Wirt tie Missionary Conference still at work in Shanghai, we are obliged to curtail our summary of the papers brought by the Irqowaddy. The Irish Laud Purchase Bill is the topic of the week, as is shown by its being the subject of the cartoons in Punch and the Pall Mull. In Buch it is the gift horse, led on by Mr. Balfour and having its mouth examined by Mr. Pare the Pall Mall Mr, Balfour has set it.as a holiday task to the other members of the guvermment, and they are not deriving any pleasure from its consideration, The Zimes ays of the bill The policy of State-aided land purchase is no longer open to discussion, except on the those who desire to keep up distur.
nce and disquietude in Ireland. There is much to be satd against it in the abstract, and even now, if there were u possibility of having an open market for Irish land, we should greatly prefer to trust to the free play of economical forces, The Act of 1881, however, and its results, social and political' have left no choice between some such policy ws that embodied in Mr. Balfour's Bill and the continuance of "struggle, within, the limite of dual ownership, which, while it demoralised the tenants, brings utter ruin upon the landlords. The Bill is an honest endeavour—such as Mr. Gladstone and his colleges have more than once professed to set before them—to enable tenants to become owners and landlords to obtain a very modest. price for the property which the law, repeatedly amended in the tenants' interest, still recognises as theirs. 'The machinery is purely voluntary landlord and tenant may fix a price between them, or may agree that the Land Department shall fix it, for the purchase of the interest of the former, and in this price arrears, not exceeding two years' rent, may be included. The whole transaction, however, will be subject to the approval of the Department in respect not only of title and forms, but of the adequacy of the security for the advance by the State, which is not to exceed twenty years' purchase of the net annual value, or £3,000, which may be increased, under special circumstances, to £5,000 in all.' Mr. Balfour's reference to this provision has been criticised by others besides Mr. Montgomery as fixing a mazinum price for Irish lund, but the Act only sets a limit to the advance and not at all to the price. Where, as is often the case in Ireland even now, land worth much more than 20 years' purchase, it is open to landlords and tenants to make any other arrangement for the surplus value, which, as the occupiers are likely to be prosperous farmers, would be ly made.
The Daily News, of course, finds the bill impracticable, but in the following remarks
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.