listened to by the peasants, blinded by desire to own the land. Indeed, from November 1st, 1903 to March 31st, 1906, the average price of land bought and sold was 22.9 times its rent (22.9 years purchase), or 25 times, if one takes into account the supplementary bonus paid to the landlords. This represents an increase of nearly 40 per cent. on the former prices.6

Now it is evident that these high prices will be a heavy mortgage on future generations. The annuities are undoubtedly calculated at a reduced rate, but they will have to be paid for sixty-eight and a half years without remission or reduction. Can we suppose that, between the present moment and that far-off date, the price of agricultural produce will not become lower, owing to increased competition? Can one hope that between now and then no crisis will occur in agriculture or in cattlebreeding?7 Yet any such crisis will be ruinous, not only for the tenant purchasers, whose initial expenses are too heavy, but also for the Irish ratepayers, who guarantee the payment of the annuities, and in fact for all Ireland, which is responsible for this debt as the price of her land.

With future dangers the Act of 1903 is undoubtedly pregnant. But admitting this point, can it nevertheless be considered certain of achieving its aim? Will it effect the general and final transfer of land from landlord to tenant? It is very doubtful. Even after this Act has done its work there will remain a considerable number of

The average

6 Report of the Estates Commissioners for 1903-1906. price per acre during the five years preceding the Act of 1903 was £8 9s. (in stock). It rose to £13 4s. (or 15 with the bonus) under the Act of 1903. The average reduction obtained by the tenant-purchasers worked out at 25 per cent. There was also another reason that might contribute to explain this rise in prices. Landlords who had sold their estates under the former Acts, had often done so under constraint, owing to their embarrassments. But now it is no longer the most encumbered estates that are being sold. Those who are selling are not compelled to do so, and will only sell at a good price. We said, in fact, that the Act was conceived with the idea of raising purchase prices. The Tories have attained their end, but it remains to be seen whether this will not produce a greater danger in the future.

7 See above our remarks as to the crisis which is already threatening the cattle-breeding industry.

landlords who will refuse to sell at any price, and a still larger number who will refuse to sell at any reasonable price. The truth is that the bonus is not large enough to fill the gap between capital bringing in the required income at 3 per cent-which is what the landlords wantand the purchase price that would only do so at 5 per cent., which is all that the peasants can pay. To end the deadlock it will be necessary some day to resort to compulsory purchase; this seems extremely probable. The settlement of the matter will doubtless be more or less delayed and by this temporising policy some disorder and violence may, perhaps, be provoked. But from the ultimate necessity there will be no escape. Landlordism will not be abolished without recourse to legal compulsion.

However this may be, the day cannot now be far off when landlordism will have disappeared and peasantproprietorship will be definitely established in Ireland. But will the dawning of that day necessarily mean the ending of the difficulty? Not even then will it be ended. England, though the traditional enemy of peasant proprietorship, has yet been compelled by a remarkable course of events to establish it in Ireland; to create, in fact, this very system in which, hitherto, she had only been able to perceive disadvantages both real and imaginary-although indeed it is now said that she is beginning to think of partially introducing it into England, as a means of checking her own rural depopulation. In Ireland it is undoubtedly indispensable to an agricultural revival; but is it, alone, sufficient for this purpose ? Undoubtedly not. To establish peasant-proprietorship by law is not enough; it must be made workable; and, in the face of present-day cut-throat competition, this result is harder than ever to achieve, more especially when it has to pay a ransom out of the profits it earns. not enough to make the peasant a proprietor; he must be placed, by means of agricultural education and cooperation, in a position to succeed. This process, as a matter of fact, has already been begun in Ireland.

It is

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must be protected against himself; against running into debt and against sub-division of his land; and steps have been taken in this direction by the Act of 1903. But until a remedy has been found for congestion, and for the excessive preponderance of grazing land over that devoted to tillage, one may say that nothing at all has been accomplished. And I cannot see that the Act, as applied, makes sufficient provision for these difficulties. Until cheap transit to the great centres, and advances of capital at a low rate of interest secured on real property have been supplied to the farmer, nothing has been done.8 Up to the present moment these points have been neglected. Finally, as we have before remarked, there will be no solution of the land problem while there is no industry to give employment in Ireland. Let us hasten to add, however, that when all is said, nothing could be more fortunate for Ireland than the establishment of small peasant proprietorship. It will bring to the peasant, who has never before known it, that feeling which is the true secret of success, namely, security of tenure. It will turn him into a Conservative, as indeed he would long ago have been if only he had had anything to conserve.9

It

8 The organisation of loans on landed security is one of the first needs of the farming interest in Ireland. It will never be satisfactorily supplied until the question of the registration of titles has been put in order, as regards both the past and the future. As to the question of the high cost of transit, see below. Another pressing need is the following :- commons must be re-established for the peasants; re-afforestation and the preservation of the existing woods must be provided for (the actual lack of trees is nothing less than a calamity). Provision must also be made for public necessities in various districts, such as irrigation, drainage, roads and railways to open up untapped areas, and utilisation of peat-bogs. There being no communal authorities (the Commune does not exist in Ireland) these functions ought to be handed over to the County Councils (the creation of Trustees under the Act of 1903, Sections 4 and 20, is entirely insufficient). 9 Tacked on to the agrarian problem are two other questions of secondary interest for us Frenchmen: the question of labourers' cottages, and the question of town tenants.

Agricultural labourers who are neither owners nor cultivators are common enough in Ireland. The exact number is undiscoverable because statistics make no difference between them and the tenants, whose farms being too small to pay, supplement their profits by hiring themselves as labourers. The ultra-miserable condition of these agricultural labourers without hearth or home, and, more especially,

will allow agriculture to develop, open the way for economic progress, and, perhaps, at length bring peace to the Land of Ireland.

the frightfully insanitary condition of the hovels in which they are lodged by their employers, have, on several occasions, provoked legislative intervention. From 1883 to 1903 various Acts have empowered the Boards of Guardians (now the District Councils) to erect suitable buildings for the accommodation of agricultural labourers. About 20,000 cottages have now been built, almost all of them in Munster or Leinster. They are let to the labourers at an average rent of 10d. to Is. per week. According to Irish opinion, the results obtained are very inadequate as compared with what remains to be done. The intricacy of the law and the ill-will of the landlords prevent any thorough development of the system.

The town tenants, on the other hand, are persons who have rented houses on town estates belonging to landlords (in England and Ireland, of course, the ownership of towns and villages, like that of the land in rural districts usually belongs to great landlords; hence the difficulty of erecting new buildings, and the power in the hands of the landlords of raising their rents to an excessive degree). The town tenants are asking for legislation analogous to the Gladstonian legislation, in order to protect them against the landlords; also for a better means of defending their rights to improvements of immovable property, and for the fixing of a "fair rent." The connection will be evident between the Town Tenants' question and that of the housing of the poor in the towns.

Two recent Acts (1906) have, to a certain extent, satisfied the claims of the agricultural labourers and the town tenants.

CHAPTER III. THE WESTERN PROBLEM

THE Western problem is merely a special "case" of the land question; but it is so exceptional a case, so grave in its urgency and so interesting as a social study, that it must be given a separate place in our examination.

Killarney and its lakes, Kenmare and its river, Glengarriff and its sweet-smelling woods-who is there that does not feel their magic? Who is there but has read a hundred times of those beautiful green oases which Nature, in some stray flight of her fancy, has reserved for this Ultima Thule of Ireland? Privileged ground it is, and a mysterious kingdom of plants. One can hardly imagine in our climates such an exuberance of vegetable life; giant rhododendrons forming unbreachable, crenelated bastions, hollies and fuchsias thirty feet high, azaleas and yuccas, flowering laurels, impenetrable tangles of every sort of evergreen, above which stand out the red pinetrunks, the slim birch trees, and the grave splendour of the Irish yews. All this springs from a thick black soil on which the rich refuse of the forest has been heaping itself, for no one knows how many centuries; fat with the decay of past, and big with the promise of future flowerings. It is a kingdom apart, a dreamland; a section, one might almost say, of the tropical regions transplanted and set down under the pale northern sky; a little world where Nature, in our colder latitudes, seems to have tried, as if in a hot-house, to put forth all her strength and luxuriance. But is this in real truth the West of Ireland? Unfortunately not. This is what is shown to the tourist. Why do they not show him the rugged Highlands which are Ireland's fortification against