carrying out a policy the nature and effect of which he described. The main portion of his property has for many generations been held on lease, and Lord Dufferin has successfully striven to keep it free from tenant-right. He bought up many claims of this nature, and has let almost the whole of his property on a lease-drafted by the present Attorney-General for Ireland and Mr. Andrews, Q.C., another well-known 'tenant-right' lawyer-which establishes relations of pure contract between the owner and the occupier, with a debtor and creditor account of improvements, and with permission to the tenant to sell his interest under the lease, but nothing more. Lord Dufferin is of opinion that if the law secures him his existing rights his money has been well spent, and that the relations established between landlord and tenant are the best for both parties. At any rate he has from time to time resumed or retained, in a manner the equity of which cannot be contested, the whole of the rights ordinarily divided between the owner and the occupier in Ulster. He has parted with strictly defined portions of those rights to his present tenants on terms satisfactory to them, and he would of course contend that his interests ought not on the termination of the existing leases to become subject to the system he has laboured to eradicate and keep off his property. There is no doubt that at present a tenant holding under one of Lord Dufferin's leases has neither a legal nor a moral claim to anything outside the four corners of that contract. But it is probable that under the new law-in spite of a dubious provision in the 47th clause-the occupiers, at the expiration of their leases, will drop into the position of future tenants,' with all the advantages of Ulster tenant-right. The money spent in carrying out the policy thus defeated by legislation, which certainly could not have been forecast even a few years ago, will be in that case lost beyond recovery.

4. Lastly, there are the estates managed on what is called the English system, on which the whole of the cost of maintenance and improvement has been borne by the landlord, so that the tenant has precisely as much or as little claim to tenant-right as an English farmer dealing with the land he rents on ordinary commercial principles. The Government allege that there are few if any estates of this description in Ireland, but they admit that there are some, and that they have a claim to exceptional treatment, by the provision exempting holdings maintained and improved by the landlord from thefair rent' clause. It is contended by Mr. Richey and others that this security is altogether untrustworthy. Free sale, at any rate, is to be allowed on these estates, although the Prime Minister has recognised the danger of its eating up' the landlord's improvements. An amendment to the first clause of the Bill exempting such estates from the 'free sale' provisions was moved by Mr. Heneage, a Liberal member, on the 16th of June, and rejected by a majority of twenty-five only, in a full House. But as the Bill stands, the landlord in these cases also is thrown back upon the raising of rent as the

only means of keeping down the invading growth of the tenant-right. Lord Leconfield and Mr. Mahony, two landlords whose estates are models in their kind, have declared that their position will be thus rendered intolerable. As Mr. Mahony forcibly puts it, if the exemption of English-managed estates be refused

there is but one other alternative whereby Government can avoid inflicting a most cruel injustice. They should buy out such owners at a fair price without putting them to the prolonged torture of canvassing the occupiers until they find three-fourths ready to purchase. To men who have seen civilisation evolved out of barbarism under their hands, and cannot but feel attached to the scenes that have cost them many a sacrifice, such a clause is like an order to collect fuel for the holocaust to be made of their Penates. Let Government, at least, avoid this unnecessary refinement of cruelty towards people who have ever done them more good than harm.

It is scarcely possible that in such cases as these—and there are several others that might be mentioned on all fours with them, or at any rate closely analogous-the Prime Minister will continue to assert that no injury is done, and that no compensation is due. A dubious promise has been given that some of the above cases will be considered by the Government before the Bill passes through committee, but up to the present date (June 24) no provision has been inserted to satisfy a claim the justice of which cannot be disputed. But if such an admission be made, what becomes of the comprehensive and emphatic denial that there is any approach to confiscation in the Bill'?

In the typical cases cited above, even Mr. Chamberlain would hesitate to assert that the landlord's rights which will be impaired or abrogated by the Bill are inequitable and ought to be subject to penal confiscation. Here indeed equity and legality are absolutely at one. The interests of the landlord and the tenant are merged in the property which is menaced. But even if Mr. Chamberlain's dangerous proposition be rejected, as it must be by all except revolutionary politicians, there are an infinity of cases in which the landlord's preexisting legal rights must suffer by the proposed recognition of the tenant's 'goodwill,' hitherto denied, and by no one more strongly than by Mr. Gladstone himself. Regarded sentimentally, these cases will be variously judged, but from a political point of view they all stand upon the same ground. If a landlord is to be compensated by the State, it is not because he is an estimable person or has made a good use of his power, but because the law takes away from him rights which the law acknowledged, encouraged, and fortified until now.

Those who contend that tenant-right, though not recognised by law, has always existed, and ought always to have been treated by landlords as a fact, may deny that in the following instances the landlords have to complain of any real hardship. But it must be remembered that the whole legal right has been hitherto in the landlord, and it is the legal right which must be considered in the matter of compensation. Setting aside the cases already enumerated, Irish estates-I am speaking of Leinster, Munster, and

Connaught only-may be divided into those lightly rented and those rented up to or approaching the full commercial level.

1. Let us look first at the lightly rented estates. The advocates of the Land Bill contend that on these the margin between the existing rent and the full competition rent amounts simply to the recognition by the landlord of the tenant-right now to be legalised. I cannot enter here into the discussion of the fair rent' clause, of which Mr. Gladstone has admitted the Government have no reason to be proud, and which has been materially altered. I am content to assume, for argument's sake, that Mr. Forster and the AttorneyGeneral are right when they assert that on such estates the fair rent will not at any rate fall below the existing level. But the landlord's right hitherto to raise those low rents being indisputable, it is clear that his liberality involves something more than recognition of the tenant's interest. It has secured for him a reserve of influence and power, political popularity, social amenities, control over the culture of the estate and over the character of the tenants. Sometimes the maintenance of a low rent is, in fact, only the landlord's way of contributing to improvements, and this spread over many years may amount to a large sum. But under the system of free sale the tenant will be enabled, unless some special means of prevention are adopted-and all suggestions of this nature have been repelled to sell off the whole capitalised value of the margin and destroy the landlord's existing legal right to all that it represents. The Prime Minister himself appears to have felt that something more than a bare legal right has in such cases to be considered. In his speech on the introduction of the Bill he said :

If the landlord does not wish to break the tradition of his property, but keeps the rent below the fair rent, it is only right that he should not in that case have his property eaten up by the tenant-right.

But the Bill contains no provision for protecting the landlord except his penalised power of raising the rent, which is the very thing he would, in the case stated, be most unwilling to do. As Mr. William Fowler has justly observed :—

The result of these proposals will probably be the disturbance of the relations of landlord and tenant on the very estates where those relations are now the most satisfactory. This cannot have been intended. No one, however suspicious of landlords, would wish that the kindest of their class should receive the worst treatment, and we must expect them to do what they can to avoid a heavy loss which is not of their own making, and for which no compensation has been proposed.

2. Turning, finally, to the case of properties on which the rent approaches the full competition level, it appears to be avowed by the Government-it is advanced, indeed, as a matter of boasting-that the 7th clause will greatly reduce the rent by giving due consideration to the tenant's good-will. Rack-renting landlords neither find nor deserve much popular sympathy, but their claims to be compensated for the oss of what they have hitherto enjoyed by law cannot be made depen

dent on their moral or social excellence. They have an undoubted legal right to raise their rents; and if Parliament interferes to reduce those rents for the benefit of the tenants, they have precisely the same right to be compensated that any other owner of property would have if his rights were impaired by legislation. Whether the title of the tenants to the newly discovered tenant-right be sound or notand it is vain to discuss a point which will be settled conclusively by Act of Parliament-the claim of the landlord to compensation is not affected. The majority of the landlords, however, on whose property rents are high, can plead not only the legal recognition of their right, but the complicity of Parliament and the Executive Government in the alleged abuse of them. Mr. Gladstone himself has emphatically stated that the purchasers in the Landed Estates Court were ‘encouraged' by law, and, it may be added, were even expressly invited by the Court, to raise rents without consideration for the tenant's interest. Capitalists were urged to invest in Irish land on the faith of a Parliamentary title, and not only had they no warning that tenantright was to be recognised, but they had in view its explicit refusal in the Acts of 1860 and 1870. Even in the most extreme cases, therefore, the owners of highly rented estates, in demanding compensation, can call upon Parliament to show why the express and implied guarantees of former law and practice should now be set aside to their disadvantage.

In the foregoing cases I have referred only to the direct abrogation of existing legal rights under the Bill. It is unnecessary to go into the question of consequential damage, or to discuss at any length the indirect compensation which the Bill, it is alleged, will give the landlords. Compensation' of this sort the landlords who look with despair on their future position in Ireland may well reject, as insult added to injury. It would be as fair to offer Lord Lansdowne or Lord Dufferin an inscription upon the Grand Livre' of Honduras or Costa Rica, as to tell them that the change in their position will afford them greater security for their rents and an improved market for their land if they desire to sell it. Even if rents are to be lowered, it is said, they will be more readily recoverable under free sale. But, as Sir William Gregory has pertinently asked, where is the proof of this?

At present the tenant refuses to pay, and, if evicted, takes the life of his successor. Will he be more patient under the provisions of this Bill? Will he submit to be sold out, to have arrears deducted from the payments made by the incomer, and to hand over his farm to a stranger? The leaders of the Land League have already answered this question clearly and explicitly.

The expectation that the price of land will increase, as it did to a small extent after the Act of 1870, is equally idle. Judge Flanagan, of the Landed Estates Court, explained in his evidence before the Select Committee of 1878, that, taking into account the rise in agricultural prices, the increase in the value of land was retarded, not quickened, from 1870 onwards. Moreover, it is certain that

the pledges of finality then given encouraged capital to investment. No such confidence can be evoked again. Once bitten, twice shy,' is the motto of the investor, and in point of fact it is understood by all concerned that the only market for land in Ireland henceforward will be that in which the buyers will be the tenants, and the sellers. the landlords. To theorists like Mr. Shaw Lefevre this prospect appears to be one which ought to attract and delight the landlords, and to satisfy them that the Bill is intended for their good. Unfortunately it is manifest that the Land Commission can purchase on behalf of the tenants only when the latter have agreed to buy and to give a certain price. They will have profited little by the teachings of the Land League if they are in haste to purchase on reasonable terms. In the present confusion, with mortgagees foreclosing and creditors of all sorts pressing upon impoverished landlords, the tenants may well afford to wait, and if the Bill remains unaltered, the time cannot be far off when the estates must come into the market for anything they will fetch. These are the benefits which, it is urged, ought to be thankfully accepted by the landlords. Even if they were not evidently illusory, it would be ridiculous to put them seriously forward in satisfaction of the claims to compensation for interference with legal rights. The familiar tale of Cyrus, the big boy, the little boy, and the two coats, is not undeserving of the attention of Ministers who seem to think that justice can be done by taking away rights here, and giving advantages there, in the peremptory fashion of a Haroun Al-Raschid.

The infinite variety of the cases which must arise if the Land Bill passes is, doubtless, a strong argument against any plan that a tribunal or body of arbitrators should assess compensation for the landlords' losses. The simplest method of dealing with the landlords' claims is that suggested by Lord Lansdowne, which does not greatly differ from Mr. Mill's proposal thirteen years ago. The question requires further discussion, which, in spite of Mr. Chamberlain's petulant refusal to listen to it, it will receive probably in both Houses of Parliament, and certainly in one. But if the principle be frankly accepted, and it is not easy to see how it can be resisted to the last by responsible statesmen, the details will not be difficult. to settle. It would be a national calamity if, in hot haste to patch up the Irish difficulty by concessions which the tenants and their Parliamentary spokesmen reject, the Legislature should abandon its hold upon the chief practical security in a democratic country against what Mr. Gladstone has himself called schemes of public plunder.' It is not difficult to persuade the masses, when they have political power in their hands, that it is a good thing to take or meddle with other people's property. It is an excellent check upon reckless experiments of this kind that those who undertake them should know that they must pay for them.

EDWARD D. J. WILSON.