e cardinal
difference, then, between Mr. Gladstone's scheme and any other land
scheme that has seen the light is this--that in Mr. Gladstone's scheme
the English loans would have been lent to the Irish Government on the
security of the whole Irish revenues, whereas in every other scheme they
have been lent by the English Government to the Irish creditors on the
security of individual patches of land.

The whole question, then, of the relation between Home Rule and agrarian
reform may be summed up as follows:--Agrarian reform is necessary for
the pacification of Ireland; agrarian reform cannot be efficiently
carried into effect without an Irish Government; an Irish Government can
only be established by a Home Rule Bill: therefore a Home Rule Bill is
necessary for the pacification of Ireland. It is idle to say, as has
been said on numerous platforms, that plans no doubt can be devised for
agrarian reform without Home Rule. The Irish revenues are the only
collateral security that can be obtained for loans of English money, and
Irish revenues are only available for the purpose on the establishment
of an Irish Government. Baronial guarantees, union guarantees, county
guarantees, debenture schemes, have all been tried and found wanting,
and vague assertions as to possibilities are idle unless they are based
on intelligible working plans.

The foregoing arguments will be equally valid if, instead of making the
tenants peasant-proprietors, it were thought desirable that the Irish
State should be the proprietor and the tenants be the holders of the
land at perpetual rents and subject to fixed conditions. Again, it might
be possible to pay the landlords by annual sums instead of capital sums.
Such matters are really questions of detail. The substance is to
interpose the Irish Government between the tenant and the English
mortgagee, and to make the loans general charges on the whole of the
Irish Government revenues as paid into the hands of an Imperial Receiver
instead of placing them as special charges, each fixed on its own small
estate or holding. The fact that Mr. Gladstone's land scheme was
denounced as confiscation of L100,000,000 of the English taxpayers'
property, while Lord Ashbourne's Act is pronounced by the same party
wise and prudent, shows the political blindness of party spirit in its
most absurd form. Lord Ashbourne's Act requires precisely the same
expenditure to do the same work as Mr. Gladstone's Bill requires,