It is a somewhat unexpected conclusion. To solve a problem of oppugnancies we are forced to a negative definition.

With the counties the case is different. If we contemplate the cutting-up of Ireland into two jurisdictions at all, we may as well re-arrange the shires or provinces, leaving out of the DublinHome-Rule jurisdiction Antrim, Londonderry, half of Tyrone, two-thirds of Armagh, and three-fourths of county Down, or otherwise as voting may now go. But here again there will be one source of friction almost incompatible with order. The town of Londonderry would have Home Rule, and the surrounding county something else, unless future elections go differently; and it is difficult to imagine such an arrangement working without quarrels. It would probably be well to leave Londonderry town with its county. Part of county Down, on the other hand, would be under Dublin Home Rule, and Belfast otherwise; but, as it happens, and as might be expected, it is in the south divisions of Down and Armagh that the Nationalists have the majority; and a line drawn across those portions of these counties, and across Tyrone up to the west border of county Londonderry, would leave a compact north-eastern province representing Orange or Conservative Ulster. Some division might indeed be practicable in Londonderry; while on the other hand it might be difficult to divide Tyrone; but such difficulties might be settled by a small amount of compromise on both sides. Such partial compromise would be justified by sheer necessity, which forces the leaving of Belfast as a whole to Orangedom.

Given a real Orange province, then, cut out of and different from the present semi-Catholic province of Ulster, the question arises, What is to be done with it? The first and most satisfactory answer, from the Radical point of view, is that Orange Ulster may be constituted a separate community or State with its own local legislature, on the United States plan; while the rest of Ireland is constituted a separate State, with its legislature at Dublin or wherever else it pleases. (An impartial outsider would be disposed to suggest Cork, which is close to one of the best harbours in the world, and is more essentially "national” than Dublin, which looks to England.) These two provinceStates would alike have Home Rule; and a comprehensive and logical scheme would empower them both to send representatives to an "imperial" Parliament, created by a reconstruction of the British constitution on a federal system, under which, say, Scotland (or North and South Scotland), Wales, and England (or two or more sections of England) should alike have their local legis

latures, while sending representatives to an imperial Parliament that should have nothing but imperial affairs to deal with.

same name.

Some Orangemen, however, declare that they will not accept Home Rule of any sort, and demand that their present connection with England shall be maintained. This attitude is obviously inspired by the religious malice which makes them hostile to the self-government of Catholics by Catholics. They are anxious to be "part of England" primarily in order to spite Catholic Ireland. But it cannot for a moment be admitted that Orangemen have a claim on England to the extent of its keeping up a dangerous source of strife in Ireland. Orangemen indeed hate Catholics about as much as many Home Rulers have been prepared to hate England; but the psychological provocativeness of a specifically alien jurisdiction is more permanent and more intense than that of difference of creed in a race with the same accent and the A Protestant state and a Catholic state in Ireland, with separate state legislatures, could get on much better together than the latter could with an English state ruled from London. Englishmen are indeed in a manner bound to see that Orangemen are constitutionally safeguarded against intervention by the Catholic Irish legislature, but that is all. The cry about "abandonment" would be the merest perversity in the face of such an arrangement as is above proposed; and would be entitled to no respect as coming from people who have repeatedly talked of resisting legislation proposed to be carried in the British Parliament. Orangemen would have a clear choice. Either they could be constituted into a separate federal state, independent of the Catholic state, and sending like that representatives to the imperial Parliament; or they could be left without Parliamentary government altogether. The chances are a hundred to one that they will not make that choice. Religious malice prevents them from seeing the plain expediency of making Ireland into one state, with one legislature, but it will hardly lead them to deny themselves representative government. The inevitable movement of democracy within Orangedom, once the pretext of danger from Popery is nullified, would force either the establishment of an Orange legislature or coalition with the Catholic state. In any case, the whole responsibility of choice would lie with the Orange faction, who would be left without any show of grievance. The plan of two Irish state legislatures would take the main ground from under Lord Salisbury's appeal, and would cancel the one valid argument against a Home Rule policy as generally conceived. I recollect to have seen, in 1885 or 1886, a scheme

of provincial legislatures for Ireland; but I cannot remember whether in this scheme the provinces were to send representatives to London or to a central Irish Parliament at Dublin. There seems, however, to be no necessity for having anything but one Protestant and one Catholic province; and in that case there could be no superior Parliament save the "imperial."

It will be necessary, however, on the plan proposed, to have a clear understanding as to what are to be imperial affairs and what are not. On this point Home Rulers have been much wanting in clearness. They often allude to "local" affairs as if these consisted mainly in municipal and county administration. But local government in a system of Federal States would include the making of land laws, and, if the American example is to be followed, marriage-laws and criminal laws. Difference of laws in these matters is a grave drawback; but the line cannot be drawn short of some such devolution of legislative power on the States if the arrangement is to meet Irish needs. The vetoes of Mr Gladstone's original Bill were reducible to no consistent principle; and it would be bad statesmanship to set up a constitution which the mass of the Irish people would be constantly burning to alter. All that the English and Irish aristocratic party can reasonably ask for in the matter of the land laws is that there shall be provision against confiscation of landlords' rights; and this may be effected by a previous purchase transaction on the lines of Mr Gladstone's proposals. If the "English majority" will not trust an Irish Parliament to deal fairly by landlords, their alternative is to employ English credit as Mr Gladstone proposed. But the policy of Ireland, to be permanently successful, must go beyond mere purchase of landlords' rights and provision for the transfer of ownership to the tenants. The events of the past twenty-five years have shown that, though the creation of peasant proprietorship fifty years ago might possibly have enabled the peasantry to meet the new situation, a system of transfer which presupposes a regular power of payment on the tenant's part is practically sure to break down. Were it only for that reason, another solution must be found if Ireland under Home Rule is not to be merely miserable with a difference.

$ 3. Nationalisation of Rent.

Even if, indeed, there were a fair prospect that in a generation the present tenants might carry through a process of purchase which should make them owners of their farms, it is not at all

likely that Ireland would then be at an end of her agrarian troubles. It is indeed odd that any one should suppose so. A system involving five hundred thousand small proprietors is of course much more conducive to national happiness than a system which keeps the land in the hands of a thousand landlords with five hundred thousand tenants, provided that under the small-proprietor system agriculture is not worsened, and that the standard of life is not lowered by multiplication of families and holdings. And we may suppose that, despite the influence of the priesthood, the Irish peasantry, like the French, would be gradually led by simple proprietorship to restrain their families and so avoid the progressive reduction of size of holdings to absurdity. In Ireland, however, the reform, so long delayed, will be extremely hard to begin; and there would be for a time a strong tendency to cut up farms under the new system as under the old. Such subdivision infallibly means misery; and such misery means the purchase of broken men's lands by others. Thus the cutting-up process would be followed by one of estatemaking. And even without widespread subdivision, in the absence of a law forcing the divison of estates that are above a certain size, the normal process of capitalism tends to the creation of large estates. Under a system of peasant proprietary, there would be no hindrance to the purchase of various holdings by any one man who could persuade the holders to sell; and the simple fact that farms vary in quality would further tend to bring about the old inequalities. Men with large families to provide for, sufferers from sickness, men with bad luck in live stock, would tend to lose their property, and others would acquire it. In France at this moment, under the law of equal division of the property of parents among children, it constantly happens that a peasant farmer has to borrow money to pay to his sisters and brothers the value of their share; so that, though the statistics are hard to get, it is notorious that the French peasantry in general are an indebted class. In a country where there was a tendency to capitalistic farming, such holdings would be very apt to be sold. It would only need, then, a generation or two to produce in Ireland a number of new rich landowners, who would let their land to tenants as did the old; and the agrarian problem, supposing it to have disappeared in the interim, would reopen. For what mining and manufacturing industry is in England, that agriculture (including pasturage) is in Ireland—the main source of the subsistence of the nation; and as industrial trouble is inevitable in England, pending the coming of a scien

tific social system, so agrarian trouble is inevitable in Ireland, pending the creation of a scientific land system.

Now, it is a much easier matter to settle the land problem on scientific lines, howbeit not on a final footing, than it is to reduce the industrial problem to any scientific footing at all; and it is relatively easier still when, as in the case of Ireland, the public intelligence has already been brought to contemplate a sweeping measure of land purchase, by State action.1 It only needs that instead of turning its effort to the creation of peasant proprietors, the State should retain all property in the land, and make the farmers and cotters its tenants, giving them not only the security of tenure which they need but the further security that their rents shall never become impossible for them in respect of bad seasons or unforeseen competition.

That is to say, the State should fix the rent due from each holding, first, on the basis of the market value of the farm under the existing laws before the commencement of the State's ownership, and afterwards, year by year, on the basis of the average prices of (1) market produce, or (2) of the produce special to any district or class of farm; or (3) in respect of new outside conditions, such as the rise of towns, roads, and railways. The rent, in short, should be on a sliding scale. In this way and in this way only is it possible to prevent chronic strife, and the chronic ruin of thousands of cultivators. As the rent would be fixed each year with regard to the variations of market prices from the level at which it was first fixed by valuation, and to the variation of the advantages of site, the same tests would apply everywhere, and tenants who were specially industrious or specially skilful would duly profit by their industry and their skill. This may not be the final principle of remuneration in human affairs; but it is an immense advance on the existing system; and if a still higher scheme is ever to be reached, it can the more easily proceed from such a basis. In the meantime, the nationalisation of economic rent would leave in full play all the individualistic forces which would work for the fullest utilisation of the land. Wherever tenants choose to undertake special improvements of a durable kind, they can and indeed should be

1 "To say the truth, all parties are agreed in petto upon the necessity of abolishing landlordism. It is only a question of settling who shall have the credit of doing it, and how it shall be managed so that neither the landlord's creditors nor the public exchequer should suffer too much by that unavoidable liquidation." (M. Philippe Daryl, Ireland's Disease, author's Eng. ed., 1888, p. 213.)