Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-12-21
THE LAND QUESTION IN ENGLAND AND
IRELAND

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Government to hope that it can keep these
issues separate. Whatever it may propose
for Ireland will be discussed and re.
garded as affecting the landed interest in
England. One result of this must be to
strengthen the opposition to radical legis-
lation OF any kind, and so TO render the
position of the Government more untena-
BILE. Tie Irish situation has already be-
come such that the Government is incapa-
bic of controlling it. It has filled the
country with troops and police, but it is
evident that beyond preventing meetings
OF the Land League these forces are prac-
tically powerless They cannot stop the
operations of the League. They cannot
cause the regular Courts to be resorted to-
They cannot hinder "Boycotting." They
cannot compel refractory tenants to pay
their rent. They cannot protect landlords
against the ruinous consequences of gen.
eral Withholding of supplies. A large part
of the Irish tenantry have ceased to pay
any rent for their holdings, and the ordi-
nary legal processes for coercing them
nave become imperative. There is a gen.
eral passive rebellion against the existing
order of things. Intimidation is practiced
on a large scale. The dissentlents from the
League doctrines are silenced by threats.
1t may be said without much exaggeration
that Ireland has passed from under the
control of England, in fact Meantime
the Government does nothing, or what it
does do produces no mitigating results.
The League is omnipotent for all practical
purposes, and the laws are coolly ignored
and set aside. The Government has GER
tainly not afforded protection to the land
lords, and it is not easy to see how it can
do so without resorting to violent
methods. 1t might suppress the public
demonstrations of the League forcibly, but
it could not by so doing terminate the
agitation. Remedy by eviction is out of
the question where scores of thousands OF
cases would have to be attended to. And
it must be remembered that the Irish land
agitation after all derives its main strength
from the fact that the injustice and op-
preston of the existing tenure of land
there cannot be seriously questioned. In
fact the agitation Is based upon undeniable
wrongs, and it involves demand for unde-
niable rights. Nevertheless it is equally
true that it has gone far beyond the first
ideas of its projectors, and that it has been
carried to conclusions which threaten to
render all rational compromise impossible.
1t is held by many careful observers that
the extension of the so-called Ulster Gus
tom of tenant rights over the whole coun-
try would give the tenants all the benefits
they can reasonably claim. The cry of
ireland for the Irish," however, has
largely superseded proposals of this kind,
andeven the conservative Leaguersnow talk
of nothing less than peasant proprietary.
It is, moreover, doubtful whether the
Irish masses really contemplate any propo.
sition which involves the purchase of the
land by themselves. They rather appear
to think that the end of the present move
ment is to be the ousting of the landlords
altogether, and the appropriation of their
estates by the tenants without payment
of any kind. As matter of course the
Government neither could nor would
tolerate such programme as this for a
moment. II the landlords are to be ousted
they will have to be bought out. and this
would involve the assumption by the ten
ants of very heavy debt, which would,
of course, be mortgage on the land
Il appears to be believed generally that
tbs Government intends to bring in very
radical land bill when Parliament meets,
and it is not doubted that this bill will be
opposed by the Tories with all the vehe.
mence and persistence inspired by the ap
prehension of a deadly attack upon the
English as well as the Irish landed inter
est. The need for reform in the land ten
ure of England has been recognized long
since by advanced thinkers, and the Cob
den Club has done much to place statistics
and arguments in behalf of reform before
the people. The Irish agitation and
American competition have, however, OPP
Grated together to force this question into
the first rank, and while these agencies
have made it almost certain that great
revolution is inevitable, they have
SO complicated the situation as to
render reform legislation exceedingly
difficult. Men no longer look upon Ire
land as country apart, in which any
crude government system may be tolerated.
They have learned, since the Disestablish-
ment bill was passed, to regard it rather as
a place in which radical English legislation
is liable to be experimental upon. Thus
the first question suggested by an Irish
land bill would be, what effect will it have
upon the English system? A peasant pro-
prietary in Ireland will be viewed with
very different feelings when it is felt that
it may forecast peasant proprietary in
England. The radicalism of the Irish lead.
ers is calculated to put arguments Of
this kind into the mouths of the
Tories, and thus to weaken the
hold of the Government upon the
English public. The Irish leaders possibly
think that by making their demands great
they are the more likely to secure large
concessions. But that kind of policy may
be carried so far as to disable the Govern
ment from making any concessions at all
and this we think is the present danger
1t is much easier to demonstrate the need
of fxity of tenure in Ireland than to JUS
tify sweeping overthrow of the whole
land system, and if the Government should
be defeated on the new bill because of its
radicalism, the Leaguers will have very
little to hope from its successors in Office,
Henceforth, however, the land questions in
the two countries must be treated as init
mately connected, and this circumstance
alone will have most important influence