The Sun.
London, England, 1869-08-14 00:00:00

TRH IRISH LAND QUESTION.

The Irish Church Act is done with and almost/
forgotten. Even the efforts of the disestablished
body to institute a form of government e::cite only
a languid interest. " The " question of the day is now
the relations between Irish landlord and tenant ; and
from August to some time about next March there
is a fair interval in which the public may sup full of
this intricate subject before the bill promised by the
Government is brought in. The Times opens the
campaign by sending over to Ireland a special repre-
sentative to examine the question. With a due senseof
the importance of the matter, this representative is
termed, not a " correspondent," but a " commissioner."
His first letter begins with the first opening of the
land-tenure difficulty, about half a century ago, when
the land system of Ireland had assumed a
" melancholy and portentous " form, when absen-
teeism prevailed to an enormous extent, when large
tracts of land had fallen into the hands of needy
and worthless landlords, when in many cases
divers interests interposed between the culti-
vator and the owner of the soil, and when
the greater part of the land was held on a precarious
tenure by very poor peasantry. " A bove all, an
immense and increasing breadth of the country was
being rapidly covered by the dense swarms of a
cottier population, who, intrenching on the domain
of legitimate husbandry, and clinging in wretched-
ness to their petty holdings—their squalid ' cabins
and potato gardens '—spread over the island a huge
mass of villeinage—a multitudinous array of want
and pauperism."
Great misery and poverty were the result of this
state of things. The tenant was often too poor to
make improvements ; and he was so much in the
power of the landlord that, when improvements
were made, the owner of the soil reaped the profits,
and animosities of race and sect increased the all-
- culties between the two classes, the proprietor and
the tiller. A fierce struggle for subs:stence was the
result of this misery, and the difficult:es of the poor
were speedily aggravatedby a wild endeavour to force
upon the soil a population which in its then condi-
tion it could not support. "In part,unconsciously to
themselves, the small farmers and the mass of cottiers
arrayed themselves into a set of trades unions for
the purpose of regulating property in land, so as by
some means to get a livelihood out of it ; and,
like other trades unions, they expressed
their will by a system of terrorism and
general outrage. The Whiteboy code con-
fronted the law and overcame it in many
districts ; tribunals of assassination and violence
prescribed the conditions of landed tenure, and agra-
rian crimes increased and multiplied, supported far
and near by popular sympathy. The upper classes,
angry and terrified, and backed by the whole power
of the State, retaliated with no light vengeance; and
repeated acts of coercion, special commissions to
administer relentless justice, continual e:ecutions
and transportations, and law executed with unsparing
severity, were the lamentable and unceasing conse-
quences."
Such was the state of society which has so
long occupied the more or less anxious attention of
Parliament. The famine brought a great alteration,
and this visitation of Providence averted a danger
which threatened the whole empire. The Irish
nation went through a strange transformation. The
miseries of famine were relieved by magnificent
Imperial charily, and then the population
emigrated in millions. Next, a stringent Poor
Law prevented poverty from settling on the soil
and accelerated the exodus of the cottli rs. The
estates of the insolvent landlords were sold and
transferred to others by a summary process, and in
this manner an immense area was thrown open to a
new class of proprietors. At the same time many
legislative efforts were made to simplify and reform
tenures, and to attract capital and energy to the
land ; and the Imperial Exchequer contributed
largely in loans for the improvement of landed
property.
Where great changes have brought about the
most beneficent results, the material wealth of Ireland
has advanced greatly, millions of waste acres have
been reclaimed. Landlordism is at all events not
what it was. There is no war of poverty against
property. The rate of wages has increased. lhe
cot tier has become an agricultural labourer.
Tried by every test, the condition of
the Irish people is prosperity itself to what it once
was. But much remains to be done. Absenteeism
is still detrimental to the best interests of the country;
the old dissentious of religion and race are still the
causeof serious difficulty, and mischievous proprietors
are, it is said, yet numerous. Most important of
all, though the per-atoll of the poorest orders
has so greatly improved, it cannot be said
t'. at the relations between the landlords and
the better class of tenants have amended in an
equal degree. Five-sixths of the land of Ireland is
still held by precarious tenures. The mass of im-
provements are not, it is said, the work of the land-
lord, but of the tenant ; and yet in many cases the
former has the power, and not seldom the will, to
appropriate the benefit to himself. Thus agriculture
is hampered, and the tenant is unable to get a fair
profit for his labour. Moreover; those foul con-
federacies established half a century ago have never
been dissolved. The spirit which fosters conspiracy
still survives in certain districts. This is the aspect
of affairs now.

MR. HARVEY LEWIS,

Some of the Marylebone electors have met to dis-
pose of Mr. Harvey Lewis. It has been resolved that
the decision of Vice-Chancellor Malins, relative to
the conduct of Mr. 11. Lewis, is, by the compromise
effected, accepted by him as true, and that be is
thereby unfitted to remain the representative of the
borough of Marylebone." But between pronouncing
against the refractory member and getting rid of
him, there is a great gulf. His conduct has been
declared in a court of justice to be " false, fictitious,
and fraudulent;" and though he has promised to
disprove that verdict, he has not done so. Resign
Mr. Lewis will not, albeit ho has left his borough
only half-represented during the session.