Agricultural land in the hands of the farmers who have bought their
holdings under the Irish Land Acts has been made liable to extravagant
burdens by the Lloyd George Budget. These peasant purchasers are treated
as if they were "Dukes." When they discover their real position, their
resentment will be bitter. Form IV. has not yet been circulated among
them. It has been kept back deliberately. It would not suit Mr. Redmond
or the Ministry, should the Irish farmer discover what the actual
working of the new Land taxes means while the legislative logs are still
being rolled by the Radical-Socialist-Nationalist combination. When Home
Rule is defeated Unionist finance should provide that the burden imposed
by these taxes on agricultural progress and national prosperity shall
be removed, and that the benefits conferred by the great Unionist policy
of State purchase on the peasant proprietors shall not be allowed to be
filched away by the Socialist budget, though it was by that very Irish
party, whose first duty should have been to protect them, that the Irish
farmers' interests have been betrayed.