1900-04-16 to the Editor of the Freeman’s Journal

Printed letter signed, Freeman’s Journal, 16 April 1900, 868 words

[Edited for paragraph breaks, capitalization, spelling and punctuation.]

Dear Sir —

I learn from the newspapers that Mr. Martyn’s letter resigning his commission in the magistracy, and his rank of Deputy Lieutenant has caused much concern among Irish landlords. For the Irish landlords have not yet learned that the English government has determined their destruction as definitely as it has the destruction of the South African Republic. The Irish landlord stands in the way of the British Goverment, for it is easier to destroy them than to find a just solution to a very real, but very troublesome problem.

There are two land Commissions now at work in Ireland, one for the purpose of reducing the rents, the other for the purpose for acquiring estates, as the reduced rentals force the landlord, no longer able to pay his mortgages and family charges, to sell his property to the Commissioners.

If a joint society were started, one part of which had for its object the reduction of the value of property, so that the other half might buy it advantageously, the law would be set in motion against the society, and a conviction for fraud would be obtained at the Old Baily. But the methods of private frauds are good enough for public policy when an English Government has to deal with an Irish landlord.

The peasants obtained the Land Acts by menace: and it was menace that has made Lord Londonderry Postmaster-General. English law in Ireland has always been irresponsible; the English Parliament has never considered anything but its need of the moment; and as soon as the good will of the peasant seemed to be of paramount importance, Land Acts were constructed by several Governments to transfer the land from the landlord to the peasant with as little delay as possible, and without burdening the English taxpayer, in whose interest it was transferred.

In another generation, the English nation will be the great mortgagee of Irish land; and the English Government will treat its Irish tenants according to the immediate need of England, as it treated the tenants of the landlord fifty years ago, as it is treating the landlords now. We have no reason to suppose that England will keep from robbing the peasant by new Land Acts, if it should seem to be to England's best interests to do so.

Lord Londonderry has sold, I believe, all his Irish estates, and having sold them, he has grown a little tired of fighting the battle of a class so stupid in its own interests, as the Irish landlords; he had gone over to the Government which he once denounced, and is now in an excellent position to cheer the Queen.

But the landlords who have sold their estates and have not made themselves feared — what are they to do? To continue to cheer the Queen from the steps of the Kildare street Club, or to act as Lord Londonderry and the Land League have acted.

The occasion is opportune for disloyalty. England’s difficulty in South Africa offers an opportunity for the Irish landlords to invent a scheme to embarrass the Government. It would be well for the Irish landlords to join the National party and adopt National ideas. The National Party, if it were in session in College Green tomorrow, could not swallow them more rapidly than Lord Salisbury's Government is doing; and it should console them in some measure to remember that it will be better for Ireland to possess the land than that an English mortgagee should possess it.

But England's difficulty in South Africa is acute, and very like Napoleon's difficulty in Russia. It was the South African difficulty that brought the Queen, in her old age, to Ireland. England, at the present moment, cannot afford that any part of her Empire should be disloyal, not even Irish landlords.

Fortunately for us, England has no friend in Europe. She counts on American sympathy, and it would not be difficult to turn the balance against her there. Many are the ways that are open to the Irish landlord of making himself disagreeable as soon as he learns that it is not loyalty, but disloyalty, that pays in Ireland.

But can the Irish landlord learn to be disloyal? I am afraid not. His loyalty is a sheer atavism: it is a curious survival; it is so disinterested that it may be called an abstract virtue, existing of, and through, itself, arising out of no circumstance in life; it is like certain plumes and appendages in birds and animals which abide in them long after the use of them has passed away.

At the present moment the Irish landlord stands on the steps of Kildare street Club and cheers the Government that is robbing him; every cheer encourages the Government to further robbery, and still the Irish landlord cheers. A strange spectacle it is, truly, of a man cheering himself out of existence. At a hundred pounds a cheer the Irish landlord, if he begins at noon, can be a pauper in the evening.

Very truly yours,

GEORGE MOORE