Englishmen still forget that Ireland has the right to be treated by them not merely with justice, but with generous indulgence. So long as the root of the evil is left untouched little will be accomplished by pruning the branches. Ireland’s curse is the system of land tenure, founded on confiscation and organized to perpetuate a fatal antagonism between the proprietors and the tillers of the soil. Irishmen will be disaffected and rebellious so long as the national prosperity is blighted by a state of things which leaves their country in the hands of men who are happy only when they are away from it.
Parliament has passed several land acts, but it would seem that they had been purposely so framed as to produce no good results. That it is possible to change the land system of Ireland radically, without doing injustice to any one, is admitted, and various projects by which this might be done have been laid before Parliament. This is not a question of tenant-rights; it lies far deeper. Nor is there any parity in this respect between England and Ireland. In England the land is owned by the people’s natural leaders; in Ireland it is owned by the people’s natural enemies. This land question is far more important than any question of Home Rule; and if Parliament will but give a proper solution to this problem, Home Rule will no longer be seriously thought of.
When landlordism vanishes from Ireland, the day of final reconciliation will be at hand. With it will disappear the filibusters, revolutionists, and Fenians, whose disturbing influence in Irish politics is made possible by the wrongs which the English government has not the will or the courage to redress. There are other grievances than the land system, but it will not be difficult to do away with them when the country shall have been given back to the people. With a free press, free speech, and an organized public agitation sustained and increased by the sympathies and interests of the masses of the people of England, it will be found impossible to withhold much longer from Ireland full and complete justice; and nothing less will satisfy her people.
_Harold_: A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1877.