Progress has now been
arrested, for the Act of 1909 does not work. The vendors or expropriated
owners, whichever is the more correct term, are expected to take a lower
price and to be paid in depreciated paper. The minorities to be most
immediately affected by legislation consist of landlords who are unable,
though willing, to sell, and of tenants who are unable but very anxious
to buy. The present deadlock is disastrous, for many tenants think they
ought not to pay more than their neighbours, and demand reductions of
rent without considering that the owner has received no part of his
capital and dares not destroy the basis on which he hopes to be
ultimately paid. It has been an essential part of the purchase policy
that the instalment due by the occupier to recoup the State advance
should be less than the rent. This has been made possible by the magic
of British credit, and if that is withheld the confusion in Ireland will
be worse than ever. The Exchequer has lost little or nothing, and even
at much greater cost it would be the cheapest money that England ever
spent. More than half the tenanted land has now passed to the occupiers,
and it would be the most cruel injustice to leave the remaining
landlords without power either to sell their property or to collect
rents judicially fixed and refixed. They would fare badly with an Irish
legislature and an Irish executive. They are, for the most part, poor
but loyal men, and have exercised a great civilising influence. Are they
to be deserted and ruined to keep an English party in place by the votes
of men who have never pretended to be anything but England's enemies?

Irish Unionists laugh at the idea of a local Parliament being kept
subordinate. It will have the power of making laws for everything Irish,
that is, for everything that immediately concerns those that live in
Ireland. There will be ceaseless efforts to enlarge its sphere of
action, and if Irish members continue to sit at Westminster they will be
as troublesome as ever there. If there are to be no Irish members
Ireland will be a separate nation. Even candid Home Rulers confess that
statutory safeguards would be of none effect. Hedged in by British
bayonets the Lord Lieutenant may exercise his veto, but upon whose
advice will he do it? If on that of an Irish Ministry the minority will
have no protection at all, and does any one suppose it possible to go
back to the practice of the seventeenth century, when all I