It remains to notice certain other points of some importance. The landlord entitled to require the State to purchase his property is the immediate landlord, that is to say, the person entitled to the receipt of the rent of the estate; no encumbrancer can avail himself of the privilege, the reason being that the Bill is intended to assist solvent landlords, and not to create a new Encumbered Estates Court. The landlord may sell this privilege, and possibly by means of this power of sale may be able to put pressure on his encumbrancers to reduce their claims in order to obtain immediate payment. The Land Commission, in their character of quasi-arbitrators between the landlord and the Irish State Authority, have ample powers given to enable them to do justice. If the statutory price, as settled according to the Act, is too low, they may raise it to twenty-two years' purchase instead of twenty years' purchase. If it is too high, they may refuse to buy unless the landlord will reduce it to a proper price. In the congested districts scheduled in the Bill the land, on a sale, passes to the Irish State Authority, as landlords, and not to the tenants; the reason being that it is considered that the tenants would be worsened, rather than bettered, by having their small plots vested in them in fee simple. For the same cause it is provided that in any part of Ireland tenants of holdings under £4 a year may object to become the owners of their holdings, which will thereupon vest, on a sale, in the Irish State Authority. Lastly, the opportunity is taken of establishing a registry of title in respect of all property dealt with under the Bill. The result of such a registry would be that any property entered therein would ever thereafter be capable of being transferred with the same facility, and at as little expense, as stock in the public funds.
[Footnote 14: Any charge in excess of one million was to be borne by Imperial Exchequer.]
Is it not time that the opponents of Home Rule for Ireland should define their position? They defeated Mr. Gladstone's scheme last year in Parliament and in the constituencies; and they defeated it by the promise of a counter policy which was to consist, in brief, of placing Ireland on the same footing as Great Britain in respect to Local Government; or, if there was to be any difference, it was to be in the direction of a larger and more generous measure for Ireland than for the rest of the United Kingdom. This certainly was the policy propounded by the distinguished leader of the Liberal Unionists in his speech at Belfast, in November, 1885, and repeated in his electoral speeches last year. In the Belfast speech Lord Hartington said: "My opinion is that it is desirable for Irishmen that institutions of local self-government such as are possessed by England and Scotland, and such as we hope to give in the next session in greater extent to England and Scotland, should also be extended to Ireland." But this extension of local self-government to Ireland would require, in Lord Hartington's opinion, a fundamental change in the fabric of Irish Government. "I would not shrink," he says, "from a great and bold reconstruction of the Irish Government," a reconstruction leading up gradually to some real and substantial form of Home Rule. His Lordship's words are: "I submit with some confidence to you these principles, which I have endeavoured to lay down, and upon which, I think, the extension of Local Government in Ireland must proceed. First, you must have some adequate guarantees both for the maintenance of the essential unity of the Empire and for the protection of the minority in Ireland. And, secondly, you must also admit this principle: the work of complete self-government of Ireland, the grant of full control over the management of its own affairs, is not a grant that can be made by any Parliament of this country in a day. It must be the work of continuous and careful effort." Elsewhere in the same speech Lord Hartington says: "Certainly I am of opinion that nothing can be done in the direction of giving Ireland anything like complete control over her own affairs either in a day, or a session, or probably in a Parliament." "Complete control over her own affairs," "the work of complete self-government of Ireland, the grant of full control over the management of its own affairs:" this is the policy which Lord Hartington proclaimed in Ulster, the promise which he, the proximate Liberal leader, held out to Ireland on the eve of the General Election of 1885. It was a policy to be begun "in the next session," though not likely to be completed "in a day, or a session, or probably in a Parliament."
