he. He has a chance of success now that he could never have foreseen, and which may never return.

Mr. Gladstone's desertion of the broad road of national Liberalism for the narrow path of party Radicalism has given Mr. Bright an authority in his crusade he could never have got without it. He and his friends now feel that the fulness of time is come. They have only to use with energy the weapons put into their hands by their new ally, and the destruction of their enemy is only a matter of time.

I am one of those who think that the greatest danger to the future of the United Kingdom is the very limited number of landowners. Any tinkering of the land laws, therefore, that perpetuates and intensifies this danger is an act of legislative madness. But this is exactly what the Land Act does in Ireland. It makes the further subdivision of land almost impossible.

Ireland requires three distinct remedies, and of these the first is by far the most important. (1) A larger number of landowners. (2) An improved class of tenants. (3) Emigration from starvation districts. The introduction of the Land Act offered the opportunity of introducing all three; the operation of the Land Act has unfortunately made all three impossible. It has closed the doors, absolutely, to the only remedies that can, in my opinion, save the country from impending ruin. Before Mr. Gladstone introduced his fatal Bill the landlords of Ireland were willing and anxious to sell at a fair price, and the tenants and general public were willing and anxious to purchase at a fair price. Wisdom would have assisted this movement, folly and vanity have completely stopped it. The landowners are as willing and as anxious to sell as ever-more so; but what tenant will buy? A year ago a transfer of property might have been made on a scale that would have changed the face of the country. Now that is impossible. What tenant will now buy his farm when

F

already he has a lease of it at a rent that enables him to sell his tenant-right almost for the fee simple of the land? What outsider will buy the land now, when he has to take it without the rights of property, when, indeed, whatever rights remain are strictly settled on the tenant? When he sees before him the utter ruin that has come on those who, trusting to the assurances of the Government, purchased land under the Encumbered Estates Act? How can a new and improving class of tenants ever hope to get land whilst they have to pay the present monstrous exaggeration of tenant-right? What prospect is there of persuading the miserable population of the 'starvation' districts of Ireland to seek more fruitful soils, now that their childishland hunger' is gratified by a perpetual tenancy of their 'pauper-warrens'?

The Irish Land Act in its present form is the most hasty, ill-considered, least statesman-like act of legislation that has ever passed through Parliament; and it must fail, absolutely and completely. It must fail, because it deliberately cancels all the conditions that civilisation recognises as indispensable in the relations between man and man. Because it does for Ireland those things it ought not to do, and leaves undone those things it ought to do. Because it stops the sale of land and perpetuates pauper and embarrassed landowners. Because it bars the way to new and improving tenants, and perpetuates bad and indifferent ones. Because it stops emigration where emigration is the only remedy. Because it perpetuates a privileged class of tenants at the expense of the rest of the nation. Because it legislates for the people of Ireland as if they were children unable to take care of themselves, and imposes on them conditions of national life that are insulting and intolerable. Because the Irish nation see through the insincerity of the Radical vote. Because they know that the destruction of the class of landowners in England and Scotland was a much stronger inducement to them to vote the Bill than the good of Ireland. Because it poisons the national life, for no

national life can be healthy in which the exercise of the right of property and of freedom of contract are forbidden. Because for a term of fifteen years it throws the whole land of Ireland into Chancery, during which time it will belong absolutely to no one, neither to landlord nor tenant, but rather more to the latter than the former.

I say deliberately that this Land Act of Mr. Gladstone, instead of strengthening the union between England and Ireland, supplies by far the strongest argument yet adduced for repealing it, because it proclaims openly that Ireland cannot exist in union with England under the conditions that are universally recognised as necessary to the progress and prosperity of civilised mankind. The Emperor Akbar used to say, 'He never knew a man lose himself in a straight road.' I ask any one who has watched the hesitating, vacillating, absolutely contradictory policy of those who have pretended to rule Ireland during the last two years, and who are still feeling their way like a blind man with a stick, whether it does not appear that we have left the straight road of common sense and national duty, and are fast losing ourselves in a labyrinth of experiments, expediency, and class legislation ?

XIV.

THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

If it is a fact that the House of Lords is acting strictly within its constitutional rights in appointing a Committee to examine into the administration of the Irish Land Act, it is evident the House of Commons has exceeded its constitutional rights in censuring it for doing so.

Of course, there have been many instances in which the administration of the Executive Government has been attacked in the House of Lords; but on every such occasion the Government of the day has been content to invite the House of Commons to support it against the

House of Lords. This was essentially the nature of Lord John Russell's resolution of March 15, 1839. The words of the resolution were: 'That it is the opinion of this House that it is expedient to persevere in those principles which have guided the Executive Government of late years, and which have tended to the effectual administration of the law and the general improvement of that part of the kingdom.' There is actually not one single precedent for the Government asking the House of Commons to pass a vote of censure on the House of Lords. To Mr. Gladstone undoubtedly belongs the honour of having inaugurated this policy of combat.

And what reason is there in this particular case to alter the unwritten law that has hitherto regulated the relations between the two Houses of Parliament ?

I do not allow that because the action of the House of Lords has enabled the Liberal party in the House of Commons to gain a party victory, that therefore the Liberal party is right and the House of Lords wrong. I believe that, in the present hyper-sensitive condition of the political nerves, the votes of the Liberal party do not on all occasions very exactly represent their true opinions. I do not think there ever was a time when party coercion. was so strong; when it would be less convenient to the Liberal party to lay bare their political consciences.

If Cicero's aspiration, that every man should have written on his forehead what he really thought of the affairs of the State,' could be realised, the handwriting on many Liberal foreheads, on the questions of the Transvaal, the Land Act, the Bradlaugh case, the Clôture, the vote of censure on the House of Lords, would give a startling contradiction to many votes.

Now, let us see what the House of Lords has done. The landowners of Ireland-a numerous, loyal, influential, and responsible class of the community-complain to a man that the Land Act is being unjustly administered ; that they are being ruined; they say the sub-commis

sioners are inefficient, are partisans, that they have reduced the rents indiscriminately to Griffith's valuation, without inquiry and without examination.

They say that Griffith's valuation, in 1852, was made just after the 'great famine,' when agriculture had suffered from a cycle of very bad years. That it was made for the purposes of taxation, and was never intended as a standard of rent; that Sir Richard Griffith stated that an increase of one-third, or 33 per cent., on his valuation would be a fair agricultural rent;' that since 1852 the value of Irish agricultural produce has risen over 50 per cent.; that the last two years are the best Irish agriculture has ever had; that, therefore, for the sub-commissioners to reduce the rents now all round to Griffith's valuation is manifestly unjust and absurd. This is the case of the Irish landowners.

The Government say: 'We do not deny that we distinctly and repeatedly assured the Irish landowners that they should not be ruined; we do not deny there is apparent, perhaps real, injustice in the administration of the Act; we merely reply that we will make no inquiries and entertain no complaints.' To this the House of Lords reply: We have satisfied ourselves that great injustice has been committed in the administration of the Act. We think that the Government are bound to inquire into these complaints; but as they decline to do so, we will undertake the duty: we have the constitutional right to make the inquiry, and we will do so.'

This is what the House of Lords have done; and this is what has brought down on their heads the thunderbolts from Olympus!

But the House of Lords can very much strengthen their case. They can urge that this Act is in every way a novelty, an experiment without parallel or precedent. There is nothing like it in any code of jurisprudence in the world it is founded on principles the very reverse of those that have hitherto been considered indispensable to