protect the reckless, indolent, or fraudulent tenant, who destroys his farm, or will not pay his rent, or multiplies squatters by subdivision; but such tenants deserve eviction. Unquestionably, too, there may be landlords who will evict even meritorious tenants, notwithstanding the heavy penalties directed against such proceedings by the Bill, and the discredit it attaches to such wrong-doers. But the instances will be exceedingly few, in which folly, obstinacy, and pride, will override evident self-interest, and brave the sense of public disgrace; evictions of this kind will be so costly and fruitless, and so condemned by the courts, that they will hardly ever occur; and, therefore, it is the simple truth that the Bill amply protects the Irish tenant, and places him in quite a new position. Nor must it be forgotten, that even if he should be evicted, he will usually leave his holding with an amount of compensation, which will save him and his family from destitution, and open to him a new way in the world. In truth, so far as regards its principles, the criticisms passed upon the Bill are the most convincing proofs of its excellence. It is urged by those who faithfully represent the shortsightedness of the "stupid party," that the measure is excessive, because, in giving protection to the occupier of the soil in Ireland, it violates the doctrine of "free contract." It is refreshing to see Conservatism wresting political economy to uphold selfishness, and misapplying it to suit its purposes; but its advocates apparently do not perceive the dangerous retort they thus provoke. Apply the rules of "free contract" to land, and what would become of all the means employed to restrict artificially dealings with what is naturally a limited commodity, of entails, settlements, holding in mortmain, primogeniture, and other aristocratic devices? In these days of democratic change it would have been wiser to have avoided these topics; and, besides, the objection only reveals ignorance of the real facts of society in Ireland. It is idle to talk of "freedom of contract," in the instance of classes in the relations of the great mass of Irish landlords and tenants, that is, of those who have what practically is a monopoly of the means of existence, and those who are compelled to compete for it; and true political economy acknowledges that the only legitimate sphere of contract is not subjection, but independence. "There is, moreover, a dangerous irony in this zeal shown by some Irish landlords in favour of the doctrine of free contract,' in order to impair a measure framed in the interest of the Irish tenant; it is rather too much to babble about this principle when one-fifth only of the soil of Ireland is held by 'contract' in a legitimate sense, and four-fifths are held at will, that is, by a tenure of a servile kind, not in the nature of a contract at all; nor will the House of Commons be led astray by selfish sophistry of this description." Another objection to the Bill is, that it draws a marked and plain distinction between the law of England and that of Ireland, and that it "tends to separate" the two countries, because it gives security to the Irish tenant. To this it might be enough to reply that, in legalising the agricultural customs of Ireland, unrecognised hitherto by the Irish courts, unlike what has taken place in England, the Bill really rather assimilates the Irish law of landlord and tenant to its English original than makes it different; that even the abstract law as it now stands is in Ireland more on the side of the landlord in many particulars than it is in England, and that this balance must be redressed before the two codes can be pronounced the same; and that a greater fallacy cannot exist, as, indeed, in the history of our own empire, the examples of Scotland and Ireland prove, than assuming that international concord or dissension are necessarily promoted by mere identity, or diversity of laws and institutions. The true and conclusive answer, however, is, that the state of society in England and Ireland, in matters connected with landed arrangements, is so different that legislation must accommodate itself to this essential difference; that a merely superficial resemblance of laws may imply a real and absolute distinction; and that it will be time enough to speak of making the laws of tenure in the two countries exactly alike when the facts underlying them correspond, when the soil of Ireland and that of England are held under the same conditions. Such cavils as these are obviously futile; and others of a somewhat different kind are little more than "leather and prunella." When it is said that the measure is intricate, that it is many-sided and subtle in character, it is forgotten. that the relations it deals with are complicated in the highest degree, and that its variableness really is a proof of its conscientious adherence to the facts of society. When it is said that it will encourage litigation by remitting a multitude of novel questions to the consideration of judicial tribunals, and by entrusting these with a very large discretion, it is forgotten that this is the necessary price of avoiding a system of harsh reform of the laws of tenure that really would be injurious to landed property in Ireland, compulsory leases, fixity of tenure, or the universal extension of the tenant-right of the North to districts at present not subject to it. As for the complaint that it makes a distinction between Ulster and the rest of Ireland, in the supposed interest of "Protestant ascendancy," it is enough to say that it does exactly the reverse, for it merely confirms the rights of the Ulster tenant, whereas it gives new rights to his Southern fellow; and as for the remark that the benefits it confers are illusory because they are only capable of being realised in certain events, this proceeds simply from sheer ignorance. The Bill, however, though noble in principle, is not without defects in detail, occasionally of an important kind. Its composition is far from good; it is loose and complex in its phraseology; it abounds in vague and unsuitable expressions; and this has added to the obscurity of a measure necessarily hard to interpret. Its definitions of very important rights, for instance, even of tenant-right, are not accurate, and have provoked censure; it makes use of popular language where technical terms ought to be employed, causing thus uncertainty and confusion; it sometimes leaves very critical questions open to be answered in a variety of ways. These blemishes are to be much regretted, and have been one main reason why the popular mind in Ireland has been misinformed on the subject, and misrepresentation has distorted the real character of a comprehensive reform entirely in the interest of the Irish tenant. A few of the provisions of the Bill require to be carefully weighed and criticised with a view to their final amendment. The statutable tenant-right, which is in the nature of a new charge upon landed property, is certainly, in our judgment, high; it is fairly questionable whether it ought to extend to farms of a considerable size; and it may operate to tax the good landlord who has let his lands at a low rent, which he may not be able hereafter to raise without paying a severe penalty, and to spare altogether the rack-renting landlord. On the other hand, it is, perhaps, doubtful whether in all cases a thirty-one years' lease ought to be an equivalent for this right; it has been urged that this may expose the tenant occasionally to injustice; and possibly a lower scale of tenant-right, conjoined with a power of measuring rents when ejectments should be brought to raise them, would have been more equitable and advantageous. The periods fixed for retrospective compensation for improvements are enormous; these, added to the revolution effected by the reversal of the presumption of law that additions to land belong to its owner, may, in some instances, be unfair to landlords; and though it is true that continuous possession is to diminish claims in this category, their limits ought, we think, to be defined. On the other hand, the definition of "improvements" in the Bill is, perhaps, too restricted, and would deal hardly with small tenants whose assiduous toil during generations had reclaimed land and made it productive; yet as to whom it might not be able to show that " had executed any work which adds to the letting value of the holdings" at present. One or two clauses in the Bill, as they stand, may enable a tenant to injure his landlord directly, and that in a serious manner; and this is contrary to the whole scope of a measure of which one main principle is to indicate the natural rights of the tenant without assailing the rights of property. We must enter our protest against a change in the Bill said to be in contemplation, the exempting purchasers in the Landed Estates Court from claims to retrospective compensation for improvements. We never could see why purchasers of this class should be less subject to legislative they changes which Parliament might make at a future time, than purchasers of any other kind; they purchased freed from past incumbrances, but not from impositions to be made hereafter, exactly as private individuals; and, as a matter of fact, of all the landlords in Ireland, they are the least entitled to consideration. Our space forbids us to do more than to glance at the manner in which the Bill deals with the land system of Ireland upon the side of ownership. In this respect it embodies and improves upon the conception of Mr. Bright, that facilities should be afforded by the State to induce Irish tenants to buy land from its present owners by voluntary contract, and thus to promote the growth of a peasant proprietary. For this purpose a sum of £1,000,000 is proposed to be set apart by the Treasury in order to make the required advances; and tenants who wish to acquire land, provided their landlords agree to sell it, are empowered to borrow three-fourths of the price, if they can pay a deposit of one-fourth as a security to the Exchequer for the loan, and for the payment of the annuity on the land to discharge it. Provision is made for operations of this kind in the case of lands in the Landed Estates Court; if a landlord wishes to part with his entire estate, and the tenants of four-fifths of it have the means of making the required advance, power is given to render the purchase complete; and it is obvious that the sum of £1,000,000 named is intended only as an experimental instalment. By these means the authors of the Bill design evidently to promote the transfer of no inconsiderable part of the soil of Ireland from its present owners to its occupiers, and thus to pledge to the cause of order a large number of the Irish peasantry, and to break the force of the revolutionary wave now menacing Irish landed property. In the present state of the land system of Ireland, we look upon this as a most enlightened scheme; but we are afraid that the machinery of the Bill is rather defective in this particular. We could say more, but our limits are outrun, and in conclusion wish good speed to a measure which in its main outlines is one of broad and generous policy, which reconciles law and fact in Ireland without real injustice to any interest, and which, if not without errors of detail, is assuredly a great and patriotic effort to solve an arduous and dangerous problem. Nor can we doubt that in its results it will be attended with lasting good; that it will reach the hearts of the Irish people, in spite of momentary signs to the contrary, and teach them that law is no longer for them the supremacy of the powerful over the weak; that it will gradually if slowly lessen the evils of agrarian disorder, outrage, and crime; that it will assuage old animosities and heart-burnings; that it will infuse harmony and goodwill into the social relation it transforms and animates with the spirit of justice. WM. O'C. MORRIS. CRITICAL NOTICES. SOME BOOKS OF THE MONTH. Modern Russia. By Dr. JULIUS ECKARDT. Smith, Elder, & Co. 1870. A GOOD and useful survey of the present condition of the Russian empire, with a critical estimate of Russian development and its tendencies since the emancipation of the serfs by Alexander II. The key-note to the book is in the division treating of Russian Communism, which may be commended to the serious attention of all political students. Those who have ceased to apprehend much from Napoleon's warning of the possible invasion of Europe by the Cossack, may learn that there is still a cloud to be watched in the North, all the more ominous to established institutions that it does not come with the lance and the musket. The writer's point of view is naturally German, but beyond a remark on the effeminacy of the Slavonic race, it is not intruded. His admiration of the Courlanders is justified by all who know them. The book should have been subjected to the revision of an English hand. Letters of the Right Hon. Sir George Cornewall Lewis to Various Friends. Edited by Rev. Sir GILBERT LEWIS. Longmans. 148. SIR GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS, who found time to do so many things moderately well and nothing very well, was among his other characters a letterwriter, and some of the fruit is now before us in his correspondence with the late Sir Edmund Head, Mr. Grote, Mrs. Austin, Mr. Greg, Mr. Freeman, and members of his family. They contain a great many highly suggestive points, in the shape of prophecies and criticisms about passing events, the writer being often most acutely right, and perhaps as often most ingeniously wrong. The critical temper, as everybody knows, was very strong in Sir George Lewis, and it is marked enough in his letters, where we encounter a long succession of unfavourable remarks. For an idolatrous literary generation, his talk about Macaulay, Hallam, Gladstone, and others, is decidedly instructive. The Land War in Ireland; a History for the Times. By JAMES GODKIN. MR. GODKIN's book is virtually a short history of Ireland, written, as history History of England, comprising the reign of Queen Anne, until the Peace of THIS is the long-expected volume which is to serve as link between the end of 1 |
