EESTRICTIONS ON THE ALIENATION Of LANDS. 



Irish Land Bills in this respect. Some of its provisions will not do 

 what is expected of them. Others will meet with a surprising and 

 unexpected vogue. That is the fate of all experimental legislation ; 

 and that we are making a great experiment I for one have never denied. 

 Given the desirability of making it, which I have already argued, 

 the utmost that we can do is, as far as possible, to anticipate every 

 likely consequence, and to graft upon it the wisdom of the most expert 

 intelligence. 



There are some features in the Bill upon which I admit that the 

 arguments are very evenly balanced. It has been said, for instance, 

 t'mt we have drawn the restrictions too tight, that the phrase ' agricul- 

 turist ' is too narrow and inelastic a term, and that there should be 

 no restriction upon dealings between members of that class. I am 

 not insensible of the danger of unduly narrowing the market for the 

 compulsory vendor, or again of excluding as a purchaser the bonafide 

 cultivator who may not happen to fall within the agriculturist defi- 

 nition. But, on the whole, I think that in these respects we have 

 gone as far as prudence and the main principles of our legislation 

 allow. The embarrassed land-owner should find a sufficiently wide 

 market within the limits of his tribal group; while the category 

 of agriculturists is, as has been shown, neither so rigid nor so exclu- 

 sive as has sometimes been assumed. Money-lenders are inside as 

 well as outside it ; nor need the credit of the debtor be permanently 

 impaired for lack of a partner to the desired transaction. 



As regards the future of this legislation, I will not be so rash as 

 to prophesy. I should be treading upon too uncertain ground. One 

 thing only I will predict, namely, that the gloomy forebodings of its 

 opponents will not be realised. The case for the Opposition, as I 

 may call it, has been stated upon a previous occasion in this Council, 

 and again to-day, as well as in a printed Minute of Dissent, by the 

 HON'BLE SIR, HARNAM SINGH. If we are to believe the opinions 

 which he has expressed or recorded at different stages, and I quote 

 his actual words, the majority of the peasant-proprietors of the Punjab 

 are to be reduced by this Bill to a state of serfdom worse than that of 

 the Middle Ages; it is to be followed by the impoverishment of 

 millions of men living upon the soil; it is to doom the people to 

 perpetual misery, and to destroy their happiness and contentment ; 

 British prestige will be rudely shaken ; agricultural credit will be 



