A common objection to a sudden creation of a large number of peasant owners is, that the thrifty and the thriftless are alike benefitted, that a large number of the holdings would be immediately incumbered, shortly brought into the market, and again accumulated in the hands of large owners. But the proposal of allowing the tenants to buy up their rent by instalments, would by a natural process confine the number of those who would achieve their own emancipation to the industrious, the thrifty, and the prudent. At the same time, the right to sell the tenant's interest in his lease for ever would, by an equally natural process, gradually eliminate the thriftless from the number of competi ADVANTAGES OF MR. RUSSELL'S SCHEME. 339 tors for ownership in favour of others more prudent. This gradual process of selection would moreover operate without the amount of distress and hardships involved in wholesale eviction. These are a few of the most prominent among the remedies that have been formulated for the present distress and disaffection in Ireland. It is probable that more of them will be adopted, simply or in its entirety by the government, which by the nature of its position is almost always obliged to compromise. Not only the Government, but both Houses of Parliament are full of landlords immediately and intensely interested in their view of the question. On the other hand, the tenants have to rely only upon the force of public opinion as expressed in the evidence and reports of Commissions upon the subject and in the action of the Land League. Neither the landlords nor the tenants can expect at the present day complete satisfaction of their demands. But the more the Government and Parliament can see their way to adopting some such scheme as that of Mr. Charles Russell, the nearer they will approximate to a solution of the Irish land difficulty and the establishment of peace and prosperity in Ireland. CHAPTER XLVI. PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES-MORE COERCION—THE WESTMEATH ACT—EVICTION AND RETALIATION-ASSASSINATION OF THE EARL OF LEITRIM. THE pleased a good many Irish people, but it offended a good many more, and the bulk of the population cared nothing about it. Such Parliamentary milk had no attractions for them: they wanted strong meat, enough to satisfy the growing appreciation that land law of the right sort was the one thing needful. Because the Government gave the first preference to religious sentiments and deferred the consideration of far more important secular facts, great umbrage was taken in the popular ranks. Discontent was hence propagated afresh, and manifested itself in such violence that early in 1870 a Peace Preservation Act had again to be passed, the very same referred to as our example in one of our earliest chapters-another humiliating confession of this failure of Union legislation. Yet, notwithstanding that failure, the leaders of the Government, never doubting the ability of the English to legislate for the Irish better than the Irish could for themselves, tried their hands again upon the Land Act described in the last chapter. There is no doubt that that Act was a thoroughly honest effort to do the right thing, as far as the very limited ability of the United Parliament was able to do it-to the best of its understanding, which was not much. Judging from the speeches of ministers just then, it was, and was to be, a piping time. The English Parliament piped vociferously, but, alas, the Irish people refused to dance. What seemed to the fathers of the Land Act baby such sweet music was to the Irish a discord and a mockery. Of the evidence of this we have only to look at the legislation of the following session. In 1871, not only was the Peace Preservation Act renewed; that THE WESTMEATH ACT. 66 34.1 was not enough. There was also passed, on the 16th of June as cursorily noticed in an earlier chapter, an Act to empower the Lord Lieutenant or other chief governor or governors of Ireland to apprehend and detain for a limited time persons suspected of being members of the Ribbon Society, or of being concerned in the commission of any crime or outrage under the direction or influence of the said Ribbon Society in the county of Westmeath, or in certain adjoining portions of the county of Meath and the King's County." This Act, though previously mentioned as an example amongst others, demands separate notice in this place. It was officially designated "The Protection of Life and Property Act," otherwise familiarly spoken of as The Westmeath Act." It recites that, notwithstanding the Church Act-so charitable, and conciliatory, and self-sacrificing; notwithstanding the Land Act-so wise, so good, and so beneficent"an unlawful society, combination and confederacy of a secret nature, generally known by the name of the Ribbon Society, at present exists; and, owing to the prevalence of the said society, murder and other crimes of the most serious nature have been perpetrated within the districts above referred to, and by reason partly of sympathy with the perpetrators of such crimes, and still more by the terror created by the action of the said society, the existing laws have been found to be insufficient for the due protection of life and property." 66 The "existing laws" included all the Constabulary Acts before referred to; innumerable Acts against unlawful oaths, expressly intended to render secret societies impossible; and the Peace Preservation Act of the previous year that was still in force. Turning to the provisions of the last named Act, any inexperienced person might suppose that it gave the Lord-Lieutenant power enough in all conscience; and if it did not, all the worse for the reputation of those who enacted it. At any rate, after the prolonged experience of seventy years, the United Parliament again confessed that its existing laws were insufficient. So the Ministry and the Parliament went at it again, with a view to making this Westmeath Act the hottest ever turned out. This, of course, was done, after the United Parliamentary manner, in as obscure and involved a fashion as possible, to conceal the intention from the rascals for whom the heat was designed, so that they should not know anything about it until it came down upon them unawares. Previous Coercion Acts had been limited to deeds and designs current or suspected after the passing of each |