upon religious matters during the last four years, and also that "intolerance" will soon be a thing of the past, toleration be regarded as an insult; that the right of every man to his own opinions, the power of all men to think for themselves upon any subject; the presumption of any body of men to claim "infallibility" for their particular views, the arrogance-nay, impertinence -of promising eternal benefits, or eternal punishments to those who cannot think as they do, will be recognized, and a progress will be made such as the past has never dreamt of—a change for the good of all men, to the suffering of none, or only the few who will have to moderate their pride, exclusiveness, and arrogance towards their fellow-men, founded upon the assumption that they have some "special knowledge" of the Creator's intentions in the future.

If the " Land Act" were a final Act, it would be unwise to write against it now it has become the law; but the Act of 1870 had to be altered in 1881; and we are justified in inferring from Mr. Gladstone's reply to a letter from the Committee of the South Shropshire Liberal Association, hoping that legislation on the English land question would soon be attempted. that the Premier intends to interfere also with the English land laws, as, after expressing that gentleman's thanks for the resolution of confidence in the Government, it says: "He also begs. that you will assure the Committee, with reference to the concluding portion of their resolution, that the Government are very sensible that legislation on the laws relating to land in England is much required." This letter is my excuse for asking Englishmen to think seriously over the question: The Land Act,-what is it? It is an Act of Parliament that puts in the place of landlord and tenant a court, a triumvirate, to manage the landed property of Ireland. It is an Act of Parliament that takes away the right of A to make a contract with B. It is an Act of Parliament to put aside nature's laws of "supply and demand" for the regulation of prices between buyer and seller, lender and borrower, and it takes to itself the office of fixing a "fair rent," which has been defined as being

such a rent as the tenant can afford to pay for the use of the land. It is admitted by all thoughtful men that for any permanent improvement of Ireland, the Irish people must become more self-helpful, self-reliant, self-dependent. To effect this, we pass an Act of Parliament that takes away the usual incentives to industry and thrift, as the Act virtually gives perpetuity of tenure— viz., leases renewable every fifteen years at such rents as the Court thinks fair at the time of renewal. The Act will only confer a benefit upon the present occupiers at the expense of the landlord, as the successors of the present tenants will have to pay for the holdings what they are worth, and farms, like trades, will be sold for a "goodwill." There is no evading nature's laws. Wealth is not created by Acts of Parliament. Study every Act that has ever been passed to regulate the price of labour, land, money, &c., and you will find its action is to benefit Peter at the expense of Paul. By this Act the value of the fee-simple is taken away from the owner and transferred to the occupant, and there its benefit ends. That it is simply a benefit to the present occupants, let us imagine going back to the law that gave officers a property in their commissions; it would be a great benefit to the "present" officers, who would have a saleable value attached to what they had not bought, but it would be benefiting them at the expense of those who succeeded them, and who would have to pay them to get the commission. With the Irish land, the tenant will be able to sell a something for money that he never bought; the law having handed over to him for "nothing" what the landlord had legally inherited, or purchased and paid for. To use plain language, the Land Acts of 1870 and 1881, no matter what their intentions, are "legalized robberies." The original Bill took away all liberty of action on the part of the landlord. Fortunately, the House of Lords has still the power of checking us in the path of destruction, and their firm attitude effected some slight modification of the details, more especially the "right of the landlord to have equal access to the Court with the tenant." And Lord Carlingford voluntarily admitted (August 15th, 1881), when the Bill passed the House

of Lords, "that in their opinion the Bill had been distinctly improved by the comparisons of the two Houses." The Government, however, refused to be just to those landlords who had, since the Act of 1870, purchased or acquired the "tenant-right" of the occupiers; so that their land, in pursuance of Section 1 or Section 2 of the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act, 1870, ceased to be subject to such custom; and where the holding is sold for the first time under the Act of 1881, they also refused to allow the landlord to apply to the Court to apportion him such part, if any, of the purchase money of such tenant-right, that, under and upon the faith of the Act of 1870, he had bought and paid for. The Act gives the power to cancel all existing contracts, by giving the "discontented" the power to appeal to the Court to revise their rent. But the most unjust feature of this unjust and unwise Act was refusing the Lords' amendment: "Because it is unjust that those who have covenanted to give back possession of land to a lessor on termination of a lease should be relieved by Parliament from the obligation of doing so without any compensation being provided for the lessor." Think of this: A has let his land to B on lease, at a fixed rental, for a certain period, and on the express and well understood condition that he has only borrowed the land," that it belongs to the landlord, and has to be returned to him if he wishes, or, as is usual, some fresh arrangements are made; yet, in the year 1881, an Act of Parliament is passed absolving B from his legally stamped agreement, and transferring the landlord's rights to the tenant for nothing;" and the only amendment that could be obtained was an alteration: "Provided that at the expiration of such existing leases, or of such of them as shall expire within sixty years after the passing of this Act, the lessees, if bona fide in occupation of their holdings, shall be deemed to be tenants of present ordinary tenancies from year to year, at the rents and subject to the conditions of their leases respectively." The principle of the Bill is maintained, and the tenants are in reality absolved from the covenants entered into under deed and seal. The "exceptional times" may give some excuse to those

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who justify this Act, but let us be frank, and honestly tell the landlord he must suffer "for State reasons or public policy." Do not pretend that you are benefiting A, without admitting that you are to the same extent damaging the interests of B. The position as regards the value of the landlords' capital is this: by the Act, land will in future be bought wholly and solely as a commercial investment a very risky and speculative investment, as it will be very dangerous to bid against the "occupying tenant." I therefore fail to see how the present landlords are to have justice done to them, or get their capital back, after an Act is passed that virtually gives an "occupier" the right to use and bequeath his occupancy as he pleases. The capital value of the land has been reduced " one-third" by the Act of 1881, by artificially restricting the area of competition. Sentimentally, it may seem right that land being limited, must be treated in a different way to corn. It is argued that because wealthy men have paid more for land than it is worth to have the right to use or control the use of it, the rent has been artificially increased; but it is not so; land has realized its price, subject to competition; and you have no more right to say land has realized an abnormal price because of the varied interests that bid to get it, than you have to say pears shall not fetch 3d. each because the price is higher than the majority can pay. This will be the operation of the Act. It is "protection" to present "occupiers' interests" at the expense of the landlord, and it shuts out of the market a large class of land buyers, and lessens the number of bidders, from the risk to buyers of being shot, and deters others who fear that in 1891 the then Government will repudiate and cancel contracts made between landlord and tenant under the Act of 1881, as the present Government has put aside its own offspring of 1870. The tenants, or rather the "present occupiers," should indeed be well satisfied with an Act that virtually hands over to them the land of Ireland at their "own price," as its action will exclude all other bidders.

On July 22, 1881, in the House of Commons, Mr. Gladstone said: "If they were to pass a law providing that rents in Ireland

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should be reduced to Griffith's valuation, that would be a case for compensation." By a parity of reasoning, if an Act is passed as a matter of " public policy," and admitted to be economically unsound," it seems only fair that the landlord who can prove that he has suffered through its action should also be entitled to compensation. In the same speech Mr. Gladstone justified the Land Law by saying that "the State, on the ground of policy, on the ground of humanity, on the ground of general utility, interfered with private property. The State had at one time endeavoured to fix wages, but nobody ever heard that compensation was claimed for a class whose wages had been reduced. The State, until very recently, maintained laws which forbade persons in times of scarcity to sell beyond the market price, but nobody ever heard of a claim for compensation 'on the part of those persons whose private interests were thereby injured. And that was a very much stronger case than the case now before the Committee. The State had again and again limited the access of employers to the labour market, and had made labour comparatively dear by means of that action; but employers did not on that account come to the House and lodge a claim for compensation." You will perceive the hollowness of such an argument, when you recollect that Adam Smith proved that the State had been most fatally wrong in all their attempts to regulate the price of money, wages, land, or any commodity. The plausible sophistry of the most skilled rhetorician of his age may throw dust in the eyes of his infatuated followers, but to me it is pitiful that so fine a career should be marred by trying to "improve upon the laws of God." It looks bad to have to justify the doing wrong by referring to the past, when the "same wrongs" were done, as men suffered the ague, by infringing laws whose action they were then ignorant of. With the ague, we found out the cause, and a man would be considered criminal who brought the disease back "because it had been." History will require, when weighing the character of the gifted author of the Land Act, some stronger justification than "that the State, on the ground of policy, &c., had used to interfere