i62 THE IRISH AGRARIAN PROBLEM. 



necessary one. As a product of the fierce 

 political strife which followed upon the neglect 

 of centuries — a strife in which political power and 

 not social reform was the main object — it has 

 been now hurried, now belated in its execution. 

 The vanity of the statesman who would see 

 Ireland pacified in his four years' term of office, 

 and the calculations of the tactician who feared 

 to drop from his hand the weapon of agrarian 

 agitation, have had more influence on it than has 

 the zeal of the true reformer. Irish nationalism 

 has utilized the agrarian war of classes to win 

 the Irish people for the national idea. It has 

 succeeded. It has defeated and finally expro- 

 priated the most influential section of the former 

 English colonists of Ireland — the landed gentry. 

 The Wyndham Act has essentially rounded off 

 this process. Through this agrarian war the 

 national question became for a time a class 

 question. Now, when the Irish tenants have 

 had conditions assured to them more favourable 

 than any other tenantry in the world enjoy, the 

 national question must lose this colouring. The 

 bought-out landlord remains in his residence 

 which he has mortgaged to the State at 2f per 

 cent. He has no further cause of friction with 

 his former tenants, who now pay him no rent. 

 He no longer regards himself as part of an 

 English garrison. He will again become an 

 Irish patriot. He no longer talks of the unity 

 of the Empire — for Home Rule has few terrors 

 for him now. He talks of ' Devolution ' — of 



