Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1903-03-13
The Irish Land Bill.

There has been inquiry as to the
| provisions of the Irish land bill, to
which we have several times referred
in these columns and which all parties
in Parliament agree means so much
for the future of Ireland. Incidentally
the bill also means much to England as
it will add to the national debt from
a billion to a billion and half dollars
This is the sum it is estimated it will
take to accomplish the transfer of the
Irish farm lands from the present land
owners 70 the tenants. 1t is a vast
sum, but it is only half what the South
African war cost, and those frienc.ly
to the measure declare it is cheap
enough 10 ensure future freedom from
the ever active discomfort and turmoil
| in Ireland.
! In 1891 law was passed providing
| for the voluntary purchase of the Irish
lands This having failed, however.
nothing remained for the government
but to step in and provide the differ
ence between the price at which the
| tenant was willing to buy. The new
proposal, therefore, provides that the
| landlord shall be paid in full for his
rent, receiving a 2% per cent bond to
an amount which will give him the
same revenue as that which he now
enjoys. The tenant, on the other hand,
will be given a reduction in rental from
Is to % per cent, continuing to pay
rent from so to 10 years, at the end of
which time the land will pass into his
or his heirs possession. The differ
ence between the old rent demanded
| by the landlord and the new rent to be
accepted will be from $5.000,000 to S.
600, 900 q year. This difference will be
assumed by the British tax payer who
will meet the interest on the bonds of
from $13S,000,0o0 to $2O5,00o,000. The
number of Irish landholders today is
estimated at about 100000, and the
rentals at from $25,OO0,O00 to $4O,-
, 100000 annually.
That the alien landlord system has
| been the basis of the Irish discomfort,
which has worked so much ill to Eng
land as well as Ireland, few political
economists will deny. Give a man the
secure possession of bleak rock,
| he will t1lr
into a garden; give him nine years
lease of q garden, and he will convert
it into desert" The lease system in
Ireland has been the cause of convert
ing one of the most beautiful and fer
tile agricultural countries in the world
into dreary waste, providing bare
subsistence for the fast decreasing
| population. There has been no incen-
! tive to the tenant to secure anything
more than a bare living out of the land,
since all Improvements have accrued
only to the landlord. The rentals eX-
acted by the landlord have been almost
beyond the power of the tenants to pay.
JOnn STUART Mlll, IN the cnapter on
Irish tenantry in his treatise of polit-
zeal economy, quotes from the testi-
mony taken by Lord Devons commits
sion: Il have known tenant bid for
farm that | was perfectly acquainted
with, worth $50 year; 1 saw the
competition get up to such an extent
that he was declared the tenant at
e45O."
1t is such oppressive rentals as this
which have reduced Ireland to its pres
ent pitiablc condition. Sixty years
ago the populati was 100000, and
now it is only half of that. When we
remember that the area of Ireland,
however, is a little less than that of
| Maine it will seem that a population
about six times that of Maine is quite
Il distance from the vanishing point.
1t has been a land of blood and tears,
of crime and grief, and the greater
| share of its woes has been due to the
| irreconcilable interests of landowner
and tenant. If this present land bill
does what is claimed for it, the next
| half century will see a new Ireland,
| blooming like the rose and filled with
| , coptoptaJ md r,roc rpople