inchoate usages, analogous to that prevailing in Ulster, which had begun to grow up in the Southern Provinces. Its most striking feature, however, appeared in the means it employed to guard and secure the equities in the land, as yet not law-worthy, and liable to be destroyed by the landlord, which had gradually been acquired by the Irish peasantry. Under many restrictions and limitations, the tenant was declared to have a title to different kinds of improvements added to the land; and compensation for these was adjudged to him. By an innovation, too, very bold for the time, every yearly tenant was deemed to possess a general claim to 'goodwill' in his farm; for when 'disturbed' by a notice to quit, he was to receive compensation on a liberal scale; and thus a right, almost of a proprietary kind, was engrafted on nearly all Irish tenancies. The same result followed from a short provision which made the landlord liable to repay sums paid by tenants upon the transfer of farms, if the transfer was made with his consent, for value, an enactment which, in many thousand instances, created a tenant right of the most important kind. It should be observed, however, that though the Act appeared to protect, with extreme care, the concurrent rights of the tenant on the soil, it made little or no interference with the right of the landlord to fix rent, or to raise it at pleasure, where there was not a lease, a very uncommon mode of tenure; and the claim of the tenant to what had been made his property was not made available while he retained his farm; for it was only when he was about 'to quit the holding,' that the statutable compensation was to be paid.

This legislation of course could only deal with the economic ills of the Irish Land System; but it should be observed that Mr. Gladstone, when he glanced at the history of the subject, spoke favourably of the Irish landlords, and especially dwelt on the many evils that would follow the general expropriation of the class. The Land Act of 1870, though it looked well on paper, undoubtedly was of real use, and possibly might have solved the problem, had Ireland been in a normal state, failed to satisfy the wishes of the occupiers of the soil, and even fully to assure their rights; and the reasons of this are now apparent. In the first place, it was too complicated to be intelligible to the ordinary peasant, and to strike his imagination as a real boon-an immense defect in a reform of the kind; and as its benefits were to be obtained only through costly litigation in a Court of Justice, these were, in many instances, placed beyond his reach. In the second place, the change in the law was made after the minds of the people had been deeply stirred by the supposed prospect of a revolution in landed relations ; and what only a few years before would have been welcomed as a

magnificent gift, was viewed as a disappointing and tardy concession. Independently, however, of considerations like these, the statute did not fully attain its ends, and fell short of doing complete justice; and this largely owing to peculiar circumstances incidental to the state of Irish land tenure. As the landlord was left free to fix the terms of rent, under social conditions in which the rate of rent was forced up by an intense competition for land, he retained power of an excessive kind; as the tenant could only obtain the advantages conferred by the law by giving up the holding which usually was his sole means of existence, and to which in all cases he was passionately attached, he still remained in a subject position; and, this being the case, the results followed where authority and dependence have conflicting interests. The statute was evaded in many cases; in others, possibly not frequent, but sufficiently so to create discontent, the rights of the tenant were squeezed out, by the raising of rent, and other devices; and, on the whole, the Act, which, it should be added, fell on times of great alternations of prosperity and distress, inauspicious in the extreme to its success, did not afford the complete protection to the equities in the land of the Irish occupier, which it had been the object of its author to assure. The great peasant rising of 1879-80, the vast power suddenly attained by the Land League, the crusade against 'landlordism,' that was the result, and the agrarian agitation of the last eight yearsall this indicates that the Act of 1870 did not remove the ills of the Irish Land System; and though it was largely amended in 1881, and it keeps its place in the Irish Land Code, it has long ceased to have real influence, and it has practically been relegated to the crowded limbo of ineffectual experiments on the Irish land.

Mr. Gladstone took up, for the second time, the amendment of the Irish Land System, in the agony of a great social convulsion. The celebrated Land Act of 1881, supplemented by that of 1887– this last passed by Lord Salisbury's Government-was the fruit of his renewed labours; and it has almost transformed the Land System of Ireland. The idea of this measure was to provide a permanent and assured protection for the equities in the land of the Irish tenant, and yet to maintain the proprietary rights of the landlord as far as this was possible; and, to effect this object, Mr. Gladstone followed the principles of a mode of land tenure long advocated by reformers of the Irish land, and, though somewhat timidly, praised by O'Connell. With exceptions as to certain kinds of farms, the Acts of 1881 and of 1887 declare that, as an equivalent for their concurrent rights in the soil, the great body of the tenant class in Ireland, whether holding from year to year, or by lease, shall have a title to commute their tenures into terms

lasting for fifteen years, but practically renewable for all time, if the conditions attached by law are observed; and in order that no means may exist to defeat or reduce the tenant's interest, the rents reserved on the terms thus created are to be adjusted through the intervention of the State, and are not to depend on the landlord's estimate. The 'goodwill' of the statutable terms is rendered. saleable under some restrictions, according to the Ulster tenantright usage, and analogous usages in the other provinces; and it is specially enacted with the view of gaining for the tenant's rights still further protection, that rent shall not be charged on improvements made by the tenant, and not in some way compensated. By these means, an estate subject to perpetual renewal, at a Statesettled rent, and under conditions by no means onerous, is drawn, so to speak, out of the fee, and vested by statute in the occupier of the soil; and Fixity of Tenure, Fair Rent, and Free Sale-rights claimed for him under the name of the three F's-have been amply conceded by Parliament. Although, too, it is vain to deny that this legislation has, to a great extent, diminished the legal rights of the landlord, and has assimilated them, in some respects, to a rent-charge, these rights, nevertheless, are largely retained; and it is simply ignorance to compare his status to that of a rent-charger only. His freehold estate is, no doubt, capable of being bound, if the tenant pleases, by what practically is a perpetual lease; but he is left many of the rights of ownership; he still possesses complete property in woods, minerals, and what are known as royalties;' he has a title to have his rent revised at the end of successive terms of fifteen years; he is remitted to his full proprietary rights should the tenant's interest become forfeited by violating the conditions imposed on him; he preserves his existing legal remedies of Ejectment, Action, Distress and Injunction; and in some cases, he is even permitted, under certain restrictions, to resume the land entirely discharged from the tenant's claims. His position, therefore, is quite different from that of the owner of an annuity or a charge; and it is very unfortunate that false notions of this kind have been widely propagated. It should be observed, moreover, that immense as are the privileges conferred by the recent law, the tenant can only obtain these by an application to the tribunals of the State; directly or indirectly he must get his new rights through the Land Commission or the County Courts ; and though the Act of 1887, which gives leaseholders, for the first time, the benefit of the law, will doubtless produce a large number of claims, still, as a matter of fact, scarcely more than a third of

1 Yet we see this proposition repeatedly stated in the English press, and by respectable writers who ought to know better.

the tenant class of Ireland have availed themselves of the advantages of the improved mode of tenure, and many thousands certainly will never approach the Courts.

The true objections to the Acts of 1881 and 1887 are sufficiently obvious to impartial persons. There is nothing in the charge that they interfere with free contract' and 'economic laws;' for free contract' could seldom exist in Ireland in the peculiar circumstances of her Land System, and 'economic laws' can only fairly work where there is an open and active market, and this, in the case of the Irish land, was not to be found. It is thought sufficient wholly to condemn these statutes because they have created dual ownership; but, in the first place, this is a complete mistake; and in the next place, as I shall point out presently, there is nothing inconsistent in 'dual ownership' with national prosperity and good landed relations, and the objection is a mere fallacy of the hour. The Acts of 1881 and 1887, however, are certainly open, like that of 1870, to the charge of being over-subtle, costly, and not final, defects of a very important kind; and, by interfering with the right of absolute ownership, they may, to a certain extent, prevent the process of making a class of improvements on estates, such as arterial drainage and building large farmsteads, which, from the nature of the case, must be made by landlords, though considering that Ireland is a land of small farms, in which whatever value is added to the soil must necessarily be mainly the work of the peasantry, much stress cannot be laid on this circumstance. On the other hand, the merits of these great remedial laws are conspicuous, whatever may be said to the contrary. With all their imperfections they do largely protect the equities in the land of the tenant class, and that nearly for the first time; they tend to the reconciliation of law and fact throughout the sphere of relations in the land; they fall in with popular wants and ideas; and, above all, they contain the principles of what I believe would form, when fully developed, the true system of Irish land tenure. It has1 been alleged, however, that they have completely failed, and that the Land System of Ireland must be remodelled on a plan of a different, nay an opposite, type. In the first place, I deny the fact: the Land Act of 1881, grave as are its faults, has, though only a few years old, already had the very best results; the Act of 1887 is still untried, but necessarily must have the same operation; and, in the next place, if the first measure has not borne the full fruit that might have been hoped for, the reasons are plain to candid observers. The inherent defects of the Act of 1881-and that of

1 This assertion is one of the many conclusive proofs of the ignorance prevailing on the subject.

1887 is on the same lines-have told against its efficient working : the peasantry could not have full sympathy with a reform that did not come home to their minds, and that seemed, to a certain extent, a mystery; the cost incurred by seeking the benefit of the law has deterred thousands from applying to the Courts; and many of the shrewder members of the tenant class believe that the Acts are transitional only, and that even better measures are in a near prospect. These reforms, again, it must be borne in mind, have been largely deprived of their grace and efficacy from the circumstance that they became law when Ireland was in an anarchic state, and that they are largely due to the work of agitators; and, unquestionably, from motives which I do not care to analyse, the Land League and the National League have used their enormous influence, in a great many instances, in frustrating the operation of the Act of 1881, especially as regards the free transfer of farms. Lastly, and this, perhaps, is the most important matter, these measures have coincided in point of time with agricultural depression of the severest kind and with a sudden and remarkable fall in prices; the 'fair rents,' settled only a few years ago, are at present felt to be so onerous that the Act of 1887 has interfered with them; and this has made the tenant-farmer suspect the law, and has blinded him to the immense advantages it confers 1.

The Irish Land Question, however, is confessedly a still unsettled problem; and it has been so mixed up with agitation and passion, that a comprehensive and final reform of the Irish Land System is felt to be needed. The direction which that reform should take is shown in an expression of public opinion which, if questionable, on many solid grounds, is certainly widely heard at this moment. The recent Land Acts, it is said, have created that intolerable thing, dual ownership in land; under this system rights are inextricably confused, and estates can be no longer improved; and in Ireland, besides, what is called landlordism' is a state of things that cannot continue. Irish landlords, therefore, must be got rid of, almost wholly, by a far-sweeping change; and dual ownership must be abolished by transferring the fee, in a freehold tenure, to the great mass of the Irish tenant-farmers, and thus forming a people of peasant owners. The way to accomplish this is to buy out the rights of the landlords through the intervention of the State; and these interests having been thus acquired, the State, either directly, or through its agencies, would regrant the lands, to their present occupants, to be held of it as absolute owners, subject

1 The restless anxiety to tear up again the Settlement of 1881-as if any law could in a few months remove the ills of centuries in land tenure-is another evil sign of the ineptitude of English opinion on this subject.