cceeds, in the same proportion the risk of the
British taxpayer increases. He is ever placed in the most invidious of
all lights; instead of posing as the generous benefactor who holds forth
his hand to rescue the landlord and tenant from an intolerable position,
he stands forward either as the grasping mortgagee or as the still more
hated landlord, who, having deprived the tenant of his holding, is
seeking to introduce another man into property which really belongs to
the ejected tenant. Such a position may be endurable when the number of
purchasing tenants is small, but at once breaks down if agrarian reform
in Ireland is to be extended so far as to make any appreciable
difference in the relations of landlord and tenant; still more, if it
become general. Now, what is the remedy of such a state of things?
Surely to interpose the Irish Government between the Irish debtor and
his English creditor, and to provide that the Irish revenues in bulk,
not the individual holdings of each tenant, shall be the security for
the English creditor. This was the scheme embodied in the Land Act of
1886. The punctual payment of all money due from the Government of
Ireland to the Government of Great Britain was to have been secured by
the continuance in the hands of the British Government of the Excise and
Customs duties, and by the appointment of an Imperial Receiver-General,
assisted by subordinate officers, and protected by an Imperial Court.
This officer would have received not only all the imperial taxes, but
also the local taxes; and it would have been his duty to satisfy the
claims of the British Government before he allowed any sum to pass into
the Irish Exchequer. In effect, the British Government, in relation to
the levying of imperial taxes, would have stood in the same relation to
Ireland as Congress does to the United States in respect to the levying
of federal taxes. The fiscal unity of Great Britain and Ireland would
have been in this way secured, and the British Government protected
against any loss of interest for the large sums to be expended in
carrying into effect in Ireland any agrarian reform worthy of the name.

The Irish Bills of 1886, as above represented, had at least three
recommendations:

1. They created a state of things in Ireland under which it was possible
to make a complete agrarian reform without exposing the English
Exchequer to any appreciable risk.

2. They enabled the Irish to govern themselves as