condition of agrarian reform—­that the latter cannot be had without the former—­surely Home Rule should stand none the worse in the estimation of its opponents if it not only secures a safe basis for putting an end to agrarian exasperation, but also gratifies the feeling of the Irish people as expressed by the majority of its representatives in Parliament?  Now, what is the nature of the Irish Land Question?  This we must understand before considering the remedy.  In Ireland (meaning by Ireland that part of the country which is in the hands of tenants, and falls within the compass of a Land Bill) the tenure of land is wholly unlike that which is found in the greater part of England.  Instead of large farms in which the landlord makes all the improvements and the tenant pays rent for the privilege of cultivating the land and receives the produce, small holdings are found in which the tenant does the improvements (if any) and pays a fixed rent-charge to the owner.  In England the tenant does not perform the obligations or in any way aspire to the character of owner.  If he thinks he can get a cheaper farm, he quits his former one, regarding his interest in the land as a mere matter of pounds, shillings, and pence.  Not so the Irish tenant.  He has made what he calls improvements, he claims a quasi-ownership in the land, and has the characteristic Celtic attachment for the patch of ground forming his holding, however squalid it may be, however inadequate for his support.  In short, in Ireland there is a dual ownership—­that of the proprietor, who has no interest in the soil so long as the tenant pays his rent and fulfils the conditions of his tenancy; and that of the tenant, who, subject to the payment of his rent and performance of the fixed conditions, acts, thinks, and carries himself as the owner of his holding.  A system, then, of agrarian reform in Ireland resolves itself into an inquiry as to the best mode of putting an end to this dual ownership—­that is to say, of making the tenant the sole proprietor of his holding, and compensating the landlord for his interest in the ownership.  The problem is further narrowed by the circumstance that the tenant cannot be expected to advance any capital or pay an increased rent, so that the means of compensating the landlord must be found out of the existing rent.

The plan adopted in Mr. Gladstone’s Land Bill was to commute the rent-charges, offering the landlord, as a general rule, twenty years’ purchase on the net rental of the estate (that is to say, the rent received by him after deducting all outgoings), and paying him the purchase-money in L3 per cent. stock taken at par.  The stock was to be advanced by the English Government to an Irish State department at 3-1/8 per cent. interest, and the Bill provided that the tenant, instead of rent, was to pay an annuity of L4 per cent. on a capital sum equal in amount to twenty times the gross rental.