the absolute reversal of claims based on it may seem justifiable. But a new injustice could only prove a new impolicy, and would be so esteemed by all who are convinced that moral influences must largely supplement legislative reform, and that both will flourish best if planted in the subsisting, though regenerated, social life of Ireland.

Such a spirit, thorough, just, and conciliating, retrospective and prospective, pervades the recent settlement of the first branch of the Irish problem. The Act which, last Session, disestablished and disendowed the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches in Ireland, is already thus regarded by not a few within their precincts, and will be so more and more. Besides its special value, that settlement has greatly facilitated the treatment of the residuary problem. The British public evinced by it their clear determination to institute a searching reform conceived from the Irish point of view, and their confidence in a government that added to the will the capacity to act justly and wisely. The passage of the Irish Church Act through the legislature, proved that party interests, mere parliamentary tactics, and partial views, must yield to a nation's demand for justice and wise government. That measure also inspired confidence that the statesmanlike genius and courage which gave it birth, would not be found wanting for the second great reform. In my judgment this expectation has been largely fulfilled by the Irish Land Bill. The inherent difficulties of the land question are, probably, not greater than those of the church question were. But the facts of the former are less familiar to the British public, its principles less readily apprehensible by them; while, even in Ireland, the views of those most competent and best disposed, are often marked by prejudice, and differ greatly among themselves. It ought not, therefore, to create wonder, if the first draft of the Land Bill should, more than the earlier measure, stand in need of careful revision. In a spirit, then, of sincere respect and grateful admiration, but by no means of indiscriminate panegyric, I would endeavour, on one hand, to examine the principles on which the Irish land question can be settled; on the other, to consider how far the proposed settlement recognises, how far it falls short of these.

I.

The Irish land question pre-eminently involves the three requisites of every political problem of the first order: a noble destination, a grave situation, and a great constructive effort. To understand and weigh them is essential for the real solution of that problem. A few words may therefore be fitly devoted to each.

Until quite recently the essentially social character of the land reforms needed in Ireland have not been appreciated, and is, even yet, imperfectly comprehended. How else interpret the incessant

repetition of well-worn economic notions-population in excess, unrestrained competition, free bargaining, and so forth—still paraded as furnishing the only reasons why a problem exists, and the only measures for solving it? From such superficial notions proceed halting and pretended solutions, incapable of destroying existing evils, since they ignore their character and sources. The difficulty ought not to be great of discerning the unsoundness, as applied to Irish facts, of purely economic doctrines drawn from the English type, perhaps the offspring of metaphysical abstraction, and so unreal even for England. Yet the controversy on that head, ably maintained during an entire generation by Mr. Joseph Kay, Mr. J. S. Mill and others, was notoriously powerless to alter the English land policy in Ireland. This was only accomplished when continued and increasing disturbance of public tranquillity aroused the British public to the hollowness of current theories. The situation dethroned economic philosophy—at least, what passed for such—and opened the door to convictions based on respect for social tradition and the study of social fact. I think this view cannot be too strongly insisted upon, as affording the surest guarantee against a twofold pressing dangerthat of making insufficient provision to meet the deepest mischiefs of the social situation in Ireland; that, again, of anticipating their sudden disappearance. The best corrective for such mistakes lies in the conviction that inherited social tendencies long survive the special causes which produced them, accompanied by an intelligent study of the contrasts between Irish and British history. Although such a review cannot be attempted here, some of the chief conclusions which it enforces must be briefly noticed, since they are essential for the appreciation of the Irish Land Bill.

1

Law, institutions, public opinion, not things of yesterday, but the growth of ages, have all combined to place the English tenantfarmer in a position the very opposite of that of the Irish agricultural occupier.2 This observation can be verified even by comparing the last three centuries, but much more decisively when the history of remoter ages is studied as it deserves. To speak in the way even well-informed writers speak of English agricultural tenure as resting simply on contract, is wholly incorrect and misleading. Adam Smith truly described that tenure as being unique in kind; characterised, that is, by a high degree of practical stability, the result of public opinion supplying the place of formal agreement. In his view, the yearly tenancy, prevalent as now in England, was (1) The writer may be allowed to refer to a publication where he has attempted such a review, entitled "History, Principle, and Fact in relation to the Irish Question." 1870. William Ridgway, Piccadilly, London.

(2) Mr. Finlason's valuable "History of the Law of Tenures of Land in England and Ireland," 1870, exhibits this contrast, from the historico-legal point of view, more completely than any other book with which I am acquainted.

not the real tenure; and one that if subsisting by itself, far from favouring, must have prevented the wonderful improvement in agriculture apparent even at that period. Into that unexampled relation of landlord and tenant there largely entered two great elements custom and equity. Since Adam Smith wrote, the progress of scientific farming in England has been sustained by the same potent influences. Originally springing from public opinion, created in no small degree during the ages often styled "dark," and fortified by a sense of mutual interest, these customary relations and equitable views have largely received the sanction of actual law. This has been especially the case within the last quarter of a century, dating from the abolition of the Corn-laws, which roused both proprietors and farmers to the necessity for enterprise and outlay, and, therefore, of increased security. The legislature did little to create such security;' but the courts of justice did a great deal by sanctioning modern customs of agriculture. Unfettered by formal definitions, they applied old principles to meet new wants, liberalising ancient customary laws by an infusion of commercial and equitable ideas. Besides contract then, in truth far more than that, the real English tenure involves an element of legal compulsion which, by guaranteeing the security of industry, has greatly encouraged the accumulation of agricultural capital, and, above all, favoured its equitable distribution and employment for the benefit of society. But this legal element is itself only the exponent of influences deeply rooted in the English land system which, in older times, engendered formal proprietary rights, in more modern, fostered a public opinion favourable to the permanence of the occupier. Of the first, the most conspicuous example exists in the perpetual copyhold tenure, estimated to embrace a fifth of English soil acquired by the descendants of servile tenants at will, through customs upheld by judicial decisions. In a less special sphere, the Roman law, so wisely equitable to improving tenants, so favourable, in view of public policy as well as personal justice, to the principles of continuous occupation, was largely incorporated into the judgemade common law of England. The feudal régime itself, during its real ascendancy, tended in the same direction. The essential character of a military society, and the necessity for mutual aid and support between the lords of the soil and its cultivators, even of the inferior classes, encouraged the acquisition by the cultivators of fixed

3

(1) Yet the House of Commons twice passed Mr. Pusey's Tenants' Compensation for Improvements Bill.

(2) See the evidence given before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Mr. Pusey's Bill, Parliamentary Paper, 1848-9; and Mr. Dixon's work on the Law of the Farm.

(3) See Mr. Finlason's book cited above, and Güterbock, "Henricus de Bracton und sein Verhältniss zum Römischen Rechte." Berlin, 1862.

interests in the land through gift and inheritance. These influences have largely survived, and though their origin be forgotten, have helped to maintain, in England, practical relations between landlord and tenant quite opposed to the commercial ideas and habits of a later epoch.

We see, therefore, the cumulative influence of public opinion and law in consolidating and elevating the condition of the English tenant-farmer. It is no exaggeration to say that whatever freedom of contract, whatever power of equal bargaining, he may in our day enjoy, is due far more to these than to his possession of capital, to the size of farms, or other economic elements so often exclusively insisted on. Now turning to the Irish agricultural occupier, we find, indeed, that such outward advantages are deficient. But we also discover a social inequality, and practical impossibility of free bargaining, which springs from legal conditions, and moral causes, that lie deep in the history and political structure of Ireland. A consideration of these, however brief, is essential for comprehending the situation and forecasting legislative reform. That judicial interposition in England, so favourable to the tenant, has been almost entirely wanting in Ireland. The reasons for its absence are various. In some cases insecurity of tenure has cut away the very facts which form the groundwork of custom; in others, adherence to the letter, rather than comprehension of the spirit of English law, has characterised the decisions of the Irish bench, composed, until quite recent times, of men themselves imbued with the narrowness of ascendancy-government, and unwilling or incompetent to take wide and just views of the land question. Under the first head falls the singular fact that even the usual English tillage customs are hardly recognised in Ireland, accustomed too generally to the makeshifts of precarious tenure. The second class of cases is illustrated in the denial of justice by the courts to yearly tenants whose farms and habitations were created, paid for, or inherited, with the express or tacit concurrence of the landowner, or under the sanction of established and general custom, or local usages. Unhappily the inaction of courts of justice was too well emulated by the activity of the legislature, which, for more than a century, and even long after the abolition of the worst penal laws, enacted a code of ejectment and gave powers intended, and only too well calculated, to fortify the position of the landlord and weaken that of the tenant. The Incumbered Estates Act of 1849, and the Landlord and Tenant Act of 1860, are the latest, and we may hope the last, exemplifications of this unjust and disastrous policy. Strange as it may seem, they were passed without any regard even to the very moderate recommendations in favour of the Irish tenantry made by the Irish proprietors who constituted the well-known Devon

Commission, and reported in 1845 on the occupation and tenure of land in Ireland.

The legal conditions which so greatly depressed the position of the Irish tenant-farmer are, however, less important than the social and moral influences that really produced the former. Here again in Ireland we meet the distorted image and mere semblance of relations, almost peculiar to English society, nor even there deserving of unqualified admiration. English agriculture has been fostered by the general harmony between the resident local aristocracy and the farming classes; extensive estates going hand-in-hand with large farms; the vast progress of manufactures and commercial industry creating and diffusing capital, while an ancient Poor Law system gave aid to the labourer, and indirectly benefited the farmer as an employer of labour. Irish agriculture reposed on a social system of large proprietors, generally devoid of sympathy with the people, deficient in capital and knowledge, condemned therefore, whether absentees or residents, to ignoble sloth or mischievous action; on the other hand, on small cultivators artificially multiplied, and deprived of all motive to exertion and prudence, many of them being little raised above the condition of labourers, yet denied, alike with that class, all public aid in sickness or distress. Here again, in recent times, the course of events, and growth of ideas have aggravated the social and moral difficulties of the Irish tenant-farmer. The potatofamine of 1846-7, the ensuing emigration, and great reduction in number of the smallest class of farms promised a facile solution only too congenial to popular tendencies in England. There too the cotemporaneous abolition of the Corn-laws seemed to consecrate a purely negative policy, and to proclaim a rupture with past traditions as the only and all-sufficient condition of social progress. Economic ideas were brought prominently forward; direct social reconstruction was placed far in the background. These dispositions and mental attitude were seized on, and have been fostered by adherents of the Anglo-Irish proprietary school, in some cases themselves proprietors or agents of such. The essence of their shallow and disastrous philosophy, so-styled, lay in two leading views, only too faithfully reflected in the legislation and practice of the last quarter of a century: first, political economy, good for the rich and powerful, uncalled for, even noxious, for the poor and humble; secondly, spurious industrialism grafted on the old feudal stock. The former found its appropriate expression in public sales, amounting in value to nearly forty millions sterling and embracing probably onesixth of Ireland, of what has been, expressively and justly, called "the right to confiscate tenants' improvements." The latter tendency, less noticed, but even more mischievous, is illustrated in those transactions, the true character of which may be described by the