The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-01-31 00:00:00

ANNEXATION OF A PACIFIC ISLAND.

The Fiji correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald
writes :

"His Excellency Sir A. H, Gordon, in his capacity
of High Commitoiouer, received a deputation from the
three Rotumah chiefs, who recently arrived in Levuka
on a mission to Fiji with reference to the annexation
of their beautiful little island, which they are desirous
should be effected. After having listened with great h
attention to the cffer of annexation as submitted y
the chiefs, his Excellency made the following reply :
'Chiefs of Rotumah,—lt
gives me pleasure to bid i
welcome to Eiji Your petition to the Queen has already
yfr
°1
been forwarded to Her Majesty, and I hay. recommended
that its prayer should be complied with. Whether it is so
or not it will be for the Queen in her wisdom to determine.
Meanwhile,
and until Her Majesty's pleasure be known,
I
am willing, so far as I can do so, to accede to your wishes,
and will send an officer ot my Government, a relative of 114
own, to live among you and advise you."
"The chiefs begged hid Excellency's acceptance of a
few mats of their country's manufacture. They knew
his Excellency had no need of such articles, and they
were almost ashamed to present them, but they de-
sired they might be accepted as a goodwill offering—as
something from Rotumah. They had come to no
hasty decision in offering their country to Great
Britain ; their fathers had desired it before them, and
it had been long talked of by the Rotmnah people, and
now they were anxious to complete what their fathers
had commenced."
Miss Logia twenty•one years of age, danghter of
Dr. Logie of Ifirkwall, Orkney, went out on Saturday for a
walk. As she did not return search was instituted, and at
eleven at night her dead body was found at the foot of a
precipice sixty feet high, two miles from Kirkwall. min
Logic was short-sighted, and it is supposed that she had
made a false step and fallen over the cliff.
Shipments of grain from the United States to
Europe for the week ending the 24th inst., as telegraphed
from New York, include 202,500 quarters wheat. Of this
amount 132,600 quarters are in transit f)r he United King.
dom and 70,000 quarters for the Continent. Of maize
160,500 quarters have been forwarded, comprising 60,500 gra
for the United Kingdom and 100,000 for the Continent'
55,000 sacks of flour have also been sent to this country. The
visible supply of wheat is represented by 31,000,000 bushels,
Slid 01 maize 1%000,0D0 Miskolc

MR. BRIGHT ON THE IRISH LAND
QUESTION. .

Last Saturday afternoon the members for Birmingham
delivered their annual addresses to their constituents in
the Town-hall, which was densely crowded. The Mayor,
Mr. Richard Chamberlain, presided. Ms. J. S. Wright, as
President of the Liberal Association, proposed the follow-
ing resolution, which was carried by acclamation

"That this meeting Itssures the members for the borough
—Mr. Bright, Mr. Muntz, and Mr. Chamberlain—of its
complete and unabated confidence in them, and tenders at
the same time its sincere and hearty thanks for the die'
anguished services they have rendered, not to this con-
stituency only, but to the cause of freedom and justize at
home and abroad."

Mr Bright, who was received with much cheering, con-
fined his remarks for the most part to the Irish Land Ques-
tion. He discussed the various forms of fixity of tenure,
recommended by some persons of authority in Ireland. To
most of them, however, there was some objection He then
mulintycniHone
recommended
his own stuhigtepsatirolniasmfoerntd eshaloiun
to go to Dublin with power to sell the farms of landlords to
id wait! ph
sheoin t ad i ffiC oc
the tenants who were willing to buy them, and to advance
three-fourths of the purchase money for that purpose. prin-
cipal and intereu to be repaid in five and thirty years. In
regard to the land held by the Corporation of London, he
the Irish
would compel its sale on these conditions. Such a measure,
he believed, would meet the wants and satisfy the desires of
people,—We give the following extract from Mr.
Bright's speech :
I beg every one of you just to lodge in your mind
i
one or two facts, There are n Ireland a little over
twenty million acres of land. Of these, 292 persons—
that is, perhaps, as many people as are in one of these
side galleries—occuPY ei
million acres, being about
one • third of the whole area of the country.
Well, but let me look at the opposite gallery, or that
behind me. There are, probably, 600 or 79 persons
in each of these galleriee. But 744 persons in Ireland
are .the owners of 9,612,000 acres of land—nearly one-
half of the whole land of Ireland; and twelve men in
Ireland—no blame to them at all, I speak of a system!
none of us would have complained if we had been the
fortunate inheritors of property like this—twelve men,
I say, in Ireland occupy about 1.310,000 acres, or
more than 108,000 each. Now, the whole of what we
call the landed proprietors of Ireland—l do not
mean people who own a garden or as much as
their house stands upon, hut the real landed pro-
prietors are probably 10,003 or 12,000 in num-
ber. What are the tenants? They are 600 000 in
number—that is, about one real proprietor to about 60
tenant farmers; and of these 610 000 590 000—that is,
equal to something like nearly 3,0e0 000 of people, but
probably exceeding 2i millions—are tenants at will
(hear), haying no lease, liable to have their rents
raised, or notices of eviction served upon them and
ejectments enforced at six or twelve months' notice at
the will of the proprietors with whom they are con-
nected. Well, but that is not all I must tell you that
a very large proportion—some people say one.half, but
I hope it is not so many—of these proprietors are what
are called absentees (hear, hear)—that is, they do not
live in Dublin or in Ireland, Many of them live in
this country and spend their incomes, it may be, in
London; others in some other country, perhaps in
Paris. But they are absentees, and I need not tell you
that the rents follow the owners. (A laugh.) If the
owners are in England, the rents come to England;
if they are in Paris, the rents go to Paris; and thus
Ireland pays an annual tribute of several millions of
the produce of its soil to owners who fulfil no portion
of the duty of owners, and who indulge in none
of that expenditure on the spot where the wealth is
created which would tend to increase the industry of
the neighbourhood, and afford employment and com-
fort to the people. (Cheers.) You will say this is
bad enough; but that is not the whole of the bad. I
said there was another matter to be remembered when
speaking of discontent and disloyalty, and that there
is a shadow of past and grievous wrong over the whole
land.holeing and land-occupying question. There is
a tradition of many most cruel confiscations in that
country. In the reign of James I. people went over
from England and Scotland—mostly, I think, from
Scotland—and were settled, or what they called
"planted" in the north of Ireland, in the province of
Ulster. Under that transaction three millions of
acres were taken from the native owners of the soil,
and were put into the hands of those new comers.
(Cheers.) Later on, in the time of Cromwell. it is
said—l hope the statement is not true, but I find
that in what are considered authentic histories—
something like seven or eight millions of
acres were transferred from the native owners
to those who followed the Cromwellian armies
and settled in that country after the disturb-
ances were quelled. And later on, coming nearer our
own times, in the time of William 111., after the
battle of the Boyne, another million of acres was con-
fiscated and placed in the hands of persons from this
country likely to be more faithful to tne new Govern-
ment and to the arrangements which followed upon
the revolution which placed William 111. upon the
Throne. (Hear, hear.) Now, if this be true, it follows
that nearly the whole lano of Ireland—all the visible
and real property—was taken from those to whom it
of old legitimately belonged, and was placed in the
hands of strangers, And since then, following all that
cruelty and injustice, there followed the additional
cruelty of the penal laws, which remained until the
end of the last century, and iefitcted untold and in-
describable injustice and wrong on the Catholic popu-
lation of Ireland. (Cheers ) The fact is, to such an
extent did all this work that I have seen it stated that
not more than one-seventh of the lend of Ireland of late
times has been in the possession of Catholic proprietors.
Well, then, remembering that these tenants, having
all these traditions floating about the country—that
they are tenants at will merely, and subject to the
fiercest competition for land, that there is no other
industry for them except in the North of Ireland, in
the linen country, or almost none—therefore they
struggle for the bit of land they hold as their only
chance of living. (Cheers.) You may imagine how
men in such a condition as this become excited even
to aesperatiee, aua ... -.mina ie.- ---eot the wildest
theories that offer them any possibility or reliei x.., ,
the sufferings they endure. (Applause.) With this
fierce competition there is a constant tendency to the
rise of rents. I do not believe the rents in Ireland are
any higher—l think they are not so high as in
England and Scotland; but then the cultivation
is infinitely worse, because, in these circumstances,
there can be no good and successful cultivation.
(Cheers.) The effect of this state of things
is to breed in every tenant's mind a feeling
of uncertainty. He knows that his rent may
be raised, and he cannot help it ; he knows that
he may be evicted according to law, and he cannot
help it; and he becomes, you may be quite sure, care.
less or slovenly in his cultivation, because he knows
that if he puts either on his farm or on his family an
appearaace of success, he merely invites an increase of
the rent demanded of him. (Cheers.) Now, I must
ask a question. I need not tell you that there is a
great suspicion engendered by this system—a suspicion
that breeds a state almost of war between the tenantry
and the agent, or the tenantry and the landlord. I
ask you, then, is any remedy needed for this state of
things? Do you think that any remedy is possible?
(Cheers.) There are things for which there is no
remedy; this may be one. It may be too late to
remedy it. But I think there is a remedy which may
be tzied—(cheers)—with a fair chance of a considerable
ir a great success. (Cheers.) Where shall I look for a
proof that there is a remedy? Go to France, go to
Belgium, go to Pruseia, go to Switzerland, go to all
Europe, and ask all Europe what is the remedy, and
they tell y u to look about you; and what you see in
those c iuntries epplz, to Ireland as the only possible
remedy in this case, ( iheers. ) What I propose and what
I have proposed for many years is this—that some
means should be taken by which the occupiers of farms
in Ireland should be transformed into owners—
(cheers)—and that this should be done by a process
which should be absolutely just, not to the tenant
only, but to the landlord himself, (Cheers) May I
ask your attention for a moment or two to the plans
that are offered by Ireland to settle the Irish qtiestion ?
You who read the Irish newspapers or the speeches of
Irish members will often hear of the term "fixity of
tenure." They say they do not want to get hold of the
land or to defraud or injure the proprietor, but they
want a settled and a fixed tenure at what they call
a fair rent. Well, now, I am in favour myself of
fixity of tenure and of fair rents. Nothing seems more
just; but what they propose is that the rent of the
land shall not be fixed by the tenant or by the land-
liird, or by the two conjointly, but by some third ,
party, who is supposed to be independent and
not interested in the matter. (Cheers.) Well,
now, that seems on the face of it a reason-
able propositien ; but to my mind the reasonable-
ness is only in th. proposition. (Cheers.) I do not
think it would be reasonable if put in practice. For
example, who is to decide what is a fair rent? And
what is a itir rent? Can any one toll me the rent
upon any given twenty acres of land on which one
Irishman would be prosperous? That would be a
rent, I fear, on which another Irishman would be im-
poverished and, perhaps, ruined. I will not speak of
the different qualities of the land. That may be
accounted for. But how would it be possible to hand
over to some lawyer, County Court Judge, or magis-
trate—some one in authority—to determine the rent of
all the farms between tenant and landowner? At any
rate, that is not a principle which we admit in
our markets and our exchanges, and I think we ought
to try every other plan that offers a chance of good
before we depart from the universally-observed
economic principle that theme who are interested in
a bargain should be those by whom it is agreed
on, completed, and accepted. (Cheers.) Now, others
say fixity of tenure under different circumstances—
that is, with a permanently fixed rent, that the
landlord in future should have nothing to do with his
land but to rec-ive the rent agreed to be paid, and
if that rent be paid the tenant should bei for ever in
the same position as if he was the owner of the land.
(Cheers.) Well, if the landlord chooses to agree to
that, no one has any right to object to it. I know an
Irish member of Parliament who has, he told me,
landed property in three counties, and he said, if his
tenants would a4ree to give him 10 per cent, more than
the present rent, he had no objection to make such an
arrangement with them. But what would happen if
you r ivorced all landowners from the land as under
our feudal laws the tenantry are to a large extent
divorced? This result would follow —instead of
having half the rents geing to London or Paris
as a tribute te be spent there, you would probably
.brave the whole. Those gentlemen who receive in-
comes of from £5OO to £20,000 a year from land in
Ireland and have nothing to do with the land, they
weuld have their rents ; but you may rely upon it they
would not live in Ireland at all, but would live here or
abroad, and the tribute which Ireland pays to absen-
teeism would in all probability be more than doubled,
(Cheers.) Now, I think neither of these plans is the best.
1 co not sag that nothing can be said for either; but
I think neither of these plans is consistent with sound
principle. And it werl easy, if there were time, to
add other reasons against them than those I have
ventured to offer to you. Now, I am for no sudden or
heroic remedy. I do not believe that you can bring
a country from the condition of Ireland to a condition
we should like to see it in by any clause in an Act of
Parliament or any great revolutionary though legal
measure. (Hear, hear.) I am myself against violent
remedies, because I belie i
believe there is i
generally a mode
of treating
political questions n which violence s not
required, (Cheers.) Now, there are two things I
Would do. First of all, I would stole absolutely, by
Withdrawing all encouragement to it, the constant
Igrowth of the accumulation of great estates. (Cheers.)
I would say that whenever men owning land died
without leaving wills their landed property should
be subject to exactly the same rule of division
which is Dow applied to their personal pro.

perty. (Cheers.) Then I would put an end
to the system of entail, by which it should be
rendered impossible to tie up the land—(cheers)—
so that the man who lies quiet for ever in the
churchyard should not have the power when dead of
determining the ownership of the estate which he pose
sassed. (Cheers.) I would so legislate that the
present generation should be the absolute owners of
the land (cheers.), and that the next generation should
be its absolute owners. Neither this nor the next
generation should be able to dictate to future gene-
rations who should own it. (Cheers.) I would have
a compulsory registration of all landed property, so
that it would be easy at the expense at only a few
shillings or a very few pounds—generally only a few
shillings—to transfer a farm or an estate from one man
to another by an absolutely legal and definite sale.
(Cheers.) Now, these things are done elsewhere, and
they can be done here just as easily if you will only lay
hold of the landed proprietor and the lawyer. (A
laugh.) You may tell me that it is a difficult thing to
do, but it is done elsewhere, and it may be done here;
if you and others like you speak out it shall be done.
(Cheers.) That is a step which ought to have
been taken in Ireland—first, when the Incumbered
Estates Court Act passed; secondly, it ought to have
been done by the Land Act of Mr. Gladstone; but
it was not done. (Cheers.) Well. now I come to the
second proposition, because that which I have referred
to is a matter which, though beginning to act hnme-
diatly, would act as you can understand, only with a
certain slowness, and would produce great and visible
results only after a certain lapse of time. But I come
to the second .proposition which I wish to state to
you, and that is a mode by which the occupy-
ing tenantry in thousands and thousands of cases
might in a very short time be made, not oceupying
tenants, but occupying landowners—positive owners of
their farms. (Cheers.) In the Act of 1870—Mr.
Gladstone's Land Act—there are clauses which are
called, or should be called, the purchase clauses in the
Land Act. They are kitten in Ireland, as you will
observe from the papers, associated with my name
(cheers), because I had suggested that mode of dealing
with the question years before the Land Act was pro-
pounded. (Cheers.) Now, the clauses of that Act
were to this effect :—That if an estate was going
to be sold having on it a great number of farms—
some estates in Ireland have hundreds, some 500
different farms upon them—if an estate was going
to be sold through the Landed Estates Court,
it was the duty of the Landed Estates Court to
sell, and wherever it could be conveniently done, to
sell to the tenants, if the tenants were willing to
buy. But it was the duty of the Landed Estates
Court to get the best price it could for the landowner
who was about to sell, and to do the best it could in
transferring farms to the tenantry. But then this fol-
lowed—if there were 100 farms on a given estate, and
only 80 farmers were able to buy their farms, what
was to be done with the ether 20? There was no pro-
vision for that, and if anybody stepped in and offered
£5 more for the whole of these farms than the whole
of these tenants offered, the Court was obliged to sell
to the person who offered the £5 more, because it was
its duty to get the best price it could for the owner of
the land; and thus the tenants themselves were
not defrauded—of course it was not a fraud—but
they were prevented from receiving the benefit
which the Land Act intended for them. Well, the
result has been that, with very few exceptions, the Act
has been a failure. I think that out of the million which
the Act proposed that the Treasury should advance to
enable their tenants to buy their farms, not more than
half a million has, in the ten years which have elapsed
since the Act passed, been expended for that purpose.
But if you look at the Church Commission you will
find a very different state of things. When the Irish
Church was abolished in 1869—that is the year before
the Land Act—there was a Commission appointed to
take up all land that belonged to the Church—glebe,
bishops' land, and so on—awl the Commission was
put into absolute possession of it. It was taken from
the Church and given to the Commission, and the Com-
mission were empowered to make such arrangements
as would enable theirs to sell the farms to the tenants
than cultivating them if they wished to buy them; and
the consequence is that a great success has attended
the working of the Church Commission. (Cheeky.) They
have made, I believe, several thousand Proprietors of
farms who, before the Church Act was passed, were
merely tenants living under the bishops and corporations.
Last year and the year before there was a commission,
over which my friend Mr. ShavaLefevre, one of the
members for Reading, presided. I cannot tell you how
much we all owe to his labours, and how much by and
by it will be Been Ireland owes to the care he has
taken upon this question, (Cheers. I was on that
committee, and we had evidence of the most conclu-
sive and unanswerable kind to show that the plan of
the Church Commission had succeeded and that of the
Landed Estates Court heel failed ; that it was neces-
sary to change the Laud Act of Mr. Gladstone—to
establish a separate, independent, and powerful cam-
mission to do this great work among the tenantry of
i
Ireland. I will tell you how it s done. The proposition
two-thirds 24 00, the o three-
fourths,
r Treasury
is that if a man comes to buy a farm which his landlord
is disposed to sell, the Treasury will find a certain
portiim I
of the
f for
find £3OO and the farmer himself £lOO, and then
money—itexample, it acyosbtes m
the farm is transferred to him, and he goes on paying
his rent, not to the landlord, because he is away, hate
lug sold it, but to the Commission and the interest on
the money he has borrowed from them; and after a
certain number of years—thirty-five years—he has
paid all the interest and all the principal of the £3OO,
and the farm becomes his own. (Cheers.) Now, I
want the Government and Parliament to pass a law
which shall compel the London companies, for exam-
ple, who are the owners of great estates in the county
of Londonderry, to sell their estates under an Act of
this kind. (Cheers.) I want also that the commission
appointed shall have the power of taking over abso-
lutely any estate offered them for sale which they
might think a citairable estate/ so that, having it.in
peeeeee;.ea, er. she florn.rni4ninn had thatlhorph
lands, they might hand it over to the various tenants
on the estate who were willing to buy. I do not know
that the commission togo there should be one to sit down
with good salaries and nothing to do, They should
have a suitable office and a proper staff; they should
have a good lawyer on it, and one thoroughly ac-
quainted with the conditions of land and the people in
Ireland. They should advertise and let all the Irish
tenantry know that the Imperial Government had
sent them to Dublin for this purpose—not to open an
office, give them a salary, and establish a new system
of patronage, but that they should hold out a helping
hand to every honest, earnest, industrious tenant in
Ireland who wished to possess his farm, and, where.
ever his landlord was willing to sell, to provide, say,
three-fourths of the money, and give him a transfer of
the estate. (Cheers.) Now, besides what I have said
about the London companies, I have an idea which no
doubt somebody who writes in the newspapers to-mor-
row will ridicule and scoff at. There are, as yot know,
many English noblemen and English gentlemen not in
the peerage who have large estates in Ireland, and
who, unless they go for a few weeks in the year as
a matter of duty, do not live in that country. I be-
lieve if Parliament were to take that course I have
pointed out, and it the public sentiment were to sup-
p at the policy of the new arrangement, you would
find many of the Irish proprietors living in England
believe that it would be of great good to that country
and no difficulty to Irish proprietorship, which will
n i
not be ended even f the present disturbances are put
down. I think many of these noblemen and
gentlemen, having no interest whatsoever -- for
they would make no sacrifice for what they did—
except in the good condition of Ireland, that they
would be willing to transfer the farms to the tenantry
and to receive a fair and a just compensation, which
the Government would be able to give them. Well,
then, very likely somebody will say, What is to be done
for the money? Who is to find the money for buying
these estates? Who is to find the £3OO which I said a
farm of £4OO would require to enable the tenant to
buy it? Let me just show how the thing would
operate in one sentence.- I will assume that a tenant
You
comes to the Commission and says, " I have got a
farm of 35 acres of land. I want very much to buy it,
and my landlord is willing to sell and this is the price
he asks for it. I can't find the money, but I can find
my share." Well, the Commission makes the arrange
ment, sees the landlord, looks at the land, receives the
£3OO or whatever it is, puts him in posseseion—in fact,
he is in possession—and keeps him there. What
follows? I believe at the present moment that the
sum actually paid as rent for farms in Ireland would
be equal to the sum which the Commission would
require as interest on the Rum they advanced ; so that
every year the t..nant would pay only the rent he now
pipe, but every year he would come nearer to
the time when the farm would be his own,
(Flear, hear.) And if he had 35 acres of land in
36 years his rent would pay both principal and
interest, and every year that passed one acre would be
added to his own land—one acre neat year and one the
r—r
hunistksloantst, the end s
wofiLswy,eaorrs
somebody
wouldey
fifonlin y
himself,ea o
whose interest could be established, the absolute owner
of the farm, and he would have it withcut having paid
more than he would have paid if no such transaction
had taken place. Now, I should think that the best
way, incomparably the best way, to establish fixity of
tenure; for the moment the tenant gets hold of the
land through the Commission nobody can possibly
disturb him so long as he pays his annual sum to the
Commission, and so he would come nearer to the time
absolute ownership. Therefore he would have no
dread of eviction and the raising of his rent. (Cheers.)
He could cultivate the farm in the best possible
manner, and feel as independent as any in this room,
and the whole aspect and atmosphere of Ireland
would be enormously changed for the better. Now,
the people wilt ny that is only a Blow process. It is
not so slow as they think; but just processes are
generally rather slow. tough they are generally very
Bur°. (Laughter.) How long would it take to double,
or quTzlruple, or increase tenfold the present number of
proprietors in Ireland? And in a very few years all
those landowners who sell, too, would be justly
treated. No man would part with an acre of land
for which he did not get his full recompense, and
those who did not sell would feel that by a gradual
increase of proprietors all over the country their con-
dition as proprietors was constantly being improved,
(Hear, hear.) At weßent the 600,000 tenants stand
f,,ce to face with 10,000 or 12,000 landlords—sixty
t:nants to one landlord. What Is the result? The
result is that the opinion in Ireland in favour of
tenants, the growing otoinion in favour of wild theories,
and sometimes of illegal practices, is a vast volume
vzhi,:h threatens—and if it were not for the power of
England would not only threaten, but do it—to sweep
away the whole property and class of landed proprie-
tors in Ireland. (Cheers.) There is no man, not even
the tenant, miserable as he is, for he could possibly
get away to America—there is no man so interested in
Ireland in taking up the plan I suggest as the landed
io-oprietor himself. We are interested in another way.
We are citizens of this United Kingdom; we are here,
constituents and members of Parliament,—we are
here with our fortunes bound up, I believe inseparably,
with Ireland, and, that being eo, I say we have the
greatest possible interest in bringing that country
into a condition which our Government and our
country con look upon without sorrow and with-
out humiliation.

Mr. Miintz and Mr. Chamberlain also addressed the meet-
ing at considerable length, after which, in a second speech,
in proposing a vote Of thanks to the mayor, Mr. Bright con-
demned the militaryisial of the Continent, and in the course
of his remarks said—

Mr. Chamberlain has spoken of those 0,4 A arinialk
abroad. I have only one observation to make With
regard to them—that m far ao their rulers, Emperors,

Kings, and statesmen are concerned, they do not ap.
pear, any of them, to be a bit more safe than if they
were guarded enly by a lot of special constables.
(Llttel laughter.) One of the things which astonish
one, or, at least, which interest one greatly and excite
one's wonder, is this—that not an inconsiderable
portion of the communications which pass between
the monarchs and statesmen of the continent of Europe
are to be found in congratulations of one to the other
that they have not yet been assassinated. (Laughter
and cheers.) Now, what can be more dreadful than
that state of things? The military ism of Germany
and of Austria, and the militaryism of France, and the
militaryism of Italy, th:se systems or this system
creates a burden upon the people and an exaction
which is constantly causing irritation among large
classes of the population, And in these large classes
of the population there are to be found men always
liable to great excitement, always on the verge of
what we call insanity, always on the verge of a
readiness to a design to att-mpt to commit 5e great
crime : and out of the follies and crimes, the incredible
errors of the monarchs and statesmen of Europe, comes
the disposition which makes the lives of monarchs and
statesmen so insecure. (Hear, hear.) . .