To the same purpose Mr. Mill observes that 'in every country without exception in which peasant properties prevail, the towns, from the larger surplus which remains after feeding the agricultural classes, are increasing both in population and in the well-being of their inhabitants.' The present landowners of Ireland may therefore assure themselves that the conviction will at length force itself upon the public, that for the prosperity, not of agriculture alone, but of all the other industries of which the island is capable, either tenancies at will must cease to exist, or peasant properties must at any cost be created. M. de Tocqueville's reflection has already been quoted, that it is a sign of the imminent subversion of aristocratic institutions when the relation between landlord and tenant has become one of the briefest duration; but he adds the significant remark that if democratic tendencies shorten the duration of tenures, democratic institutions tend powerfully to increase the number of properties, and to diminish the number of tenant-farmers.' The land system of Ireland is one without the advantages either of feudalism or of democracy. As long as a numerous population,' says Lord Dufferin, is cursed with a morbid craving to possess land, so long will the owner be able to drive hard bargains.' The conclusion which these 'hard bargains' are likely to force before long on the public mind is, that the morbid craving for land with which the people of Ireland have been cursed, is that which moralists in every age have denounced, and against which the prophet cried, 'Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be

no place, that they may be placed alone in the earth.' The landlords of England may likewise rest assured that their own interests are involved in the Irish land question in a different manner from what they suppose. They are afraid of a precedent of interference with established territorial institutions; they have more to fear their self-condemnation.

151

MR. SENIOR ON IRELAND.*

AFTER centuries of alternate rebellion and famine, and finally the loss of a third of the Irish nation in twentytwo years, the Irish question- for,' as Mr. Senior said a generation ago, there is but one'-has become the English question too, the main question on which a general election is about to turn. Some of the chief guides of public opinion in England nevertheless profess themselves still in perplexity as to what the Irish question is. For their information, and to find the key to its solution, let us state the question in Mr. Senior's words: The detestation by the mass of the people of Ireland of her institutions,' being he said the fundamental evil, the first step towards the cure of this detestation must be to remove its causes; the first step towards making the institutions of Ireland popular must be to make them deserve to be so. indeed, they were deserving of popularity, the remedy would be hopeless. But this is an impossible supposition. No population hates the mass of its existing laws without sufficient reason. The tendency is to cling to whatever is established, merely because it is established.'

6

If,

This statement of the question seems to us com

Reprinted from the 'Fortnightly Review,' November 1868..

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plete. We cannot, however, say as much for either Mr. Senior's solution, or his explanation of the long delay of solution. The object of every statesman,' any we fully admit, ought now, as in 1844, when Mr. Senior said so, to be that the Irish Catholics should feel themselves, to use O'Connell's words, "subjects out and out as the Protestants are." But when it is added that this feeling will be produced by a provision for the Irish Catholic clergy from the Imperial revenue, and can be produced by nothing else,' we must assert a conviction that such a provision twenty-five years ago (if accepted, which is very doubtful) would not only have left the original Irish question remaining, but have added another. Had the Irish Catholic Church been endowed by the State a generation ago, its disendowment would be one of the questions before the generation to come. In like manner we must reject the explanation Mr. Senior has given of the nonsolution of the original question. The prejudices and passions of England and Scotland,' he says, ' rendered it useless to suggest, because they rendered it impossible to apply, the means by which the misery of Ireland might be relieved.' Unless in the sense in which under one name a nation is confounded with its government—a confusion which, as was pointed out in a former article, lics at the root of a number of national evils and international feuds *-it is most unjust to

* Nations and International Law.' 'Fortnightly Review,' July 1, 1868, p. 90. For 'Baron von Ompleton,' p. 92 in that article, read 'Baron von Ompteda.' For 'investing the appeal to force in this regulated form to the,' p. 100, line 15, read investing, &c., with the.' For 'the later Roman law of nations,' p. 100, line 22, read the later Roman law of actions.'

hold England and Scotland responsible for the long misery of Ireland. On the contrary, no sooner does national, that is to say popular, feeling in England and Scotland obtain some considerable influence over political questions, than the first question is 'the Irish question' the question how to give Ireland good and popular laws, and to remove the institutions she detests. The plain reason is, that equality in the constitution, popular government, leads to equality in the laws, popular institutions; and the Irish question is but the most urgent side of the general question of equal and popular legislation for the whole kingdom, because inequality in legislation takes in Ireland the grossest and most intolerable forms. The reason, on the other hand, of the long continuance of the Irish question is equally plain. The history of this country,' said Mr. Lowe, in the most famous of his speeches against the admission of the people to a share in political power, 'the glorious and happy history of this country has been a conflict between two aristocratic parties.' Whose glory, we ask, and whose happiness? In the brief history of legislation for the English labouring classes, from 1349 to 1834, given in Mr. Senior's volumes on Ireland,* the reader will find a chapter in that 'glorious and happy history,' and a continuation of it may be found in the state of the agricultural labourers of England, and the proceedings in Parliament respecting them from that day to this. It is, however, to Ireland especially we must look for the kind of glory and happiness produced by a perpetual

* 'Journals,' &c., i. pp. 143–147.