esday
following, and then only being brought to an end by the authority of the
Speaker. By March, however, the Bill passed, and in the following month,
April 7th, a new Irish Land Act was brought forward by Mr. Gladstone,
and was passed after much opposition the following autumn.

The full scope and purport of this Act it is far beyond the limits of
these few remaining pages to enter upon. Although, to some extent an
outcome of the Act of 1870, it cannot in strictness be called a mere
development or completion of it, being in many respects based upon
entirely new principles. The most salient of these are what are known as
the "three Fs," namely--Fixity of Tenure, Fair Rent, to be decided by a
Land Court, and Free Sale. As regards the last two, it has been pointed
out with some force that the one practically does away with the other,
the only person benefited being the immediate occupier, at whose
departure that fierce competitive desire for the land which is the real
root of the whole difficulty being allowed freer play than ever. With
regard to the first, its effect may be briefly stated as that of
reducing the owner to the position of a rent charger or annuitant upon
what had before been his own estate, thereby depriving him--even where
want of means did not effectually do so--of all desire to expend capital
upon what had henceforth ceased to be his property, and over the
management of which he had almost wholly lost control. That this is a
change of a very large and sweeping character it is needless to say.
Henceforward ownership of land in Ireland is no longer ownership in the
ordinary sense of the word. It is an ownership of two persons instead of
one, and a divided ownership, even where two people work together
harmoniously, is as most of us are aware, a very difficult relationship
to maintain, and is apt to be followed sooner or later by the
effacements of the rights of one or the other. How these diverging
rights are finally to be adjusted is at this moment the problem of
problems in Ireland, and still imperatively awaits solution.

In October of the same year, 1881, Mr. Parnell, Mr. Davitt, and other
principal members of the Land League, were arrested by order of the
Government, and lodged in Kilmainhan gaol, an event announced the same
evening by Mr. Gladstone at the Guildhall banquet. The following May the
Liberal Government resolved however, rather suddenly, to reverse their
previous policy, and the Irish l