336 



GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



The armament consists of four 13^-inch 67-ton 

 breech-loading guns, eight 5-inch breech-load- 

 ers, six 36-pounder quick-firing guns, and 

 eleven 3 pounder Hotchkiss guns, besides 

 machine-guns, boat and field guns, and twenty- 

 four Whitehead torpedoes. The turret-guns 

 will fire projectiles weighing 1,250 pounds, 

 with a powder charge of 630 pounds, and will 

 train through an angle of 270. The 5-inch 

 guns will be mounted on the upper deck be- 

 tween the turrets. Of the eight torpedo-tubes, 

 four are above and four below the water-line. 

 A sister ship, the " Nile," is building at Pem- 

 broke, and is likely to be the last of the British 

 monster iron-clads. 



The Irish Land Commission. The Tory Govern- 

 ment, after assuming power in 1886, appointed 

 a royal commission, under the presidency of 

 Earl Gowper, to take evidence in relation to 

 the working of the land act of 1881, and to 

 make recommendations regarding the removal 

 of the evils existing in Ireland. General Sir 

 Redvers Buller, who had been sent to Ireland 

 to take charge of the constabulary, was exam- 

 ined before the commission on November 11, 

 1886. He said that in the counties of Kerry, 

 Clare, and a part of Cork, which was the dis- 

 trict of which he had special knowledge, rents 

 were fairly well paid, but were not paid in 

 some localities because they were too high. 

 Tenants were anxious to pay when they could 

 get reasonable allowances. In some localities 

 there was an organized stand against existing 

 rents, but it was the pressure of high rent that 

 produced the agitation and intimidation against 

 the payment of rents. Judicial rents were fixed 

 in a summary, general way, and, although they 

 might have been fair at the time, can not be 

 paid now. When asked if he could suggest 

 any remedy, General Buller proposed that the 

 courts should have discretion to withhold or- 

 ders of eviction, and that a court of asses- 

 sors should be created for each county which 

 should have power to lower or raise rents at 

 any time according to a sliding scale of prices. 

 The commissioners in their report recognized 

 a fall in agricultural prices which reduced the 

 value of farming capital 1 8$ per cent, for the 

 last two years, as compared with the four 

 years preceding. The majority of the com- 

 missioners recommended a revision of judicial 

 rents every five years, the reduction or en- 

 hancement to be determined by the change of 

 prices, and not by a revaluation of the land. 

 Justice O'Hagan and other members of the 

 commission thought that lease-holders ought 

 to be admitted to the benefit of the land act, 

 and have changes made in their rents if the 

 land commission or county court judge should 

 consider that their cases required a modifica- 

 tion of the terms of their leases. The com- 

 missioners spoke emphatically in favor of emi- 

 gration for the relief of the congested districts. 



The Round Table. In the spring, when the 

 Conservative ministers were preparing to en- 

 ter on a new campaign of coercion in Ireland, 



which the Liberal Unionists of the Radical fac- 

 tion were not ready to support, Mr. Chamber- 

 lain repeated the sentiments he had formerly 

 expressed in favor of granting a large measure 

 of home-rule to Ireland. The Liberals, in re- 

 sponse to bis overtures, intimated that a modi- 

 fication of Mr. Gladstone's scheme was not out 

 of the question. A conference was arranged, 

 and Lord Herschel, Sir William Harcourt, and 

 Mr. Morley, on the part of the Gladstonians, 

 and Mr. Chamberlain and Sir George Trevel- 

 yan on the part of the Liberal Unionists, dis- 

 cussed a compromise plan for Ireland. Lord 

 Hartington refused to commit himself before- 

 hand. The " round-table " conferences were 

 held in secret, and went on smoothly, but had 

 not accomplished much toward harmonizing 

 Mr. Gladstone's national plan with Mr. Cham- 

 berlain's scheme for local self-government, 

 when the latter, in public speeches and in a 

 letter published in an organ called "The Bap- 

 tist," declared that reunion was impossible 

 while the Gladstonian Liberals encouraged 

 crime in Ireland and obstruction in Parlia- 

 ment. Sir William Harcourt and his friends 

 thereupon broke off the conferences, throwing 

 the blame of their failure on Mr. Chamberlain. 

 Mr. Gladstone, in a speech made at Swansea, 

 offered to treat every point in his home-rule 

 scheme as open to discussion. The Liberal 

 Unionists replied that they could not be satis- 

 fied with vague assurances and undefined con- 

 cessions which were governed by the condi- 

 tion that the settlement must be satisfactory 

 to the Parnellites. 



Sir George Trevelyan, who had before a 

 Unionist meeting at Aberdeen expressed the 

 opinion that the Irish question must be dealt 

 with " radically and remedially," and could be 

 settled only by a reunited Liberal party, was 

 unwilling to follow the Tories in a policy of 

 repression, and after the conferences joined 

 the Gladstonians. In July he was returned to 

 Parliament by one of the divisions of Glasgow. 



The Plan of Campaign. The rejection of Mr. 

 Parnell's bill for the relief of tenants whose 

 condition was still intolerable, notwithstanding 

 the land act, was followed by the adoption by 

 the National League of a " plan of campaign " 

 against rack-renting and tyrannical landlords. 

 It was first published in " United Ireland," on 

 October 23, 1886. Messrs. Dillon, O'Brien, 

 and other members of the Irish party, who ex- 

 plained the plan of campaign and urged its 

 adoption in public speeches during the autumn 

 of 1886, were arrested and tried in Dublin on 

 a charge of conspiracy. The judge's charge 

 declared the plan of campaign to be a criminal 

 conspiracy, yet the trial ended with a disagree- 

 ment of the jury on February 24, 1887, and the 

 discontinuance of the proceedings. After this 

 result the plan of campaign was widely car- 

 ried into practice. It consists in the National 

 League's acting as attorney for the tenants. 

 Officers of the local branches receive the rent 

 from the tenants on a rack-rented estate, and 



