The notable feature which distinguished this plan from all other schemes was the security given for the repayment of the purchase-money:  hitherto the English Government has lent the money directly to the landlord or tenant, and has become the mortgagee of the land—­in other words, has become in effect the landlord of the land sold to the tenant until the repayment of the loan has been completed.  To carry into effect under such a system any extensive scheme of agrarian reform (and if not extensive such a reform would be of no value in pacifying Ireland) presupposes a readiness on the part of the English Government to become virtually the landlord of a large portion of Ireland, with the attendant odium of absenteeism and alien domination.  Under a land scheme such as that of 1886, all these difficulties would be overcome.  The Irish, not the English, Government would be the virtual landlord.  It would be the interest of Ireland that the annuities due from the tenants should be regularly paid, as, subject to the prior charge of the English Exchequer, they would form part of the Irish revenues.  The 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