Ireland's disease

by Philippe Daryl

I.—Mr. Gladstone’s Scheme.

Mr. Gladstone’s scheme was framed in two organic Bills. By the first the British Government undertook to expropriate the landlords, and to redeem the Irish lands on a basis of twenty times the actual rent, to be paid in English Consols, at par. These lands would then be sold to the Irish tenants at a discount of 20 per cent., payable in forty-nine years by instalments equal to about half the former rent. The second Bill provided for the local government of Ireland, while it reserved for Great Britain the general control of the revenue and the right of keeping military forces in the island. Thanks to a coalition of a fraction of the Liberal party with the Tories, this programme fell to the ground at the General Election of 1886, and was set aside by Parliament.

It may be that the loss is not much to be regretted. Very likely Mr. Gladstone’s scheme was, in his own thoughts, only meant as a trial, what we call a ballon d’essai. Excellent in its twofold principle, his solution had the very serious drawback of substituting, in the place of the 12,000 present landlords of Ireland—a single one, the State. It looked as if it solved all difficulties, and perhaps it would have caused fresh complications. In fact, it amounted to requiring that the unavoidable liquidation should be paid—by which people? By those who could least afford it—the Irish tenants. Whence might the poor devils have taken the money for their annuities? And even admitting that they could have found it, can one refuse to see that their culture, so wretched already, would have become still poorer? Has ever man chosen, to buy an estate, the moment when he is a confirmed bankrupt?

But it would have been to them a nett gain of one-half on their actual rent, it will be objected.

A nett gain of one-half on nothing, then, as they cannot afford to pay any rent just now, unless they deduct it from their capital (supposing that they have any), and there is no reason to suppose that things will be better for the next fifty years.

Besides, if you admit that by paying for forty-nine years half the actual rent as judicially fixed, the Irish tenants ought to have the ownership of the land, why, in the name of all that is fair, refuse to see that they have paid it more than ten times already, in the shape of excessive rent?

“They were free not to pay it and go out, with their goods and chattels,” says my old friend, the Economist. I answer: No. They were not, for a thousand reasons, and had to obey the will of the vampires, as long as it was strictly possible.

Either the tenants, having become proprietors in name but not in reality (or, as it were, proprietors of a shadow of land mortgaged for half a century), would have paid their annuity,—and in that case they were as poor as before; or they would not have paid it, and then the Liberal party would have heard a fine din!

In fact the Gladstone plan rested on an entirely chimerical hope: that of settling the Irish question without its costing a penny to the British Exchequer. To entertain such a hope is clearly to prove that one sees indeed the evil, but without descrying its deeper cause.

This cause lies in the impossibility to the modern tenants, in the face of the competition of better organized countries, and generally under the present conditions of the world’s agriculture, to pay any rent whatever.

The Irish tenant is a bankrupt, because he has paid, for too long a time already, the rent that he could not afford. The land is impoverished for the very same reason. Now, to sell it to a penniless buyer is absurd enough; but to pretend to believe that the penniless buyer shall render it prosperous and make it yield riches, is perhaps more absurd still.

Such illusions ought to be discarded. If England really wants to settle the Irish question, as her honour and her true interest both command her to do, she must manfully accept the idea of a pecuniary sacrifice and a real restitution. It would be useless to cheat herself into acceptance of half-measures. She had much better weigh the real cost of an imperious duty, pay it, and square matters once for all.

Not only must she give, gratuitously give away as a present, the land to the Irish tenant, but she must provide him, at the lowest rate of interest, with the capital necessary for putting that land in working order.

This consummation might perhaps be attained at a lesser cost than would at first sight appear possible,—let us name a figure,—at a cost of one milliard francs, or £40,000,000. But this milliard should be forthcoming in cash, presented by the British nation to the sister isle as a free gift, a premium paid for peace, or rather a lump sum of conscience-money, such as we see sometimes advertised in the columns of the Times.