Great Britain and Ireland. page 3

The Irish land-question has been previously alluded to in these pages. Very complex in details, which present during the 19th century, a chequered scene of crime, tumult, coercion, agitation, intimidation, and tribulation, it is simple enough in origin and principle. We have seen that the agrarian difficulty had its rise in conquest and confiscation. The people, robbed of proprietary rights in the soil, have never ceased to regard that soil as justly theirs, and to resent the payment of rent as legalised spoliation. Native and alien landlords and their agents, in the latter half of the 18th and during most of the 19th century, were the objects of agitation, opposition, outrage, and murder conducted by secret societies formed among the peasantry - "Whiteboys," "Ribbonmen," and the like. Countless "Coercion Acts " were from time to time passed in order to deal with disorder and veiled rebellion. It was Ireland's misfortune that the lack of coal, capital, and enterprise had brought nearly all the people, save in the province of Ulster, into a state of dependence on the produce of the soil, and a bad harvest has been invariably productive of want approaching or reaching the point of starvation. The country was much over-populated under the existing economical conditions, and the evils of the land-question were aggravated by the fierce competition for farms which caused a constant rise of rents. Non-payment of rent brought evictions, or forcible expulsion of tenants, from their lands and homes, and eviction was frequently followed by outrages perpetrated on land-agents, on succeeding tenants, and on all who supported the cause of the hated landowners. British legislation, for many years, paid little or no heed to these matters, or only made things worse by strengthening the hands of the landlords for enforcing the rights which, to the unhappy Irish tillers of the soil, appeared to be deadly wrongs. Commissions appointed to inquire into the state of Ireland constantly, in their reports, made use of the words "exorbitant rents."

At the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign the condition of affairs was truly portentous. Independent foreign observers-French, German, Italian - declared the misery of the Irish peasant to be beyond all example in modern Europe, The Times and the Quarterly Review, very powerful organs of English opinion as far as possible removed from revolutionary views, denounced the "landlordism" of Ireland in the strongest terms of bitter indignation. Nature herself at last took the matter in hand, and brought a fearful but, in some points, effectual remedy to the miseries of the country. In 1841 the population of Ireland had reached a number exceeding 8,000,000, the bulk of whom depended for subsistence on a single root. The failure of the potato-crop in 1845, 1846, and two following years brought the awful tragedy known as the Potato Famine. In spite of all British and American efforts, this slew at least 500,000 people through hunger and disease, had a large share in causing the immediate repeal of the Corn-laws, and started the great emigration-movement which, conveying away some millions of Irish, chiefly beyond the Atlantic, and in far smaller numbers to Australasia, relieved the country from its curse of over-population. Legislation had dealt with the symptoms instead of with the cause of the malady. Parliament maintained the rights of property, passed more and more Coercion Acts, and supported eviction. In 1849 the Encumbered Estates Act enabled Irish landlords or their creditors to sell estates, and a special court, in the course of 40 years, made the transfer to new owners of about one-fifth of the soil. The new landlords were even more ruthless than the old, and in 1870 the first real measure of relief to Irish tenants was passed. This first Irish Land Act of Mr. Gladstone compelled landlords to pay to tenants, on removal from holdings by the landowner, the value of improvements, made at the tenant's cost, in the soil and the farm-buildings. The measure, however, failed to prevent the landlord from»raising the rent of an improved holding, and if the tenant were thus driven to give notice, he had no claim to compensation for improvements. Iniquitous landlords thwarted or evaded the intentions of the law, and there was a renewal of agrarian trouble in outrages, murders, and the acquittal of offenders, in spite of the clearest evidence, by sympathising juries of their fellow-countrymen. In 1879 the National Land League was started in Ireland, and strongly supported by Mr. Parnell and the Home Rulers of that country. In 1881 Mr. Gladstone's second Irish Land Act effected much good in establishing courts with power to fix a fair rental for tenants, payable at that standard for 15 years, during which period the tenant could not be evicted except for non-payment of rent or for breach of certain clear agreements between the landowner and himself. In the following year an Arrears Act made an end of all debts due by tenants to landlords, on payment of only one year's rent. In 1885 another Act did much to further the cause of peasant-proprietorship in the soil by enabling the state to advance two-thirds, and later, the whole of the purchase-money to tenants, repayable over 49 years in the form of four per cent, interest. Many millions of pounds have been thus advanced, and the last state of Ireland, at the end of the 19th century, is in a marked degree better than the first. In spite of all troubles and difficulties, the country has, within the last 50 years, made a marked advance in material prosperity. The revenue, between 1850 and 1888, rose from 4,500,000 to 7,500,000 pounds; the deposits and private balances in joint-stock banks increased, between 1852 and 1885, from 10,000,000 pounds to nearly thrice that amount. The savings-banks used by the poorer classes of depositors have, in a like period, increased the amount of deposits fourfold. In 1854 only one person in 132 of the whole population was a depositor in a savings-bank of any kind. In 1887 the proportion was about one in 28. A vast improvement in the dwelling-houses has also taken place, and for every 100 families now living in the typical Irish "mud-cabins" there were 700 so existing when Queen Victoria came to the throne. In 1841 more than half the population over five years of age could not read and write; 40 years later, only one-quarter were in that condition.

The province of Ulster, largely differing from the rest of the country in religious faith and in the race and character of the people, has been disturbed and disgraced only by occasional outbreaks of hostility, "religious riots," between Catholics and Protestants. As regards the land-question, an unwritten law styled the "Ulster custom" afforded freedom of sale for the goodwill of a holding and the practical fixity of tenure so desirable for skilled and industrious farmers. In the most flourishing part of Ireland, the county of Antrim, manufacturing industry has had great success owing to capital, energy, and the proximity of cheap and abundant fuel in the Cumberland and Lancashire coal-fields. The great town of Belfast, now renowned for ship-building, has also supplied employment to large numbers of people in flax-spinning, linen-weaving, rope-making, and other trades. We leave this subject by recording the Act of 1869 for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Protestant Church in Ireland - a measure which ended a grievance of Irish Catholics by removing Irish prelates from the House of Lords and employing a part of the superfluous revenues of the Church for the relief of Irish suffering in various forms.

In Scotland, the period under review has witnessed a great growth of population and prosperity, and the only event needing notice here is the noble display of public spirit which caused the formation of the "Free Church" in 1843. This step was a revolt of a large number of Presbyterian ministers and laymen against the patronage-system which forced new ministers on congregations who objected to their appointment. The "General Assembly," by its Veto Act of 1834, had forbidden the appointment of a minister to any parish against the will of a majority of male Church-members. The civil law, in certain cases, enforced compliance with the wishes of lay-patrons, and a great secession from the established Presbyterian Church was the result. Nearly 500 ministers, headed by Dr. Welsh, the "Moderator" of the Assembly, and by the great orator, the accomplished Dr. Chalmers, resigned their livings and threw themselves for subsistence on the voluntary support of laymen who might approve their conduct. A grand response was made to this heroic appeal of conscientious men, and large sums of money soon supplied a sustentation-fund for ministers; erected hundreds of new churches and "manses"; established new theological colleges, and launched on its career the "Free Church" which has produced some of Scotland's ablest and most eloquent divines.

In the Anglican Church the chief event of the 19th century has been the "Oxford Movement" or "Anglican revival" connected with the names and due to the efforts of Pusey, Newman, Keble, and other Oxford scholars. The Tracts for the Times, published between 1833 and 1841, caused the supporters of the movement to be styled "Tractarians"; another popular name was that of "Puseyites." Many of these reformers, men of the school of Archbishop Laud in Stuart times, ended by going over to the Roman communion, the most notable examples being those of the men who became Cardinals Newman and Manning. The modern "High Church" or "Ritualistic" section of Anglicans now includes the large majority of the clergy, and a permanent result of the revival has been a greater degree of devotion to practical and parochial work, combined with a vast improvement in reverence of ritual, church-music, and church-architecture. Nonconformist activity has, in a large measure, kept pace with the Church in these matters, apart from any changes of ritual.