in the maintenance of social order, while
the landlords should be enabled to rid themselves on fair terms of their
estates, in cases where, from apprehension of impending changes, or for
pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves from the
responsibilities of ownership. Of the land scheme brought into
Parliament in 1886, it need only here be said that it proposed to lend
the Irish Government 3 per cent. stock at 3-1/8 per cent. interest, the
Irish Government undertaking to purchase, from any Irish landlord
desirous of selling, his estate at (as a general rule) twenty years'
purchase on the net rental. The money thus disbursed by the Irish
Government was repaid to them by an annuity, payable by the tenant for
forty-nine years, of 4 per cent. on a capital sum equal to twenty times
the gross rental; the result being that, were the Bill passed into law,
the tenant would become immediate owner of the land, subject to the
payment of an annuity considerably less than the previous rent--that the
Irish Government would make a considerable profit on the transaction,
inasmuch as it would receive from the tenant interest calculated on the
basis of the _gross_ rental, whilst it would pay to the English
Government interest calculated on the basis of the _net_ rental--and
that the English Government would sustain no loss if the interest were
duly received by them.

The effect of such a plan appears almost magical: Ireland is transformed
at one stroke from a nation of landlords into a nation of peasant
proprietors--apparently without loss to any one, and with gain to
everybody concerned, except the British Government, who neither gain nor
lose in the matter. The practicability, however, of such a scheme
depends altogether on the security against loss afforded to the British
tax-payer, for he is industrious and heavily burdened, and cannot be
expected to assent to any plan which will land him in any appreciable
loss. Here it is that the plan of Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill differs from
all other previous plans. Act after Act has been passed enabling the
tenant to borrow money from the British Government on the security of
the holding, for the purpose of enabling him to purchase the fee-simple.
In such transactions the British Government becomes the mortgagee, and
can only recover its money, if default is made in payment, by ejecting
the tenant and becoming the landlord. In proportion, then, as any
existing purchase Act su