BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE, LONDON.
formed a breach of the terms on which he had promised the Government conditional support, and for a time factious obstruction prevailed.[321] For the clause enabling landlords to nullify the Bill by offering leases, Ministers substituted a clause permitting landlord and tenant to come to a voluntary arrangement for a thirty-one years’ lease, but allowed the Courts to take this offer of a lease, if it were refused, into consideration in assessing compensation for eviction. Mr. Disraeli’s argument here was far-seeing. He said these changes would tempt the landlords to use ruthlessly the only power left to them by the Bill—that of eviction for non-payment of a rent which, however, they were permitted to raise, till it was impossible for any tenant to pay it. This, indeed, was what happened. At first the Bill, as has been explained, compensated eviction by the offer of a thirty-one years’ lease. The moment that clause was withdrawn, and eviction was compensated by damages, it was recognised that occupancy, per se, gave the occupier certain rights in the soil; in other words, the dual-ownership of landlord and occupier was then recognised as a principle. A long and weary struggle in Committee, in which the defence of the Bill was brilliantly conducted by Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chichester Fortescue, followed, and the Opposition, aided by some crotchety Liberals, attempted to smother its principle by loading it with incompatible details. As Easter drew near, it was despondently whispered that the measure would have to be abandoned. Under unseen pressure from the constituencies, however, the action of the House was quickened after the Easter Recess, and all attempts at re-opening the controversy over the principles of the Bill under the pretext of improving it in detail, were crushed. Considerable concessions were made to the Tories. Mr. Gladstone’s original scheme provided that no tenant who paid under £100 a year of rent could contract himself out of the Bill. The Government lowered the limit to £50 of rental. The clause creating the presumption that improvements were made by the tenant, was limited as regards those made before the Act took effect. In Committee nothing was done for tenants who were evicted after it was known the Land Bill would be brought in. Nothing was done for reclaiming occupiers under middlemen, whose own tenancies expired with their leases from superior landlords. But before Parliament adjourned for Whitsuntide the Bill had passed through the House of Commons substantially unchanged. The landlords’ friends preferred to accept it as an alternative to further agrarian agitation, though Mr. Hardy threatened that the House of Lords would abrogate the penalty on evictions.
Lord Cairns had by this time been compelled through ill-health to finally resign the leadership of the Tory Party in the Peers, which he had reluctantly resumed, and the Duke of Richmond had been chosen as his successor. The new chief’s first speech on the Irish Land Bill was moderate and business-like, and his proposed amendments were to exempt all landlords from the Bill if they offered twenty-one instead of thirty-one years’ leases, to fix a date beyond which no tenant’s claim for improvements would be considered, to let landlord and tenant settle their disputes privately, without going into court, and to cut out a clause limiting distress for rent to persons who had contracted to submit to it. Though he disapproved of the Bright clauses creating a peasant proprietory, they were defended by Lord Salisbury and Lord Cairns. Lord Athlumney, as an Irish proprietor, said the Bill contained nothing which a humane landlord would object to accept, and the Duke of Abercorn gave the measure a general support. Lord Derby’s criticism was more subtle. The Bill did not apply to large farms. That was offering landlords an inducement to clear out small tenants, for it gave landlords what the custom of the country had denied them—a moral right to evict on paying damages for the privilege. Lord Lurgan on the Second Reading said the Bill no more hurt him than would a Bill legalising his debts of honour, but Lord Leitrim objected to it “from the title downwards,” and thought that disputes between landlords and tenants should be settled by Quarter Sessions—a tribunal composed of landlords alone. In Committee amendments were passed cutting down the scale of compensation, denying compensation to assignees not approved by the landlord (Duke of Richmond), enacting that no tenant paying more than £50 a year was in any circumstances to get compensation for eviction (Lord Salisbury), asserting that the presumption of law was to be that all improvements were made by landlords (Lord Clanricarde), prohibiting tenants from letting gardens to their labourers (Duke of Richmond), in fact, with the exception of the Bright clauses, the Peers mangled the Bill so as to make it utterly useless to the tenants. The excitement usually stirred up by a conflict between the two Houses grew every day, and men began to talk of an autumn session, the rapid passing of the Bill again through the Commons, and a creation of new Peers to force it through the House of Lords. For this dead-lock Lord Salisbury was chiefly responsible, for he practically ousted the Duke of Richmond from the leadership. After a day’s reflection, however, the Peers, influenced by Lord Cairns and Mr. Disraeli, retreated from the perilous position they had taken up. They withdrew their amendments on report, accepting instead a few plausible but transparently illusory compromises suggested by Lord Granville by way of saving their dignity. The result was that, for a time, Lord Salisbury was discredited, and the position of the Duke of Richmond, whose hand he had admittedly forced, was strengthened in the leadership. The Commons accepted all the amended amendments of the Peers except three,[322] and so the Bill passed. It marked an epoch in the political development of England. It was the first great constructive measure which recognised the right of the poorest class as distinguished from the middle class, to participate in beneficial legislation. It recognised the justice of legislating for the interests of the masses on the principle that it was not safe to leave them to the mercy of Supply and Demand, and of the economic Moloch of laissez-faire.
The other great measure of the Session—Mr. Forster’s Education Bill—illustrated the change in the drift of English legislation during the Victorian age still more strikingly. On the 17th of February Mr. Forster introduced his Education Bill. The problem to be solved, as Mr. Forster said, was “how to cover the country with good schools.” The conditions under which it must be solved were two: (1), the interests of the parents and children must be harmonised with those of the ratepayers; and (2), the new system must not be so built up as to destroy the old one where it was efficient. England was mapped out by Mr. Forster into school districts.[323] If in any of these more schools were needed, the people would have a year of grace in which to provide them, by voluntary subscription. If not, an elected local School Board would provide them compulsorily, and maintain them out of fees, rates, and the usual Government “Grants in Aid.” Religious teaching was not proscribed—the kind and quantity of it to be given, subject to a Conscience Clause, being left to the Boards. The Boards might also assist existing schools, or adopt compulsory education if they chose, and the Bill dealt with children between the ages of five and twelve. Where districts or Boards refused to provide efficient schooling for the people, the Education Department was to have power to force them to do so. The opposition to the Bill centred round the religious question. As Mr. Lowe said in his speech on the Second Reading, the House agreeing on the general principle, fixed their whole attention on one narrow point, like a “fierce herd of cattle in a large meadow deserting the grass which is abundant about them, and delighting themselves by fighting over a bed of nettles in a corner of the field.” The opposition of the Anglican clergy was anticipated. They naturally objected to any system that gave the parish schoolmaster something approaching the endowed status of the parish priest, and which released him from abject servitude to the Church. They could not conceal their hostility to a scheme of education which was National without being Anglican, and in which the principle of religious equality, so fatal to the claims of an Established Church, was not only recognised, but endowed by the State. But what had not been foreseen was the opposition of the Dissenting ministers and churches—an opposition that culminated in personal animosity to Mr. Forster. Representative Dissenters, like Mr. Winterbotham, told the House that they would prefer to delay the settlement of the whole question, till the country was prepared to accept secular education pure and simple. Their belief was that the Bill would tempt the different religious bodies to fight for control over the School Boards, so as to influence their decision on the question of religious teaching, and that in this struggle the Established Church, from the prestige of its connection with the State, would again assert its ascendency. The Party of Free Thought, led by Mr. Mill, joined the Dissenters in their attacks on Mr. Forster, Mr. Mill’s objection to the Bill being, that under it the whole body of the ratepayers might be taxed to pay for teaching a particular religion to the majority. Lord Russell, who also pleaded for delay, advocated
MR. DISRAELI (AFTERWARDS LORD BEACONSFIELD).
(From the Bust by J. E. Boehm, R.A., in the Possession of the Queen.)