

GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



319 



Ireland or to England to work as laborers in the 

 summer time. The United Irish League, which 

 succeeded the Land League, became active and 

 the Home .Rulers in Parliament aggressive. Lord 



("adogan in April, under the crimes act of 1887, 

 >vived in 9 counties the summary jurisdiction 

 i stipendiary magistrates, special juries, and 

 lange of venue. Convictions under the coercion 

 jt were innumerable. When the Irish members 

 ent home in the parliamentary recess they took 

 te lead in the attack on the Government, and 

 were brought one after another before the resi- 

 dent magistrates for conspiracy until ten were 

 convicted without juries and sentenced to vari- 

 ous terms of imprisonment. For the first time 

 hard labor was added to the punishment and 

 they were treated as common criminals. Mr. 

 Wyndham's land bill was intended for the mu- 

 tual benefit of landlords and tenants. Its aim 

 as to accelerate the transfer of the land to the 

 tter, and hence contained a clause providing 

 that in future the land courts would not reduce 

 rents unless the tenant agrees to a purchase 

 ption. The Irish members considered it a land- 

 ord's bill, yet the landlords looked with appre- 

 ension upon a clause which gave the land com- 

 issioners power to fix prices as well as rents, 

 ales under the previous land bill decreased rap- 

 idly in four years, while fixing of rents has be- 

 come more involved and expensive. Litigation* 

 flourishes while the land is going to decay and 

 the landlords can not sell for enough to clear 

 off encumbrances. The bill, which had no chance 

 of passing unless both the landlords and the 

 Irish members accepted it, would enable a land- 

 lord desirous of selling to apply to the Land Com- 

 mission to fix a price, and if he accept it and 

 three-quarters of the tenants agree to purchase, 

 the commission advances the money and divides 

 the land among the tenantry, to be paid for in 

 instalments, reselling, if desired, the immediate 

 demesne to the landlord. Lands overcrowded 

 with tenants, with holdings less than It) acres 

 rated at less than 5 a year, lands where tenants 

 cultivated patches in different places, and moun- 

 tain and bog lands Mr. Wyndham proposed to 

 treat as congested districts and to buy and re- 

 apportion the land at a loss to the Government. 

 When tenants on an estate apply to have a fair 

 rent fixed the Land Commission would value the 

 estate, if the owner is willing to sell, and if the 

 tenants are unwilling to purchase with the aid 

 of Government advances they must continue to 

 pay the rent they have been paying for fifteen 

 yeaYs longer and are . charged with the costs. 

 Mr. Wyndham, who had endeavored to follow 

 Gerald Balfour's policy of killing Home Rule 

 with kindness, refrained from proclaiming the 

 Land League a dangerous association and at- 

 mpting to suppress it with the powers the 

 imes act gave, which no Government had at- 

 mpted to apply to their full extent, was con- 

 strained to proclaim more districts when Ireland 

 was inflamed by the Nationalist orators more 

 widely than ever was known, even in Leinster 

 and Munster. In September he made Dublin 

 one of the proclaimed districts and prohibited 

 iiiblic meetings in that city, not because any vio- 

 ence occurred there, but because that was the 

 ieadquarters of the agitation and, unless he 

 grasped the despotic powers of coercion, the in- 

 violable asylum of the agitators. Although the 

 land courts had twice reduced rents, there was 

 much distress in the western and southern coun- 

 ties, of which the confusion and litigation arising 

 from the land laws was a contributory cause. 

 The purchase clauses had failed because the ma- 



jority of the gentry -were as loath to give up their 

 ancestral estates as the peasantry were to leave 

 their bit of land, even when landlord and tenant 

 were both insolvent and plunging deeper into 

 debt. Some of the landlords proposed a confer- 

 ence for the settlement of the land question by 

 agreement with the tenants and their advocates. 

 The Chief Secretary approved the suggestion of 

 a mutual agreement without committing himself 

 in regard to the unexplained basis of the settle- 

 ment. Ireland has long been paying an unequal 

 share of the imperial taxes, the amount of the 

 excess having been estimated in the report of the 

 commission on financial relations. The Irish of 

 all parties have demanded a readjustment of 

 taxation and are not satisfied with the reply 

 that Ireland has a proportionately larger repre- 

 sentation in Parliament. The hundreds of mil- 

 lions that Ireland has inequitably been made to 

 contribute to the imperial treasury beyond her 

 true share seems to the Irish a debt due from 

 Great Britain which ought to be repaid in some 

 way. In the parts of Ireland where agrarian 

 troubles are chronic, though rents are reduced 

 every fifteen years, bankrupting the owners of 

 the encumbered estates, yet the tenants are still 

 impoverished, and the land, left undrained, un- 

 fertilized, stripped of its trees, is constantly de- 

 teriorating. Representatives and friends of the 

 debt-ridden landlords thought that the British 

 Government, through whose interference they 

 had become financially ruined, should make them 

 whole by buying their estates at the former rent- 

 ing value and place the peasants on a safe finan- 

 cial footing by reselling the land to them at its 

 actual productive value. On such a basis most 

 of the landlords would agree to compulsory sale, 

 but not the great proprietors like the Duke of 

 Abercorn and the Marquis of Londonderry. The 

 Irish Nationalist party was unanimous in de- 

 manding the compulsory expropriation of the 

 landlords in whatever way and the creation of a 

 proprietary peasantry on terms fair to the peas- 

 ants. The evictions on the De Freyne estate 

 were carried out. The Land Leaguers prevented 

 the vacant farms from being taken for grazing 

 purposes and broke up the practise of shopkeep- 

 ers in many Irish towns who made a profitable 

 speculation in renting grass lands each year to 

 fatten stock for market. Some of the landlords 

 met in a convention and raised a fund to assist 

 and protect persons attacked or threatened by 

 boycotting, blackmailing, or intimidation. The 

 law of conspiracy under a new interpretation 

 brought to prison many speakers who threatened 

 to make those who opposed them uncomfortable 

 and miserable even by means which they them- 

 selves considered moral and lawful. Col. Arthur 

 Lynch, who commanded an Irish legion that 

 fought on the side of the Boers in South Africa, 

 was elected to Parliament in Galway when the 

 war ended. As soon as he landed on British soil 

 he was arrested on the charge of high treason. 

 Boycotting in the form of exclusive dealing with 

 shopkeepers in towns and with others who did 

 not join the United Irish League was the prin- 

 cipal ground on which members of Parliament 

 and of the county and borough councils were sen- 

 tenced for criminal conspiracy to imprisonment 

 with hard labor, which deprives them of civil 

 rights for five years. Most of >the newspapers of 

 the country were suppressed for printing lists of 

 those who had joined the league and those who 

 had not. The civil court in Dublin gave dam- 

 ages, which a special jury fixed at a high figure, 

 to a small trader who sued several members of 

 the United Irish League for ruining his business 



