The Sun.
London, England, 1869-08-24 00:00:00

TUE LAND QUESTION.

The land question is coming to the fore in an
unmistakeable manner. Tho already-announced
association has published its programme. It contains
the best names amongst the advanced Reformers.
Mr. John Stuart Mill is its chairman ; Sir George
Grey, Sir C. IV. Dilke, M.P., Messrs. Fawcett,
Dixon, Jacob Bright, Tom Hughes. M'Laren„
Morrison, and Muntz, M.P.'s • Sir J. Bowring, Messrs.
Hare, Neate, Harrison, Beales, Rogers, Potter, and
many others are down on the committee. The efforts
of the organisation will be devoted to obtaining free
trade in land. They support Mr. Locke's Real Esta-
blished ill testacy Bill; wish to preserve the rights of the
public over commons ; and will promote measures
whereby a peasant proprietary may be established.
Towards this Litter end they will agitate for a reform
in the law as to land held by public bodies.
To the Duke of Richmond this association
seems to be working against all practical
experience. He pointed out at a recent meeting at
Strathbogie, Scotland, that in Ireland small holdings
were already the rule for farms. They were the
curse of the country. The proper thing for Parlia-
ment to do, he said, nas not to divide and split up
land any more, but to take measures whereby farms
should become larger, so that there might be security
for influence, intelligence, enterprise, energy, and
capital being used in the agriculture of tne country.

'The 7Vines
Commissioner continues his investiga-
tion into the Irish land question by an account of
agrarian outrages in the districts of Tipperary. The
principal crimes committed in that neighbourhood
within the last twelve months are the homicides on
the late Mr. Scully's estate at Ballycohey, and the
murders of Messrs. Bradshaw, Baker, and Tracey, all
of which, with the exception of Mr. Bradshaw's
murder, are agrarian crimes. As to the terrible
affair on the Scully estate, the commissioner
observes there can be no doubt that Mr.
Scully was asserting his right, but that it was a case
of 81117:»271»1 ;US being sumnia infuria. The tenants
of Mr. Scully had previously held from year to year;
but they were, when the murder took place, required
to pay rents quarterly, and to hold their tenure on
twenty-one days' notice. The murders of Mr.
Tracy and Mr. Baker were much more ruthlcs3, each
arising from cases of ordinary ejectment. But in no
single instance has an offender been brought to
justice. •
All these crimes, says this inquirer, have one com-
mon object—to maintain the title of the tenant to his
holding, according to a popular standard of right,
and to punish those Who attempt to disturb it. They
aro not the results of individual passion, but are
systematic to a certain extent, and show the signs
of a kind 'of method; they exact vengeance not
only from the authors of what is supposed a
wrong, but from those who, though innocent of it,
help to carry it out, and become its instruments.
On the whole, the existing relations of property,
though occasionally grievous, cannot be held respon-
sible for this lawless spirit. It could grow up and
spread only in a state of society that has been for a
long time deeply disordered.