If it is objected that the pauperised population of the west would make but poor emigrants, I would reply that their previous life will have fitted them infinitely better for their new destinies than the Icelanders, who have been driven forth from their Arctic abodes by an analogous necessity, since these last had never seen a plough, a road, a tree, or a field of corn; yet so delighted are they with their new possession that they have called it 'Paradise.'

6

There remains one other point to be noticed, and that not an easy one. In my pamphlet on Irish Distress and its Remedies,' I mentioned what is well known, that the Irish priesthood of the Church of Rome frequently object to emigration. It is not necessary to ascribe this, as is often ungenerously done, to their pay depending on the number of their flocks, which makes them reluctant to lose any parishioners. The pay is poor enough; and they earn it, for whatever be their failings, the priests look after their people. What they urge is that in the great American cities men and women become alike demoralised, and lose their simplicity. Their clerical brethren write to them to send no more out. Better, they say, that they should starve at home than run the risk of ruin there. But Bishop Ireland's Association meets this difficulty. The priests go with the people and enter into their interests. Schools and chapels are opened at once, and strict rules are enforced against the sale of spirits. I am glad that I am again supported by the opinion of Lord Dufferin when I say I am convinced that, if there is to be successful emigration on a large scale from western Ireland, it will be needful for the Government to unite with the priesthood, and to give them every assistance in providing for the religious care and oversight of their people. If priests could be sent with their flocks, it would be money well laid out to afford them a free passage, and a grant of land in their new settlement. In Canada this would be looked on as a perfectly natural arrangement.

I fear that some of those whose sympathies I should like best to enlist in favour of organised emigration may take exception to this recognition of the Roman Catholic Church. I can only ask them fully to consider the question as I believe I have done. Conversions from the Romish Church have not been very frequent in Ireland, and are not in the future likely to be more successful among a half-starved peasantry in Connaught than among prosperous settlers in Manitoba. It must surely be admitted that the people are likely to learn more good than evil from their priests, and that in the prairies it is better that they should have their priests than be altogether without religious teachers. At any rate I am not now proposing any scheme for conversion, but a, scheme for lifting up a very poor and miserable class of people who exist almost at our doors, and making them into prosperous and independent farmers and labourers.

I cannot but see that any Government emigration scheme at present for Ireland would meet with hot opposition. It would be denounced as a treacherous device for weakening the country for the final struggle with England. We should be blamed as heartless

Saxons for wishing to drive a poor people from their ancestral homes. We should be assured that there is untold wealth still within its narrow seas, and that Ireland's bogs might be drained so as to support half as many more than its present population. All this we must expect. I advocate emigration in the cause of humanity, and not in that of any political party, for it is no party question. I would ask my opponents, who after five years will be most prosperous-the peasant possessing 160 acres of the finest wheat-land in America, on which he is paying off a debt of only 100l., or his brother who elects to stay in Ireland cultivating an inferior soil, to drain and improve every single acre of which a sum of 10l. or 15l. has to be expended. Consider what can be done upon land in Ireland with 100%., as compared with the same sum in the United States or Canada. I am no advocate for enforced emigration, but I wish that the Irishman should have clearly placed before him the opening which awaits him to go in and possess the good land.

Doubtless he will have hardships to endure, no emigrant's life has been begun without. But the hardships he will be calied to suffer he will suffer in common with the sons of gentlemen of culture and position, with large farmers from Canada or England or Scotland, who with the golden hope of the future before them are willing to brave the rigours and difficulties of a life in the Saskatchewan or Red River valleys.

I cannot do better than close what I have to say in the words of a valued friend in the Nineteenth Century for January.

Mr. F. Seebohm writes as follows:

Resist the temptation artificially to provide for the maintenance of population at too high a level. . . . Compare the waste lands of Ireland with the trans-Atlantic prairies, and instead of asking the question whether it will barely pay to plough up the Irish bog, boldly ask which will pay best, the same labour and capital expended here or there; and according to the answer cultivate the Irish bog or leave it alone. . . . Open the sluice of emigration as widely as possible till a real level in population is reached, grudging no longer the flow of population to the place where it is most wanted. Never mind if, having done justice to the peasant tenants of Ireland, the free course of economic laws should be found there as in England, as capital increases, to work in favour of large rather than of small holdings. Rejoice if Irish tenants find a better investment for their capital than can be got from a few poor acres of land, and a wider field for their increasing enterprise and energy than bogs and mountains afford. If this should be the result of England's doing justice to Ireland, then the higher happiness and freedom of her sons, wherever they may live, will reflect back a greater prosperity on their old country and upon those who stay at home than any possible ingenuity could secure by making artificial and uneconomical provision for them where they ought not to be.

J. H. TUKE.

ABOLITION OF LANDLORDS.

Ir may seem superfluous to English minds to discuss what appears to them so revolutionary a scheme as a general, compulsory, and immediate transfer of the land of Ireland from the landlords to the tenants. The idea has, however, not only gained a strong hold over the minds of the peasantry, but is even regarded with considerable favour by some advocates of the landlord's claims; while in England too there is probably an increasing body of opinion in large popular constituencies, if not within the walls of the House of Commons, in favour of drastic changes, the effect of which on the British taxpayer himself is not very clearly understood. It may, therefore, be worth while to inquire how the suggestion presents itself to Irish minds, what the results would be in Ireland, and whether the British taxpayer is likely to accept cheerfully the part assigned to him in the matter.

Expropriation is regarded by many thoughtful people in Ireland as the only possible alternative for a reform which should give to the tenant the practical security and joint interest in the land, which the scheme popularly called the three F's aims at affording him.

It is not merely that the relations between landlord and tenant are at present over a large portion of the West strained and disturbed, but the state of affairs has disclosed to many minds grave social dangers from the operation of the Land Laws, even under the protection given to the tenant by the Land Act of 1870, which were unsuspected by good landlords, but for which they are nevertheless suffering; to which, now they are known, many landlords are anxious to apply a remedy, and which amount to an extensive failure of the English system.

No one now denies that the State has a right itself to take possession of property by compulsory purchase at a price not less than the market value, where the public interests require such a transfer to be made. The State has also an unquestionable right to compel owners of property to sell to public bodies or other parties on similar conditions. The price in such cases has usually been calculated on a basis more liberal than that which the state of the market at a given moment under a forced sale would afford, and considerable allowance

has been made for the prospects of improvement in the market or the possibility of developing the property in question.

Landed property is no exception to the general principle; transfers of this kind constantly take place in the case of railways, streets, and in the furtherance of other public objects. And if a sufficient cause were shown, no principle can be laid down on which even a wholesale compulsory transfer of property in land should not be made from one class to another-always supposing that the latter are able to pay on the conditions stated above.

It may be desirable to point out that such a scheme differs from that connected with Mr. Bright's name, not only in the important point of compulsion, but also in the hardly less important respect of being wholesale and immediate-in fact, the difference is very much the same as that between reform and revolution.

It is not seriously contended by any party, except the Land League, that if such a change be desirable in Ireland it shall be effected at the expense of the class to be compelled to part with their property. Nor is it conceivable, either that the House of Commons would listen to such a proposal, or that any community, however democratic, which was not actually in the vortex of a revolution, would sanction such a formidable attack on the constitution of society, unless in the name of systematic communism. At any rate it is unnecessary at the present moment to entertain any such considerations or to discuss them in detail. And it may be assumed that any scheme of expropriation to be examined will not treat the whole body of Irish landlords as criminals to be visited with pains, penalties, or fines. General indictments are too much the fashion in these days in the country of Edmund Burke, forgetful of its great men of old; but an indictment against a whole class cannot claim much more respect or credit than one against a whole nation.

Supposing, however, for the sake of argument, that the Irish landlords, short of actual criminality, are so grasping and oppressive a class that justice and expediency require their entire and immediate abolition, what is the extent of the change contemplated, how is the change to be effected, and what are likely to be the consequences? And finally, is it practically possible?

The extent of the change socially is the removal from all connection with the land of 10,000 landlords, and the creation of 500,000 peasant proprietors. The pecuniary extent of the change is measured by Mr. Parnell's estimate of the rental of Ireland at 15,000,000l., which at twenty-four years' purchase (the average price realised by the sale of lands to tenants in the Landed Estates Court) would represent a capital of 360,000,000l. Estimates of rental are not easy to verify, and certainly Mr. Parnell's estimate, placing the rental at 50 per cent. above Griffith's valuation, would be generally considered as much higher than the real figure. The common

impression among those who have considered the subject seems to be that the capital value of agricultural land in Ireland is something over 300,000,000l. This figure may for purposes of argument be used as sufficiently correct.

Three hundred millions! It is a sum imagination boggles at.' Where is it to come from? There has never been any answer given to this question but one-a Government loan. It is said, 'Oh, no money is required, nothing but paper, Government paper.' It is just as well, however, clearly to understand what is meant, and the operation of the proposed transaction. It is very simple. Government is to raise a loan, and advance to the tenants the whole, or part, of the capital sums, or Government stock, necessary to buy up the property. The landlords are to walk away with Government stock; the tenants are to repay the Government loan by instalments, which are to discharge principal and interest in a certain number of years, at the end of which time they will have their land rent free.

Postponing for a while the consideration of the scheme in detail, and supposing that it is perfectly feasible, just, and financially prudent for the three parties concerned, the State, the landlord, and the tenant, the important question arises, What are likely to be the consequences to those immediately interested? And here a larger field is included, for other classes must also be considered, especially the agricultural labourers, while such a gigantic change must have results for the whole community which it would be rash to attempt to forecast. Such a transaction cannot be viewed in a merely commercial light in its effects upon the two parties to the transfer, even though the class of agricultural tenants are, with their families, about half the population, nor as a matter of financial adjustment or actuarial calculation. It is, in fact, a question of high policy demanding the earnest thoughts of wisest statesmanship.

The points that specially demand attention are tolerably obvious, and may at any rate be indicated without presumption, despite the magnitude of the issues at stake and the sagacity which their determination demands.

The three classes who now divide the produce of the land occur first to the mind. These classes are naturally found in very various combinations in different parts of the country. In parts of Connaught there may be said to be only one class, that of small peasants a separate class of labourers working for hire without land being absent, and few of the landlords being resident. In parts of Leinster, on the other hand, the farmer class proper is but scanty, the land being held in large grazing tracts by landlords or by graziers. And these exceptional conditions, as they may be considered, perhaps present the greatest difficulties in regard to this as also in regard to all other schemes of Land Reform. It is not intended, however,