GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



363 



erated funds to apply them to current expenses, 

 lie proposed to replace the short annuities by 

 long annuities, terminable in 1906, by which 

 60,000,000 of the principal of the public debt 

 could be cleared off. During 1880-'81 a total 

 reduction of debt, amounting to about 7,000,- 

 000, had been effected. This, the eleventh budg- 

 et brought in by Gladstone, he declared would 

 probably be his last. 



At the time of the introduction of the Irish 

 Land Act, the Duke of Argyll resigned his 

 position in the Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal, on 

 account of provisions in the bill which, he 

 considered, put the ownership of Irish property 

 in commission and abeyance. He was suc- 

 ceeded by Lord Carlingford. 



The Irish Land Bill was introduced April 

 7th. Mr. Gladstone, in explaining the minis- 

 terial measure, denied that it was the iniquity 

 of the Irish land laws which rendered it neces- 

 sary, stating that these differed only from the 

 English laws in being more favorable to the 

 tenant. Neither did he believe that the con- 

 duct of the main body of Irish landlords called 

 for legislative interference ; most of them ab- 

 stain from exacting all that they can under the 

 law. The land hunger, or land scarcity, in Ire- 

 land, aggravated by recent bad seasons, and the 

 harsh conduct of a limited number of landlords 

 in demanding unjust rents and enforcing them 

 by cruel evictions, were stated to be the 

 grounds for legislation. The land act of 1870 

 had proved defective, but it had re-established 

 tenant-rights, of the same nature as those which 

 prevailed before the establishment of the pres- 

 ent land system, and which are cherished in the 

 traditions of the Irish people. The principle 

 of tenant-right, however much denounced as 

 joint proprietorship, is recognized in the laws 

 of Great Britain and of the other countries 

 of Europe. The fact that improvements are 

 generally made by tenants in Ireland, and not 

 by landlords as elsewhere, rendered it nec- 

 essary, in the interests of justice, that these 

 rights should be enlarged and protected. Tne 

 claims of justice could only be satisfied by in- 

 troducing the three reforms demanded in the 

 popular agitation fair rent, fixity of tenure, 

 and free sale. Free sale, or the right of the 

 tenant to assign his interest in the land, al- 

 though the one of the three innovations which 

 is the most completely in accord with modern 

 notions of property, has been more objected to 

 than the others. This right is the more valu- 

 able to the tenant, not only by reason of the 

 general land-hunger, but owing to the demand 

 for holdings, springing from motives of fancy 

 or sentiment, as by emigrants returning from 

 America. A land court was considered in- 

 dispensable for the adjustment of the respective 

 equities of landlords and tenants. Of the seven 

 majority and minority reports of the Bess- 

 borough and Richmond Commissions, one ap- 

 pointed by the late and one by the present 

 Government, to investigate the Irish land ques- 

 tion, all but one agree in recommending the 



establishment of such a court. The bill pro- 

 vides for the creation of a court which is to 

 take cognizance of rent, of tenure, and of as- 

 signment. It is an optional court, to which all 

 tenants throughout Ireland have access, but 

 not the landlords. The latter are not given 

 direct access to the court, on the ground that 

 they could force tenants into litigation, and by 

 the possession of this power could extort spe- 

 cial agreements as to rent. The great diver- 

 sity of conditions under which land is leased 

 in Ireland rendered it, in Gladstone's opinion, 

 undesirable, as well as difficult, to introduce 

 uniform regulations governing all yearly ten- 

 ancies, or to establish a compulsory court to 

 review the relations of landlord and tenant 

 when not invoked. There is no agricultural 

 country in the world the face of which is so 

 seamed with variety as Ireland. You have 

 to begin with all the usual varieties, and then 

 you have many varieties which are exclu- 

 sively Irish. You have the grazing and the 

 village farm, the largo holding and the small, 

 the large proprietors and the small, the land- 

 lord absent and the landlord resident; you 

 have the improvements made sometimes by 

 the tenant and sometimes by the landlord, for 

 there are in Ireland, what in Ireland are called 

 in the strictest sense, improving landlords; 

 yon have the leaseholds, the annual tenancies, 

 the care-takers of land, lands in conacre and 

 lands in rundale; you have the lands over- 

 rented through the operation of the great land 

 hunger; you have the lands under-rented 

 through the traditions of many estates, and in 

 certain cases through the desire, and perhaps 

 with the express purpose, of excluding tenant- 

 right and assignment; you have the old-fash- 

 ioned Irish landlord and the new-fashioned 

 Irish landlord, and though the old-fashioned 

 Irish landlord was not an impeccable being, 

 yet many of his sins toward his tenant were 

 sins of omission rather than of commission, and 

 in some respects he would bear a not unfavor- 

 able comparison with the new-fashioned land- 

 lord. " You have land under middle-men, and 

 you have land without middle-men ; you have 

 leases in perpetuity, and, above all, the preva- 

 lence of local customs, which have taken deep 

 root in the country, and which, in my opinion, 

 we should incur a very heavy responsibility by 

 gratuitously endeavoring to wipe away from 

 the face of the land. All these are strong 

 reasons for making it optional to the tenant 

 to consider whether he shall go into court or 

 whether he shall not." 



The Land Commission created by the act is empow- 

 ered, when called upon bv a tenant, to determine a fair 

 rent for the holding. The judicial rent thus estab- 

 lished can not be raised within the statutory term of 

 fifteen years, nor can the tenant be evicted except for 

 non-payment of rent, or for waste, subletting his 

 farm, or other breaches of the statutory conditions. 

 The tenant may at his option apply to the county 

 court judge to fix a fair rent, or it may bo settled by 

 agreement with the landlord, or by arbitration ; and, 

 when it is fixed by either of these methods or by de- 

 cree of the Land Court, ho obtains the statutory term 



