of the United Kingdom. Economically also the two countries are bound together in a way which makes a common physical policy absolutely necessary for the welfare of both countries. The financial arguments which might have made it possible to permit an independent fiscal policy for Ireland under free trade, have disappeared with the certain approach of a revision of the tariff policies of England. There can be no separate tariffs for the two countries, or even a common tariff, without a common Government to negotiate and enforce it. If there were no other objection to the establishment of a separate Government in Dublin, it would be impossible because legislative autonomy can only be coupled with financial independence.
The financial difficulties in the way of any grant of Home Rule are fully explained by Mr. Austen Chamberlain. Three attempts at framing schemes for financing Home Rule were made by Mr. Gladstone in the past. All the powers of this great and resourceful dialectician were employed in defending these various schemes in turn. He was not deterred from pressing any scheme by the fact that in important details it was inconsistent with or even opposed to what had been previously recommended. But if there was one principle on which Mr. Gladstone never turned his back it was in demanding a contribution from Ireland for Imperial services. At one time he demanded a cash payment, at another the assignment of the Customs, and on yet another occasion the payment to the Imperial Exchequer of a quota—one-third—of the tax-revenue in Ireland.
The effect of recent social legislation, such as Old Age Pensions, Labour Exchanges, and Sickness and Unemployment Insurance has been to confer on Ireland benefits much greater in value than the Irish contribution in respect of the new taxation imposed. In consequence of this change the present Irish revenue falls short of the expenditure incurred for Irish purposes in Ireland. Mr. Chamberlain shows that if any scheme even remotely resembling any of those put forward on previous occasions by Mr. Gladstone is embodied in the new Bill, and if a moderate contribution for Imperial services is included, the Irish deficit must range from £2,500,000 to £3,500,000. If by any process of juggling with the figures the Irish Parliament is again to be started with a surplus the deficit must have been made good by charging it against the Imperial taxpayer. But again there is no permanence in such a surplus. It must disappear if the ameliorative measures which are long overdue in Ireland are undertaken by an Irish Parliament; and previous experience has already illustrated that even without the adoption of any such new schemes surpluses would long ago have made room for deficits. It will be the duty of the Nationalists party to say definitely what are the fiscal reserves upon which they can draw in order to establish permanent equilibrium between revenue and expenditure in Ireland.
Not only does Unionist policy for Ireland involve considerations of national safety and national honour, but it is also necessary for the economic welfare of both countries. The remarkable success which has attended Mr. Wyndham's Land Act of 1903 has alarmed the political party in Ireland, which depends for its influence on the poverty and discontent of the rural population of Ireland. Mr. Wyndham in his article upon Irish Land Purchase shows clearly the blessings which have followed wherever his Act has been given fair play, and the evils which have resulted in the suppression of Land Purchase by Mr. Birrell's Act of 1909. The dual ownership created by Mr. Gladstone's ill-advised and reckless legislation led to Ireland being starved both in capital and industry and brought the whole of Irish agriculture to the brink of ruin, and under these circumstances, Conservative statesmen determined, in accordance with the principles of the Act of Union, to use a joint exchequer for the purpose of relieving Irish distress. Credit of the State was employed to convert the occupiers of Irish farms into the owners of the soil. The policy of the Ashbourne Acts was briefly that any landlord could agree with any tenant on the purchase price of his holding. The State then advanced the credit sum to the landlord in cash, while the tenant paid an instalment of 4 per cent. for forty-nine years. It is important to notice that the landlord received cash and that the tenants paid interest at the then existing rate of interest on Consols, namely, 3 per cent. The great defect in these Acts was that they applied only to separate holdings and not to estates as a whole; but their success can be estimated by the fact that under them twenty-seven thousand tenants became owners by virtue of advances which amounted to over ten million pounds. Under Mr. Balfour's Acts of 1891 and 1896, the landlord was paid in stock instead of cash, and the tenants still paid 4 per cent., the interest being reduced to the then rate on Consols—2–¾ per cent.—and the Sinking Fund being proportionately increased. It will be noticed that these Acts began the practise of paying the landlord in stock, though at that time Irish Land Stock with a face value of £100 became worth as much as £114. The exchequer was, moreover, permitted to retain grants due for various purposes in Ireland and to recoup itself out of them in case of any combined refusal to repay on the part of tenants.
The Irish Land Act of 1903 was the product of the experience gained during eighteen years of the operation of the preceding Purchase Acts. It was founded upon an agreement made in 1902 between representatives of Irish landlords and tenants. Cash payments were resumed to the landlords, the tenants' instalments were reduced to 3–¼ per cent., and a bonus, as it was called, of twelve millions of money was made available to bridge the gap between the landlords and the tenants at the rate of 12 per cent, on the amount advanced. That Act possessed the additional advantage of dealing with the estates as a whole instead of with individual holdings, and it substituted the principle of speedy purchase for that of dilatory litigation. This remarkable and generous measure initiated a great and beneficent revolution, but every popular and useful feature of the Act of 1903 was distorted or destroyed in the Land Act which the present Government passed at the instigation of the Irish Nationalist Party in 1909. In Mr. Wyndham's words "a solemn treaty framed in the interest of Ireland was torn up to deck with its tatters the triumph of Mr. Dillon's unholy alliance with the British Treasury." Under the Act of 1909, landlords, instead of cash payments, are to receive stock at 3 per cent. issued on a falling market. This stock cannot possibly appreciate because owing to the embarrassment of Irish estates a large proportion of each issue is thrown back upon the market at the redemption of mortgages. The tenant's annuity is raised from 3–¼ per cent, to 3–½ per cent., a precedent not to be found in any previous experiment under Irish Land Purchase finance. The bonus is destroyed and litigation is substituted for security and speed. The results of the two Acts are instructive. Under the 1903 Act the potential purchasers amounted to nearly a quarter of a million; under the 1909 Act the applications in respect of direct sales being less than nine thousand. It is hardly necessary to go into the reasons advanced for this disastrous change. It has been brought about not in order to relieve the British Treasury, but in order to rescue from final destruction the waning influence of Irish Nationalism. Mr. Wyndham has the authority of the leader of the Unionist Party for his statement that the first constructive work of the Unionist Party in Ireland must be to resume the Land policy of 1903 and to pursue the same objects by the best methods until they have all been fully and expeditiously achieved. Unionist policy cannot, however, be confined to the restoration of Land Purchase. The ruin which Free Trade finance has inflicted upon Irish agriculture can only be remedied, as Mr. Childers saw at the time of the Financial Relations Commission in 1895, by a readjustment of the fiscal system of the United Kingdom.
Mr. Gerald Balfour shows us in one of the most able papers in the book the extraordinary development which has been seen in recent years in Irish agricultural methods. The revival of Irish rural industries dates from Mr. Balfour's chief-secretaryship. The Parliament which set up in Ireland the Congested Districts Board and sanctioned the building of light railways at the public expense, also witnessed the formation in Ireland of a Society which was destined to work great changes in the social conditions of the country. The Irish Agricultural Organisation Society represents the fruit of a work begun in the face of incredible difficulties and remorseless opposition by Sir Horace Plunkett in 1889. "Better farming, better business, better living"—these were the principles which he and Mr. Anderson set out to establish in Ireland. Their representatives were described as monsters in human shape, and they were adjured to cease their "hellish work." Now the branches of the Society number nearly 1000, with an annual turnover of upwards of 2–½ millions, and they include creameries, village banks, and societies for the purchase of seeds and manure and for the marketing of eggs. It is not necessary to tell again the story of the Recess Committee and the formation of the Department of Agriculture. The result of its work,
