The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1869-10-16 00:00:00

MR. BRIGHT'S IRISH LAND SCHEME.

It may not be uninteresting just now to reproduce
the detaila of Mr. Bright's land scheme. They are
contained in the following extract from • speech de-
livered by the right hon. gentleman at a meeting held
in Dublin on November 2, 1566 :
" I propose to introduce the system which would gradually
no doubt rapidly and easily, without injuring anybody,
make many thousands who are now tenant farmers, without
lease and security, the owners of their fauns in this Island.
Tale is my plan and I want to restate it with a little further
explanation, in order that these gentlemen to whom I have
referred may not repeat the very untrue, and I may say
dishonourable comments which they have made upon me.
" Theta are many Loge estates in Ireland which belong
to rich families in England—families not roily of the highest
rank, but of the highest sharacter—beeause I will rennin to
say there are not to be found amongst the English nobility
families of more perfect honourableness and worth than
some of those to whom my plan would he offered ; and,
therefore, I am not speaking against the aristocracy, against
those families, or against property, or against any-
body, or against anything that is good. I say that If
Parliament were to appoint a commission, and give
ir, say, at first, up to the amount of £5,000,000 sterling,
the power to negotiate or treat with those great families in
England who have great estates in Ireland, it is probable
that some of those great estates might be bought at snot
very unreasonable price. lam of opinion it would be the
cheapest money that the Imperil Parliament ever expended,
even though it became possessed of those estates at a price
considerably above the market price.
But I propose it should be worked In this way. I will
take case. 1 will assume that this commission as got a
coaiderable estate into its possession, bought from some
present owner of it. I will take one farm, which I will
assume to be worth £l,OOO, for which the present tenant is
paying a rent of £5O • year. lie as no lease. Ile has no
security lie makes almost no permanent improvement of
any kind; and he is not quite sure whether when he has
'saved a little more money he will not take his family off to the
Ebited States. Now we will assume ourselves, if you like lobe
that commission, and that we have before us the farmer who
is the tenant on that particular farm, for which he pays £5O
a year, without lease or security, and which I assume to be
worth £l,OOO. The Government, I believe, lends money to
the Irish landowners for drainage purposes at about 31 per
cent per annum. Suppose the Government were to go to
this farmer and say, • You would not have any objection to
become possessed of this farm?' No, not the slightest,' he
might say, 'but howls that to be done?' In this way ; tell
the farmer—you may pay £5O a year, that is 5 per cent. on
£1000; the Government can afford to do these transactions
for 31 per cent. ; U you will pay £6O • year for a given num-
ber of years, which any of the actuaries of the insurance
offices, or any good arithmetician, may soon calculate—if you
will pay £OO for your rent instead of £5O, it may be fifteen
or twenty years, or more—at the end of that time the farm
will be yours without any further payment.
" I want you to understand how this is. If the farmer
paid .£lO a year more towards buying his farm, the fact is
that the £1 000 the Government would pay for the farm
would not cost the Government more than £35, •nd there-
fore the diff,rence between £35, and £6O. being £25, would
lie the sum which that farmer, in his rent, would be paying
to the commisaion, that is the Government. for the redemp-
tion of his farm. Thus at the end oft very few) ears the farmer
would possess his own farm, having a perfect security. All
the time nobody could turn him out if he paid his rent,
and nobody could touch him for any improvenient he
had made on his land. The next morning after he
made that agreement he would speak to his wife and
to lis big boy, who had perhaps been idling about
for a long time, and there would not he s stone on the land
that would not be removed, not a weed that he would not
pull up, not a particle of manure that he would not save:
there would not be anything that he would not do with s
real and an enthusiasm which he had never known before to
cultivate that farm ; and by the time the few years bad run
on when the farm should become his without any farther
purchase, he would have turned a dilapidated, miserable little
farm into a garden for himself and family.
" Now, this statement may he commented on by some of
the newspapers. You will understand that Ido not propose
a forced purchase, or confiscation. I would undertake even
to give—if I were the Government—to every one of those
landlords 20 per cent, more for his estate than It will fetch la
any market in London or Dublin, and I say that to do this
would produce a marvellous change in the sentiments of the
people and in the condition of agriculture in Ireland."