The Crimes Act of 1882.

7

violence; and we have even less sympathy with the shortsighted pedantry which protested against 'coercion' in Ireland, as being incompatible with theories of government fit only for peaceful communities. As regards the Crimes Act, the special powers confided by it to the Irish Government were by no means the immense encroachments on constitutional rights and privileges they have been said to be by partisan malice. But the authority committed to courts of justice to change the place of trial for agrarian crimes in districts where juries refuse to convict; the summary power entrusted to magistrates to investigate and punish the minor offences most prevalent from 1880 to 1882; the right placed in the Executive's hands to quarter police on spots stained by outrage, and to lay the charge on the guilty neighbourhood; and the facilities afforded to the Lord Lieutenant to restrain and extinguish rebel newspapers, and to suppress meetings dangerous to the public peacethese provisions have had most wholesome effects; and, under their influence, agrarian trouble and Land League tyranny have been almost quelled. The measure, in short, has been most successful: one of the best proofs of this is that it has been denounced with unsparing vehemence by the party of treason and anarchy still too strong in Ireland; and as for its administration, it has been as just, as moderate, and, on the whole, as merciful as it could be under existing circumstances, though the judges and other ministers of the law, whose duty it has been to carry it out, have been assailed with a malice and fierceness to which it would not be easy to find a parallel.

Force is the true way to repress crime; it is not the way to remove the ill-will, the hatred of class, and the occasional distress, which naturally result from social grievances. This obvious distinction, often forgotten by sentimental or illinformed theorists, has been steadily kept in mind by the Government; and the memorable Land Act of 1881 attests its earnest and bold resolve to redress the ills of the Irish land system, and as far as legislation can attain this end -to place it upon a secure foundation. No one knows better than its great author what is objectionable in this celebrated law, and no one has stated so well the cogent arguments which may be urged against a measure of the kind. That the State should interfere in the most general and important dealings of a large community, should practically annul and readjust contracts, and should attempt to measure the rents of Ireland, was not only an herculean task for which it was by no means fitted, but has had a tendency, from the nature of the case, to produce real and not trifling mischiefs. The Land Act, by setting up a tribunal to determine the letting value of land, has necessarily fostered the sense of dependence which is one of the worst faults of the Irish peasantry; and by undertaking to make a bargain for them, it has weakened in them the self-reliance, and the feeling that promises ought to be kept, which are sure signs of a progressive people. In addition, too, to these general evils, the Act has shown symptoms of developing ills of a more special kind that must be considered. By changing the status of the Irish landlord, and converting him nearly into a rent-charger, it has discouraged the efforts of many of the class to lay out money in improving their lands; and this is a very serious mischief, especially as regards arterial drainage, one of the chief requirements of the Irish soil, and which is scarcely as yet understood by its occupants. Then, again, the settlement of rent by the State has offered inducements to dishonest farmers to exhaust their lands before the inquiry is made, in order, in this way, to obtain reductions; and, as the experience of India has shown, the provisions of the law for a readjustment of rents, through the same agency, at recurring periods, will probably be followed by like consequences. These are plain and undoubted evils; and it must be added that in one of its chief parts, the Land Act has confessedly failed, and that, in our judgment, as we shall endeavour to show, it needs reform in points of importance. It must, too, be distinctly borne in mind, that comprehensive as the measure is, it necessarily scarcely reaches or amends some peccant parts of the Irish land system; it does nothing, but very indirectly, for the large and depressed class of hired rural labourers; and, except in this way, it has in many instances effected little for the small cottier peasants, who, unless their landlords concede their claims, are unable to pay the expense of the law. Nor can it be said that the Act has, as yet, obtained the full confidence of the Irish farmer; and it has certainly not been received with the gratitude and thankfulness of the class, as a whole, which might have been expected in a case of the kind. Notwithstanding drawbacks like these, however, and discouragements it would be wrong to ignore, the Land Act, we are convinced, will lead to a settlement of the Irish land system, and, with some amendments, will in the long run solve, as far as law can do it, a most intricate problem. Adjusting, as never was done before, the facts of Irish landtenure to law, it has at last given full legal sanction to the The Land Act of 1881.

9

moral rights of the Irish peasant, at least in a great number of cases; and, as a rule, it protects the occupier of the soil from rack-rents, from unfair eviction, from the confiscation of real improvements, and from the insecurity of uncertain possession. It accomplishes this, as is well known, by establishing courts for the settling of rents in the case of subsisting yearly tenancies, and of leases when the terms expire; and it draws, so to speak, out of the landlord's estate, an interest in the land for the tenant's benefit, which, if simple and fair conditions be observed, will be practically a perpetual tenure. The immense advantage of making the status of a very large body of the tenants of Ireland completely secure, and free from dependence, infinitely counterbalances, in our judgment, the objections that may be made to the law on economic and even on moral grounds; and the Government, where there was but a choice of evils, has taken the true and the wisest course. With the progress of time, too, we may fairly expect that many of the obvious mischiefs of the Act will gradually diminish, if not disappear. The interference of the State with contracts is already very much less than it was; for as landlords and tenants gradually ascertain the standard of rent fixed by the courts, they now often adjust the rent themselves; and in this important matter, we rejoice to say, the statute is fast becoming self-acting. Again, if the tendency of the law is to lessen the self-reliance of the Irish tenant by teaching him not to deal for himself, it has raised him highly in the social scale; and by placing him in a better position than ever had been the case before, we may hope that he will become gradually more self-respecting and conscious of duty than he had been under the old land system. As for the other evils we have referred to, we believe the arterial drainage of Ireland is a work which the State will have to execute; as regards improvements, not a few landlords will probably begin to improve again when Ireland shall have been completely pacified, and tenants doubtless will improve largely under the altered conditions of their tenure; and with respect to the 'running out' of farms, this can be prevented by care and watchfulness. As regards the fact that most of the smaller tenants are shut out from the courts by their cost, we do not think so badly of Irish landlords as to suppose that they do not adjust their rents on the same scale for all their tenants; and we know, from an experience tolerably large, that in many instances they have taken this course. As for other points, the Act, we have said, does in our opinion need some reform; but as for the objection that the Irish farmers do not as yet exult in the change in their lot, and are not wholly content with the law, we can only say that the sentiments of a class are not transformed in a very few months; that a mere act of justice does not command gratitude; and considering the wild hopes which unprincipled men have lately held up to his excited fancy, we need not wonder that even the Land Act does not realize the dreams of the Irish peasant.

These considerations must be borne in mind on a broad and impartial review of the statute. On the other hand, let us observe the effects it has already had on the Irish land system, and will have, we believe, on the Irish land question. About a fifth part of the farmers of Ireland have applied to the Courts since 1881, to obtain the new condition of tenure; and these applications have been disposed of in more than 110,000 instances. In addition, there have been 80,000 cases in which tenants have come under the Act by private arrangements with their landlords, and the number of these, as we have said, is greatly increasing, month after month. These figures, however, large as they are, give by no means an adequate notion of the widespread operation of the law. Throughout the whole range of landed relations, it has been, so to speak, a pervading force, thrown into the scale for the tenants' benefit; and this has had immense, though unknown, results, in improving throughout the entire country the position in life of the occupier of the soil. It may fairly be said that, in less than three years, probably more than half of the peasantry of Ireland have been raised out of a social state in which they were liable, at least, to too much extortion, to positive wrong, and to a precarious tenure, into a new phase, so to speak, of existence, in which they are free from unjust demands, can call what is of right their own, and, above all, are secure in their holdings; they have passed, as it were, out of the bonds of feudalism into the liberty of what is almost ownership. It is impossible but that this great revolution, which strongly resembles the transformation of the villein in England into the copyholder -one of the mediæval landmarks of progress-will have vast and enduring effects: it must ultimately win to the side of order, and bring into obedience to law, a preponderating amount of that class in Ireland which is the most important in her social structure. This will be an extraordinary years will pass before the results full completeness, the consummaWe would say a word as to the

national gain; and though will be manifested in their tion, we trust, is certain.

Its Great and Beneficial Effects.

II

manner in which the Land Act has been carried out by the Courts, especially as to the adjustment of rents, and which has been the subject of much clamour on the part alike of some Irish landlords, and of the whole body of the 'Irish Party.' That perfect accuracy has not been obtained in such a matter as the fixing of rents, nay, that mistakes have been sometimes made, is inevitable from the facts of the case; but the evidence is overwhelming that the work has been done as honestly, as thoroughly, and with as strict a regard to justice, as was possible in the case of fallible judges. The reductions of rent caused by the inquiries have no doubt been on the whole large; but this neither justifies the Tory cry that the Act has been unfairly administered, nor the vehement expressions of men like Mr. Healy, who denounce Irish landlords as 'common robbers.' The rental of Ireland, we must not forget, is being readjusted at a period marked by low prices and bad harvests; and English and Scotch landlords, as a matter of fact, have reduced their rents much on the same scale as Irish rents have been curtailed by law.

The Land Act, however, as we have said, has not been successful in one particular; and in others we think it requires amendment. We have little sympathy with those Irish landlords who, looking exclusively to their own interests, insist that the State should buy up estates indiscriminately, for sale to all kinds of occupiers; and the 'Irish Party demand the creation of a 'peasant proprietary,' on a gigantic scale, in order simply to produce a class which they think would dislike an alien government.' In no respect, as regards this subject, has Mr. Gladstone more clearly shown his capacity as a true statesman, than in preferring to improve the occupants' tenure, in legislation on Irish land, to suddenly making a large class of freeholders by questionable means at the risk of the State; in this matter he has been a Conservative, in the best sense of the word, in his policy. It would certainly, however, be well for Ireland if a considerable number of tenant farmers were given facilities to purchase their farms, on easy terms, and without loss to the Treasury; and no doubt the clauses of the Act intended to effect this object have proved abortive. To promote the end of creating in Ireland a body of solvent owners of land, in sympathy and habits a yeomen class, we should not object to making the conditions under which the tenant can buy his holding, with the aid of the State, more liberal than they are at present; for instance, it would, we think, be fair to extend the time for making repayment of the purchase money