368 



GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



ings above 30 and below 50 valuation were 

 granted relief on the plan of state loans and 

 voluntary agreement with the landlords. An- 

 other amendment provided for a system of 

 state-aided emigration. 



The Lords amended the act so as to require 

 the consent of the landlord to the prescribed 

 composition, and to enjoin the commissioners 

 to count the value of the tenant-right as an 

 asset in estimating the solvency of tenants. 

 Gladstone refused to give up the principle of 

 compulsion, but compromised the question of 

 charging arrears upon the tenant-right, accept- 

 ing the Duke of Abercorn's substitution of 

 " shall " for " may " in the amendment, tacked 

 on in the Commons with limitations as to time 

 and amount, and with the qualification "so 

 far as the commissioners think it reasonable." 

 Lord Salisbury was determined to precipitate 

 a crisis, but the Conservative Peers refused to 

 follow him. The Ministers could have reas- 

 sembled Parliament, and, while demanding the 

 assent of the Upper House to the measure once 

 more, could have dissolved with a " good cry " 

 by announcing a new reform which they still 

 hold in reserve. This is a county franchise 

 bill, extending the borough suffrage to the rural 

 population. 



The Land League, as an organization, was 

 destroyed by Forster's application of the rigors 

 of the coercion laws. The force of the move- 

 ment in the form which it had taken spent it- 

 self with the settlement of the arrears question. 

 While Parliament was in debate over the ar- 

 rears bill, Michael Davitt, who had been re- 

 leased from Portland Prison a few days after 

 the enlargement of the " suspect " members, 

 propounded a new settlement of the land ques- 

 tion, which removed it, except so far as the 

 principles already embodied in legislation would 

 solve it, into the sphere of speculative politics. 

 His solution was the "nationalization of the 

 land," * a scheme deduced from the theories 

 of Henry George, the American economist, 

 who was at that time in Ireland as correspond- 

 ent for the "Irish World." This New York 

 weekly journal from the beginning of the land 

 agitation has circulated widely in Ireland, 

 clandestinely when its open sale was pre- 

 vented by the police. It was the medium for 



to have the Imperial Government expro- 

 priate the landlords, indemnifying them by the payment of 

 one half the former money value of the land, taking that to 

 be their equitable share in the ownership, according to the 

 principles of " conventional justice and prescriptive right." 

 At twenty years 1 purchase of the present rental, this would 

 be about 140,000,000. An annual revenue collected in Ire- 

 land of 7,000,000 would pay the interest at three per cent, 

 and wipe out the principal in fifty years. The annual agri- 

 cultural product of the country is now about 30.000,000 in 

 crops, and 30,000.000 more in live-stock. Fully twenty-five 

 per cent of the total is drained out of the country in the rents 

 paid to the absentee landlords. Under the more favorable 

 conditions which would result, the out-turn of vegetable 

 products would be at least doubled. He proposes to have the 

 state remain the universal landlord. A rent equal to ten per 

 cent of the value of the annual agricultural yield would amply 

 pay the entire costs of general and local government. Apart 

 from this moderate rental there would be no taxes to pay by 

 any class in the community, after the debt for the landlords 1 

 indemnity has been extinguished. 



the appeals for pecuniary assistance to the 

 American Irish, and its editor, Patrick Ford, 

 acted as agent in the remission of large sums. 

 Already powerful through its passionate advo- 

 cacy of the aims of the Land League, and for- 

 merly of the revolutionary designs, and the 

 subsequent constitutional agitation for the re- 

 peal of the Union, this Irish-American news- 

 paper, which has always represented extreme 

 views, became the organ of the Land League 

 after the authorities had gagged the Irish press. 

 The representative organ of Irish sentiment in 

 America and the purveyor of American sup- 

 port, and swaying opinion in Ireland more 

 strongly in the absence of other outspoken 

 journals, the " Irish World "* sometimes dic- 

 tated, rather than voiced, the policy of the 

 Irish leaders. This influential organ now em- 

 braced Davitt's scheme for realizing the ideas 

 of the "abolition of landlordism" and "the 

 land for the people." The Ladies' Land League 

 had been, except the Prisoners' Aid Society, 

 since the suppression of the Land League, the 

 only outward symbol of the large organization 

 which had rallied under its banner the entire 

 population of three provinces, and the majority 

 of the fourth. Mr. Forster had done all he 

 dared to destroy the ladies' association. Their 

 practical work of providing food and shelter 

 for evicted families was prohibited, and gentle- 

 women were cast in jail for erecting huts for 

 the roofless sufferers. These harsh measures 

 only aided the high-spirited Irish ladies, under 

 the leadership of Miss Anna Parnell, to keep in 

 fresh remembrance the Land League and its 

 aims. The Ladies' Land League also now de- 

 clared in favor of Davitt's project. Parnell, 

 with the other leaders, pointed out that the 

 Irish people would have to be educated in en- 

 tirely new ideas to relinquish their hopes of a 

 peasant proprietary for this theoretical scheme, 

 and that its realization would make them the 

 serfs as well as the subjects of the "alien" 



* Rossa's "United Irishman," the organ of the "dynamite 

 faction,'' was frequently quoted from in the House of Commons 

 in justification of repression; the arguments based upon the 

 extravagances of this sensational sheet were answered by the 

 Irish representatives with contemptuous sarcasms. They de- 

 clared that it found its readers chiefly among the Tory party, 

 and that " O'Donovan Eossa was as necessary to Mr. Forster 

 as Mr. Forster was to O'Donovan Eossa." They did not re- 

 pudiate the " Irish World." The " Irish Nation," founded in 

 the winter of IfcSl by John Devoy, a well-known Fenian, is as 

 revolutionary in its tendency as the " United Irishman," and 

 much more ably and eloquently written. It reflects the most 

 advanced doctrines of Irish nationalism, and condemns Da- 

 vitt's land ideas, deeming that Ireland should gain her inde- 

 pendence by physical force, but not undertake the task of 

 reforming civil society. The "Irish World" was a vehicle 

 for the teachings of German socialism before it took up Henry 

 George's agrarian theories. It has always striven to har- 

 monize its social theories with the doctrines of the Catholic 

 Church. By means of the " Spread the Light Fund," which 

 was collected in connection with the revolutionary " Skirmish- 

 ing Fund," it has been circulated gratis extensively in Ireland. 

 The Boston " Pilot," conducted by the accomplished John 

 Boyle O'Reilly, is the most moderate of the Home-Rule and 

 Land-League journals, and perhaps the ablest and most in- 

 fluential, having a circulation second to no other Catholic 

 paper in America. It advertised a reward of $5,(iOO for the 

 detection of the assassins of Lord Frederick Cavendish and 

 Mr. Burke. Its editor was formerly a participant in the at- 

 tempted Fenian revolution, and is still a nationalist, but looks 

 to Home Rule ae the stepping-stone to independence. 



