The Great Land Bill

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 26, 25 June 1903, Page 1

The Great Land Bill

' And one by one in turn, some grand mistake Casts of! its bright skm \oail>, like the snake The ' grand mistake' ol the British Covermnent in lieland was the .substitution of the leudal loi the old ( lan system of land ten me in Ireland alter the da\s 01 tinViolated Treaty of Limerick That, great blundei is, n is fet-vently desned, to be remedied by i'.o u'eat L..ud Bill which brings more ol liojic ioi tlie most distiessiul country than any measure which r>;.'3 be>n talked miuthe connection between tr » two o)iinlries began r\ei seven centuries ago. At piesent it is, so to S[ieak, upon the anvil ol the House and is being battered and ;haped by the sledge-hammer of discussion What its dnali'oim will be nobody but a prophet or the son of a ptophet can at present say. One point of \ ital uupoi tarn c has howe\er, been seemed Mr. W\ndham's inoposal ioi .1 perpetual rent charge has been abamloned m tominittie IVat another lllibeial yiro\ision lias been allowed to lemam : namely, that the amounts ol rentri eduu ion umUi the new Act shall be only between ten and thntv pe-i cent lor second-teim lents, and between thnt\ and loiiv per cent for first -term rents ( First-teim rents ' mean rents that ha'U- been fixed once, and second-term lents mean rents that have been ivMse<l a second time, by tinLand Courts since the passing of Mr Gladstone's Land Act in 18K1 ) Mi- Itedmond's amendment to ..bnlish (he maximum limit o) reduction, and to extend the minimum, was rejeded last week by 217 \otes to 17i> If this clause be allowed to remain m the new Act it will work a great hardship on a large numbei of rackrented and other estates m Ireland where the haphazard decisions of more or less incompetent Land Courts made paltry and inadequate 1 eductions and enabled the landlord to squeeze a hea\ v rental on values created by the toil and sweat of the tenant laimer

To the Irish tenant 1 Aimer the present Bill, halt and lame though it may be, otteis a way out 01 the evils ol a system of dual ownership that has long been intolerable As the landlords : by iar the greater part ol them are the descendants and heirs of the old fox-hmitniß. loiid-.swcwnng Vu\u \ -fisted, hard-di inline,, roystermg squires who beggared themselves and their tenants and left to their children legacies consisting .<>i the most part of debts and mort^apes Land in lieLnd has long been an asset of last-diminishing \i\A\w li estates were put 'up at auction to-day and sold lm then market \alue, we should witness a repetition ol the bai-gain-counter transactions that took place undei t ho operations of the Encumbered Estates Act m IS.">l To the Irish landlords, then, the new Act will be a gilt ol the gods— a golden windfall poured into their expectant

lap by a new M'Lady Bounty. But they are the dauglitei s of tlie leech, and they will keep on crying : ' More, more ' ' 'It may be,' says London ' Truth ' of May 7,

■ that we are wise in agreeing to pay blackmail in order to f i <m> lush tenants lroni their landlords But we must not imi away with the notion that we are not paying it Let us suppose a landloid with an estate bringing ,v Llnoii per auuum net — le. -CUum altei deducting 10 ]H-i cent lor cost of management, etc Most i states in Ireland ,\rc hea\il\ nun tua^ed We will suppose there is a mortgage of iilH.onu on this estate, bearing 4£ I>er cent mleiest. This would absoi b JLBln The income oi iln- l.mdloid would c onsecjuently be .Cl9O For this estate he iecei\es twenty-eight veais' j)iirch.\se on net annual -\alue — ie, £28,000 If he pa\ s off the moitgage there remains £10,O0(t, and this at :?£ per cent would bring him in £3.">0 11 is nnome, therefore, becomes £3.")() instead of £190 But the market value oi hish estates is ceitamly not more than twenty \ ears' puich.ise The real a able, tlierefoi'e, of an estate bringing m ClOoO a } ear is, at most, L2o,ii(>i) '1 he tenant pa\s (i\e yiars' j>ui chase in addition to market value, and tlie taxpa\er thiee \eais' additional pin chase , or, m othei woids, the landloid iecei\c-s a pitsna oi £8000 ioi being good enough lo sell Ins estate We are bound to gt\e the Insh landloid a substantial eqimaleiit to what he den\es lrom his i-sta.te Jn the case oO mortgaged estates he gets mou- than the eqiuvaltnt So 'does he when the estate is not nioitgaged. in the shape of tietter secui it\ Tn stiict justice this is almost as alisuihl as it would be to gi\e the owner of a mine returning an income of £1000 on an in\estment of £10,000 a sum suflicient to leturn him the £l()0o m gilt-edged -ec unties It seems to me that, by p.uityoi leasonmg we ought t c> luao made good to e\ery Irish landlord whoso icnts weie mulcted m the Land (Joints, a suflicienc\ of Consols to make up the i eduction in his income '