The Daily Telegraph FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3005, 11 February 1881, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1881.

Sympathy with Mr Parnell and bis followers has been expressed at a number of meetings held in several of the large centres of population in Australia, and as this sympathy may extend to this colony it is as well that the public should understand with what section of land law reformers at home sympathy is desirable. That a reform of the Irish land law is desirable, and a pressing necessity, can not be doubted by any one who has given attention to the subject. The system under which a few hundred absentees exercise irresponsible power over the soil and peasantry of Ireland is most deplorably bad. That large estates have a tendency to break up of themselves is a fallacy, and until some very drastic remedies are supplied to the land laws in Ireland little peace or contenment can be expected. The legislation in the British Parliament for the last thirtyfive years has been an acknowledgement that Ireland has been suffering under misrule ; and the Queen's speech at the opening of the present Parliament shows clearly that the present Government are folly alive to the necessity of prompt and decisive action. The Encumbered Estates Court, established in 1849, dealt in the ten years of its existence with oneseventh of the landed property in Ireland, breaking up and re-distributing it anew. The Landed Estates Court, which followed it, sold to the value of £12,000,000 more in six years. In 1867 Mr Gladstone abolished the State Church in Ireland ; and its lands, to the value of £8,000,000, have been sold, mostly to the peasants settled upon them ; and in 1870 Mr Gladstone's Land Bill extended the customs? tenn.ni right of Ulster, with legal guarantees, over the whole island. The proposal that the State should buy land from the landlord, and sell it on reasonable terms of deferred payment to the tenant, is probably the best possible expedient that could be -adopted, and plan might be supplemented by another under which a tenant driven out by enhanced rent should be entitled to compensation at a rate to be fixed. Ireland has suffered of late from bad seasons and American competition ; it has suffered also because the Encumbered Estates Act has been worked to favor wealthy purchasers, and because Mr Gladstone's Land Act was easily evaded, but, notwithstanding, it is at the present time financially in a sounder condition than it has been at any period of its history, and if some broad and wise measure can be passed dealing with the land law, this monster of Irish discontent may be destroyed, and peace and prosperity given to a country which sorely needs it.

Whether the plan we have indicated is the best possible way of dealing with the Irish land question or not, we may rest assured that the statesman at present at the bead of Her Majesty's Government will deal with it in a thorough and fearless manner. He has done so in the past, and his efforts in the direction have not been barren of results. Under the present condition of things, with the country fully alive to the necessity of a change in the system of land tenure in Ireland, and a Government in office pledged to do their utmost to effect that change, it was the duty of Mr Parnell and his followers to seek redress in a constitutional manner. Instead of this, they have stumped the country, using l inflamatory language, and urging the tenants to pay no more than what they themselves consider a fair rent, and to make life unendurable to anyone who

has evicted a tenant for non-payment of rent. Then Mr Parnell has explained that he is agitating to keep the Government up to the mark, and his mark appears to be that the Government shall purchase a good portion of the land in Ireland and hand it over to the tenants, apparently without cost, and if this is not done the tenants are to refuse rent altogether next year. Even at a most moderate supposition Mr Parnell intends that the value of the land shall be assessed by the tenants themselves. The proposition is monstrous in every particular. Then we cannot hold Mr Parnell innocent of the many atrocious acts ot violence which his intemperate propogaudisms have excused if not evoked. Behind this movement there is an element which no reform will satisfy, which lives and thrives upon rebellion and strife, whose object is the dismemberment of the Empire, and nothing less will satisfy it. The remnants of the Fenian organization have been gathered together and are active, and until they are crushed by the powers granted by the Coercion Bill no measure of land reform for Ireland is possible.