PREFACE. 3 



these facts as they appear to a highly trained 

 and competent foreign observer. 



The root idea, as it appears to me, of Dr. 

 Bonn's work is as follows : — After a careful 

 diagnosis of the existing situation, he exposes 

 in masterly fashion the absolute fatuity of the 

 Gladstonian land legislation, regarded as a settle- 

 ment of the Irish land question. The Land 

 Purchase Acts are, of course, recognised by 

 Dr. Bonn as a considerable advance, in point of 

 statesmanship ; still there are two serious draw- 

 backs to them — they are irregular in their appli- 

 cation, and thus often work extreme injustice, 

 especially to the better class of tenant-farmers ; 

 and — a more serious and fundamental vice — 

 they have placed the idea of property before 

 the Irish tenant as something which he has 

 to be bribed into acquiring, not as the goal 

 and reward of self-denial and of strenuous in- 

 dustrial effort. It, therefore, behoves those who 

 can look a little ahead of the difficulties and 

 entanglements of the present day to consider how 

 best to avert the danger that property gained in 

 such a way may produce not a bracing but a 

 slackening of industrial energy and ambition. 

 Dr. Bonn finds the one sure hope of the nation 

 in the strengthening and extension, in the widest 



