Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1881-06-22
THE IRISH QUESTION THAT PER-
PLEXES ENGLAND BRIEF
LY STATED

very briefly and clearly as follows The
great question of the hour is that involv-
ed in the Irish land bill 1t is by this
measure that Mr.. Gladstone has emphat-
ically declared his ministry will stand or
fall. IwishI could explain it to you,
but it is not easy to
but our Irish Iliad in nutshell. There
are only two of our public men who have
yet had the courage to say they under
stand the BILL And if it is difficult of
comprehension by Englishmen, it must
be still more SO by Americans who do
not suffer from the accumulated evils of
primogeniture, entails, distress or hy-
pothic feudal conveyances and territor-
ial magistracy, and who cannot possibly
for generations to come be attacked by
morbus Hibernicus- land hunger-caus-
ed by land scarcity. There are for prac-
tical purposes some 5000 landowners in
Ireland, and some 100000 tenant-farm-
ers. These two parties have fallen out,
or rather they have never fallen in, since
the English conquest of Ireland by Strong
bow and his Norman barons. Of the
100000 Irish tenant-farmers the holdings
of 320, 900 are valued at less than $40
per annum, while those of 175,O 900 are un-
der 500. This will give you some con-
ception of the abject poverty of the coun-.
try; and where the holdings are smallest
the families are notoriousyl the largest.
Manufactures there are none, or next to
none. Well, what the landlords insist
on is, that their relations to their tenants
should be governed legally by "freedom
Of contract" and, economically, by the
the operation of supply and demand"
They let the use of their land to the high
est-bidder for a years time and eject him
ruthlessly whenever the rent becomes
overdue. Ejectments mean, and can on
ly mean, positive starvation for the eject
ed. When the present government came
into power it found probably half Of the
tenant-farmers plunged in rent arrears,
and the consequent process of eviction
being resisted by the assassination of such
landlords as the Earl of Leitrim and Lord
Mountmorris. To mend matters, com
pensation tordisturbance bill WAS brought
into the commons, the effect of which
would have been to give the indebted
tenants temporary respite. But the
the house of lords, or it would be more
correct to say the house of landlords,
threw it out as a palpable Infringement
of the right of their class "to do what
they liked with their own Thereupon
the social war in Ireland became as well
it might, more and more bitter, and when
Parliament met this session Mr.. Foster,
the chef secretary of Ireland, announced
that before any futher attempt at remedy
ia e,tr
would be needed to allay the prevalent
anarchy. The coercion act was passed
at a terrible cost. Some forty Irish men,
bers had to be removed from the house
by superior force aud the old rules of
parliamentary debate had to be superse-
ded bv the cloture in a bad form.
Then at last we got to the great prom
ised remedial measure, the land b4l 1T
is very elaborate measure, intended, as
Mr.. Gladstone says, ''to maintain the
present social relations in Ireland" The
landlords demand freedom Of contract"
the tenants and the exponents OF their
views in Parliament, the 'three t's' viz,
fixture of tenure, fair rents and free sale.
The bill steers a middle course. 1t gives
the tenants ixity of tenure for fifteen
years, at 'fair' rent, with power to as
sign his interest or tenant-right, If the
landlords do not pre-empt, which he may.
Tenant right is defined as consisting of
the value of the tenants Improvements
and (nota bene) "the excess which IS
found in open biddings for holdings IN
Ireland in consequence of the scarcity Of
the supply of land as compared with the
demand" Well, this tenant right,
which, it is estimated, will. on an average,
amount to $l35 per tenant, has to be tix-
ed judicially in court, as has also the
''fair' rent, at the instance OF the tenant.
This is, it seems to me, the irredeemable
weak provision Of the bill. The tenant
who employees counsel learned in the law
may we'll expend $3.50 in establishing his
right to an interest worth $135, while if
be is in arrear af rent, his tenant right is
already in pledge. The fair rent is like
wise very doubtful boon. A rent that
is economically fair to-day-what with
the ceaseless and overwhelming stream OF
agricultural products from your ports
will almost certainly, long before the fif-
teen years lease has expired, be simply
ruinous, and evictions for non-payment
of rent will again have again set IN worse
than before. [ am sorry to take SO hope
less view Of this we'll intended measure,
out know the condition of Ireland well,
and have seen with my own eyes the
boundless resources of the far West.
"The New World is being called in to re-
dress the balance of the Old'' in way
that Canning never dreamed of. If
American competition in grain and cattle
but continues for other ten or fifteen years
the landed aristocracy not merely of Ire
land, but of England and Scotland, will
infallibly be ruined. In some parts of
England not merely the rent but cultiva-
ton of land has completely ceased. In
others the farms are being let rent free,
the tenant not even paying the taxes. |
took up Midland counties paper the
other day and found vacant farms adver-
tised to the extent of $4,000 acres. In
Leicestershire 10000 acres or more have
gone out of tillage. A silent revolution
is taking place throughout rural England.
How long it will remain silent l know
not. The social system with has obtain
ed for 80 many centuries is slowly break