rather to a settlement of these relations on a Federal plan than on the Colonial plan. The original proposal of Mr. Gladstone was based on the latter principle. It undoubtedly alarmed many people; though it is by no means certain that, if once the principle of autonomy were conceded, the Colonial relation would not be more acceptable to the majority of people of Great Britain. Presented, however, as the question was, the balance of opinion was undoubtedly in favour of a Federal solution of the future relations of Ireland to Great Britain. Mr. Chamberlain has in many of his speeches advocated change in this direction. Speaking against the Irish measure on its introduction, he admitted that his scheme for a National Council in Ireland was no longer possible; that only a very large proposal could at any future time be accepted as a settlement of the question; and that he looked for a solution of it in the direction of Federation. This solution, he said, would maintain the Imperial unity, and would at the same time conciliate the desire for a national local government which is so strongly felt in Ireland. Writing again on the 7th of May last, at a critical period of the fortunes of the Bill, he expressed his hearty support to the principle of autonomy for Ireland, subject to the full representation of Ireland in the central Parliament, and her full responsibility for Imperial affairs. Later, in the debate on the second. reading of the Bill, he referred with approval to the constitutional relations of the Dominion of Canada to its provinces, such as Nova Scotia and New Brunswick-a relation strictly of the Federal kind, and where autonomy as regards administration and legislation is fully conceded to these provinces. It seemed to most Liberals that, with these views, Mr. Chamberlain might have well withdrawn from further opposition to the second reading of the Irish measure, when Mr. Gladstone had promised to introduce clauses for the representation of Ireland in the Parliament of Great Britain for Imperial purposes. Without desiring, however, to point out inconsistencies in Mr. Chamberlain's speeches and conduct, we may say that, looking broadly at his many proposals, there is much which suggests the possibility of agreement on his part with the Liberal party on the basis of a real and genuine autonomy for Ireland. It is this which is the essential kernel of the Irish policy; all other questions are subservient to it; subject to this, the Irish members themselves have expressed their readiness to accept whichever of the two possible solutions of their future relations to Great Britain is most acceptable to the English people. Again, the Land Purchase scheme no longer bars the way to any agreement with the Dissentient Liberals. The proposal was eminently unpopular with the constituencies. It did more to wreck the Irish policy of the late Government than any other part of their scheme. Tory candidates and Dissentient Liberals vied with one another in VOL. XX.-No. 116. UU denouncing it and in making capital out of it. It was persistently alleged that it involved a loan from the central Government of 200,000,000l. without any real security. What more plausible argument could be addressed to distressed agriculturists or to depressed manufacturers than that they were to be taxed for the benefit of Irish landlords? None made more frequent use of this argument than Mr. Chamberlain. Could the electors, however, have known that the very first proposal of the Tory Government, supported by Lord Hartington and by Mr. Chamberlain, would be an immense extension of the principle of Imperial loans, with the avowed purpose of converting all the tenants of Ireland into owners, and of abolishing the system of dual ownership recognised by the Land Act of 1881, how very different might have been the result of the elections! The new proposal, if not accompanied by any measure conceding the demand for local government, would substitute a hated central Government for the hated landlords, and would draw upon the State all the unpopularity now attaching to the rent receivers, while the Imperial Government would find itself the mortgagee of every farm in Ireland, and receiving what would practically be rent for a long term of years in the shape of interest or repayment of capital. Is it possible to conceive a position more full of danger to the State, so long as the national demands of Ireland are refused? The proposal of the present Government, however, is of the utmost political importance. It is made far more in the interests of the landlords than of the tenants. It proves that the landlords of Ireland are as anxious to clear out of that country as their bitterest enemies are to get rid of them. Can any one doubt that the demand for Home Rule would be even more universal in Ireland if the landlords were bought out under such a scheme than at present? or that it would be conceded without objection in England when all fears of what might happen to landlords were removed? It is my confident belief, however, that any universal scheme of Land Purchase, or of converting tenants into owners, by Imperial loans, either with or without Home Rule, will, after what occurred at the last general election, be rejected by the country. It does not, however, follow that a moderate application of the principle of Imperial loans to aid a settlement of the Land Question may not still be adopted as a part of the settlement of the Home Rule question. I have myself advocated such an application to the case of the smaller tenants only. The use of Imperial credit to convert them into owners would have the advantage that, at a moderate rate of purchase, the relief to them in the substitution of interest for rent would be very great, that it would create at once a very large class of persons permanently interested as owners, and get rid of the relations of landlord and tenant between the most numerous and most difficult class of small tenants, and that it would enable the landlords to realise a fair value for the most hazardous parts of their properties. In respect of larger tenancies the same arguments scarcely apply. There is not the same reason for large reductions of their payments; if their rents are too high, they ought to be dealt with by the Land Court; the purchase of them would involve an enormous advance of money. It may be that in respect of the larger tenancies some other method of settling the question may be devised, not involving any great advance, such as that of fining down their rents by the aid of State loans, and converting the variable rent into a rent charge of lower amount. It is unnecessary, however, to pursue this question further. It will be conceded that the proposal of the present Government to extend indefinitely Lord Ashbourne's Act, and to substitute a universal system of peasant proprietors for the dual ownership of land now existing in Ireland, has made it far easier to approach the question of Home Rule. Proposals to ease off the difficulties of that question by a partial application of Imperial credit can no longer be denounced in the spirit of the last electoral campaign. We need no longer despair of the Liberal party coming to an agreement on the subject. The following, however, of Mr. Chamberlain among the Dissentients is small in comparison with that of Lord Hartington. Mr. Chamberlain alone could not influence a sufficient number of them to secure a majority of the present House of Commons in favour of any measure which he might agree upon with the Liberal party. He could have turned the scales in the last Parliament on behalf of the Irish measure. It is possible that at the general election his active co-operation with the Liberals on behalf of a policy of autonomy for Ireland would have made the difference. He no longer holds the balance in the new Parliament. It rests with Lord Hartington and his Whig followers to decide whether to effect a compromise with the Liberals upon the basis of a real autonomy for Ireland, with security for the maintenance of the Imperial Parliament for Imperial purposes, or whether to throw in their lot with the Tories, to support them in some scheme, such as that which has been foreshadowed by Lord Randolph Churchill, and which appears to be something in the nature of a National Council, a scheme which will give no content to Ireland, and be no settlement of the question. The responsibility on them is a heavy one. It is even greater than in the last Parliament, when they opposed and rejected the Irish measure. They had then a not unreasonable hope that they would be supported by a majority of the Liberal party in the country. They must now be aware that the Liberal party as a whole, with the exception of a small minority, has pronounced in favour of autonomy for Ireland; they must know by experience that what the Liberal It rests with them party adopts is certain of ultimate success. whether the interval shall be long or short, whether the political agony in Ireland, and its social disorders, and a bitterness between its classes shall be prolonged, and whether all Liberal measures for Great Britain shall be suspended during the present Parliament, and until the next appeal to the electorate. The longer that may be postponed, the more certain will it be that, whatever else may be the result of it, the Dissentient section will be ground between the two parties, and extinguished as a political factor for the future. G. SHAW LEFEVRE. The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. No. CXVII.-NOVEMBER 1886. THE COMING WINTER IN IRELAND. THE bill introduced by Mr. Parnell to give temporary relief to the Irish tenants was defeated in-for the time of year-a very full house on the 22nd of September last. It was defeated by a majority of 95 in a house of 503 members. The defeat of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill in the House of Lords, in the month of August 1880, closed one chapter, and opened another, in the history of Ireland, and it is quite possible that the defeat of Mr. Parnell's bill may yet be pointed to as an event of equal gravity, and equally farreaching in its consequences on the future of Ireland. What was Mr. Parnell's bill, and why was it introduced? It was a bill designed to give temporary relief to tenant farmers in Ireland pending the inquiry which has been undertaken by the present Government. I shall presently state what the bill proposed to do; but I must here try to answer two questions which have been very frequently put:First, why was such a bill considered by Mr. Parnell to be necessary in September last? And, secondly, why was not it or some similar bill introduced during the spring session? I shall answer the latter question first. No bill for the temporary relief of Irish tenants was introduced during the spring session, chiefly because the Irish National party had strong hopes that the measures proposed by Mr. Gladstone for the better government of Ireland would be passed into law. And when pressed, as we frequently were, by our constituents to take some steps to stop evictions, our answer always was that it would be folly to embarrass a Government which was engaged in an attempt to settle the Irish question in a generous and final fashion; and that if, as we VOL. XX.-No. 117. X X |