THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (_continued_)--THE IRISH LAND ACT OF
1870--THE LAND LEAGUE AND THE NATIONAL LEAGUE--THE LAND OF
1881--SUBSEQUENT LEGISLATION AS REGARDS THE LAND SYSTEM OF IRELAND
State of landed relations in Ireland in 1869-70--Mr. Gladstone Prime
Minister--The Land Act of 1870--Its merits and defects--A short period
of prosperity in Ireland--Ominous symptoms--Michael Davitt--The
teaching of John Finton Lalor in 1848--The 'New Departure' in
Fenianism arranged in America--Foundation of the Land League--It was a
foreign rebellious conspiracy, with an agrarian side, under a
constitutional mask--Parnell the master spirit of the League--His
visit to America and the results--A short period of distress in
Ireland--Conduct of the Irish landlords--Progress of the Land
League--Mr. Gladstone again Prime Minister in 1880--The Compensation
for Disturbance Bill rejected by the House of Lords--Outburst of
agrarian crime, as the Land League increases in power--Rents at
Griffith's valuation--Boycotting--Frightful state of Ireland in
1881--After a short attempt to repress it, Mr. Gladstone surrenders to
the Land League--The Land Act of 1881--Mr. Gladstone breaks the
pledges he had made in 1870--His promise of compensating the Irish
landlords--The Land Act of 1881 a bad and unjust measure directly
inconsistent with that of 1870--The 'No Rent Manifesto'--The
Kilmainham Treaty--The Phoenix Park tragedy--Coercion--Parnell
founds the National League, the successor of the Land League--Renewal
of agitation in 1886--Struggle with law and the Government--Subsequent
agrarian legislation for Ireland--This is really a concession to
agitation, for the benefit of Irish tenants, and to the injury of
Irish landlords.
Mr. Gladstone, after his conversion to Home Rule, more than once declared
that, almost from early manhood he had given special attention to
Ireland; either his memory was at fault, or he had kept the fact to
himself. He had been a conspicuous figure in politics, for many years
before 1868; but until he had been placed at the helm of the State, he had
shown little acquaintance with Irish questions, and, indeed, had expressed
few opinions on them. In 1866 he had said in the House of Commons, that
the existence of the Anglican Irish Church would be probably long; he had
been in high office almost since 1853, and, as a colleague of Lord
Palmerston, had acquiesced in the philippics of that statesman against
Irish tenant right, conduct that revealed ignorance of the land system of
Ireland. But, in 1868, when the Fenian outbreak had caused the nation to
demand large reforms in Ireland, he suddenly abandoned his attitude of
reserve; he threw himself into Irish affairs; his zeal, it may be
remarked, as often happened, fell in with his interests, and with those of
the Liberal party, and gave him a leverage to drive Disraeli from office.
During months before the General Election that ensued, the orator
thundered on Irish grievances, and on the manifold ills of Ireland; in
figurative and impassioned language, he said that the island was blighted
by a huge upas tree, the Church, the land, and education being the three
main branches. These harangues, addressed to the new democracy,
contributed powerfully to the fall of the Conservative Ministry; it was
little noticed, at the time, that one of the results was ere long to
compel Mr. Gladstone himself to subject Ireland to severe repressive
measures, for Whiteboy and agrarian outrages became frequent In 1869, the
Minister addressed himself to the task of hewing down the first branch of
the poisonous upas; he disestablished and disendowed the Protestant Church
of Ireland. This is not the place to comment upon that great measure; it
was well designed upon its professed principles; it dealt liberally, nay,
generously, with the voluntary Church, which replaced the Church of the
State it overthrew. But essentially it was a scheme of destruction, formed
in Nonconformist not in Irish interests, and opposed to the views of
generations of statesmen; it made no provision for the clergy of the Irish
Catholic Church, a policy which Pitt, Castlereagh, and Lord John Russell
had had at heart, which had been all but a condition of the Union, and
which, if carried into effect, would have done much to strengthen and
maintain that fundamental law, and to promote tranquillity in Ireland and
her general welfare.
Mr. Gladstone now turned to the second branch of the upas, the land system
of Ireland and her landed relations. His whole career, especially in its
Home Rule phase, proves that his knowledge of Ireland was not exact or
profound; at this time he had had little experience of the Irish land
question. But the mind of England was still attracted to Irish affairs; a
number of distinguished Englishmen and Scotchmen went to Ireland, to
investigate the state of the country on the spot; the British Press sent
some of its best contributors; the time was singularly opportune for a
fair and complete inquiry; no Minister has had, before or since, such
assistance in dealing with Irish problems. I must glance at the state of
the Irish land system in 1869-70, as this was fully explored and made
manifest.[55] The material progress being made, since about 1854, had
been largely developed in by far the greatest part of the island. The
population was being still diminished by emigration and other causes; the
area for real husbandry had been greatly extended; the rural community, at
least in its lower grades, was infinitely better off than it had been
before the Famine. The look of the country, in most places, bore witness
to a change beneficent in the main; it had been almost transformed since
1844-45. The cottar system, no doubt, was to be found in backward
counties; but even in these it had been largely effaced; it was all but
passing away in the more thriving counties; masses of indigence were to be
seen only in tracts west of the Shannon; and these were aggregated on an
area comparatively small. The general consolidation of farms had,
meanwhile, gone on; and though Ireland remained, on the whole, a land of
small farms, her land system had, from top to bottom, ceased to depend for
its support on a perishable root. In every conceivable respect a marked
improvement was visible in the state of the peasantry; they were by many
degrees better clothed and fed than their fathers had been; the wages of
agricultural labour were still rising, and were now paid in money, and not
in plots of potatoes; and though the habitations of this whole class were,
as a rule, still mean, the dwellings of the class of substantial farmers
had shown signs of distinct social progress. At the same time agriculture
had made a marked advance, owing to the influences I have referred to
before; fine specimens of extensive farming were very commonly to be seen;
thousands of acres had been reclaimed and enclosed of late years; at no
period certainly had the landed gentry, in a great measure through moneys
borrowed from the State, expended such large sums in improving their
estates, especially in arterial drainage, and the introduction of the
best breeds of stock of all kinds. The wealth of Ireland, too, was
increasing, if not rapidly; and a change for the better might be traced in
what we may describe as her general social life. Her middle class was
still weak and small compared to that of England and Scotland; but it had
been growing in wealth and power; and this, to some extent, had had a good
effect on a community still mainly dependent on the land.
The material and even the social progress of Ireland, since the Famine,
had thus been marked; it had been more decided than it has been, at any
period, except, possibly, that from 1782 to 1800. Her land system, too,
had become better in important parts; but in many respects it remained
vicious; some of its vices had been aggravated, or were more sensibly
felt. The hope that the land would pass generally into the hands of large
farmers, able to develop its resources, had not been realised, or had been
realised only to a relatively trivial extent; it was still held in the
main by a peasantry of small occupiers of the soil, though the
consolidation of farms had gone on over extensive areas, especially over
wide tracts of pasturage, in the eastern, midland, and western counties,
and this, in some instances, through a process of harsh eviction. The
profound divisions of race and faith, the distinctive feature in the
organic structure of the whole community, were at least as visible as ever
in the land system; from causes I have pointed out before, they had, not
improbably, been widened; this tended to increase the old dissension in
landed relations, and the long-standing separation between the landed
classes. Middleman tenures, with their mischievous effects, had, since the
Famine, well-nigh disappeared; but the new landlord had largely replaced
the middleman; absenteeism remained what it had been; and though absentee
estates, as a rule, were under good agents, there was too much of that
'absenteeism of the heart,' condemned by Tocqueville as a grave social
danger. The purchasers under the Encumbered Estates Acts, with some
honourable exceptions, no doubt, were too often oppressive landlords; the
old landlords, as a class, had, certainly, done much for their estates,
but they had lost their political and largely their social influence;
partly owing to apprehensions as regards tenant right, partly to the
assurances of statesmen that their position was safe, they had become
perhaps more exacting in their dealings with their dependents; in the
existing situation, they more and more resembled a weak caste, controlled
by the central Government, and isolated amidst a community, to a great
extent, not friendly. All this tended to produce a want of stability and
insecurity in the land system, which was ominous of social strife and
trouble; but the most active element of disturbance was to be certainly
found in the contact with the rebellious movement which Ireland had lately
witnessed. Fenianism had been scotched, but by no means slain; and though
the peasantry had held aloof from it, Fenian emissaries were going through
the country, appealing to the passions and the greed of the occupiers of
the soil, for different reasons not contented with their lot, hostile, in
a great degree, to the order of things around them, and more alive to
their grievances than in the past generation; at this very time a cry
against the payment of rent, and against 'landlordism,' as it was called,
was being heard in a few counties. It was significant that agrarian
crimes--some of the worst type--and agrarian disorder were distinctly
increasing; and it should be added, that, in spite of Cardinal Cullen, the
younger Catholic priests, in some districts, were beginning to play the
part of agitators again.
Passing from the general state of landed relations, the conditions of land
tenure, briefly noticed before, had not improved of late years, and were,
in some respects, worse. Rents had been rising for a considerable time:
but except in comparatively few instances, they were not excessive, as
affairs stood; whatever mendacious calumny has since maintained, Ireland,
on the whole, was in no sense an over-rented land.[56] But the modes of
occupation were essentially bad; they were open to the gravest objections;
their vices had become more than ever apparent. The tenant right, under
the Ulster custom, had, I have remarked, largely secured the tenant
farmer, in parts of the province, what was generally known as the 'Three
F's,' Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure, the power of a Free Sale of the
holding;[57] though it should be especially borne in mind that the fair
rent was never adjusted by an external agency, but was settled by what
Adam Smith would have called 'higgling' between the owner and occupier of
the soil. The custom, however, had been very powerful; its violation, on
anything like a great scale, would have certainly caused a fierce war of
classes; and it gave the Ulster tenant, in tens of thousands of cases, a
real proprietary right in the land, whatever might be the terms of his
contract; a right equivalent to more or less joint-ownership, and that
might be described as a precious _peculium_, subject to conditions that
long had made it practically secure. But this most important right,
involving property worth many millions, still remained wholly unprotected
by law; and though its value had enormously increased, as the wealth of
Ulster had been developed, of late years, it was being 'nibbled away' on
not a few estates, and restricted by limitations of many kinds that had
greatly impaired it. An analogous right, like seed scattered by the
winds, had partially spread into the southern provinces, as the natural
result of the equitable claims, the occupiers of farms had repeatedly
acquired, though this had not been recognised on many estates, and its
efficacy was not as yet great; but this right, such as it was, like its
fellow, was not law-worthy, and depended wholly on the will of the lord of
the soil. In addition to the tenant right in the north and the south, the
concurrent claims of the tenant farmers, throughout the country, in
respect of improvements and of sums paid on the transfer of farms, for
'good-will,' had been greatly increasing of late years, especially as
prosperity was advancing; and yet tenures had continued to become more
precarious; leaseholds were being almost everywhere replaced by tenancies
at will. These claims were never so extensive before; often equivalent to
joint-ownership, in no doubtful sense, and, in almost all cases, of some
value, they were, nevertheless, still outside the ægis of the law, a fact
that must ever be borne in mind; they could be destroyed or greatly
reduced by the raising of rent, they could be annihilated by a notice to
quit, if eviction followed. Unquestionably in the great mass of instances,
these rights, whatever their nature, were not invaded; but they certainly
had been in a certain number; a single case of invasion created alarm and
distrust, and had a bad effect on landed relations; throw a stone into a
pond, and it makes a ripple; it has a disturbing influence far beyond the
surface it strikes. No wonder, then, that complaints of these modes of
tenure had become very general, and were loudly expressed, not only by
those who might suffer from them, but by intelligent minds which had
mastered the subject. It was an exaggeration to assert, as was said at the
time, that the peasant in Ireland lived under a sword of Damocles; but he
lived under a system in which law and right were very plainly opposed.
Only a revolution, which Parliament would not have sanctioned, could have
effaced the inveterate ills of the Irish land system, running up to the
conquests and the confiscations of the past, and the divisions of race and
faith in the Irish land; the remark is as true now as it was thirty years
ago; and a revolution of the kind, I am firmly convinced, would, even
under the best conditions, make infinitely worse whatever was already bad.
But it was possible for legislation to remove or mitigate the essential
vices in the modes of Irish land tenure; Mr. Gladstone rightly confined
himself to this object. He brought in his first Irish Land Bill in the
early spring of 1870; he had to address a House of Commons not much in
sympathy with a project of the kind. Many of the members were ignorant of
the subject; many thought English land tenure perfect, and could not
understand why it would not do for Ireland, a prejudice at least three
centuries old; some believed Irish tenant right to be a violation of Free
Trade, then in the ascendant in every phase of commerce. The Minister's
speech was adapted to those who heard it; it was tentative, moderate, not
striking; he drew, indeed, very plain distinctions between British and
Irish land tenure, and showed how the first could be no rule of right for
the second; but if he enlarged on the just claims of the occupier of the
Irish soil, he did not venture to maintain, what he probably felt, that
these were often equivalent to a joint-ownership more or less developed.
He was, in short, dexterous, but not profound; very inferior to Burke,
who, a century before, had grasped the essential facts in this province,
though the question was still in the remote future. The most important
parts of Mr. Gladstone's speech, and indeed, of those of his leading
followers, regard being had to events by no means distant, were those in
which he repudiated, with no doubtful censure, the whole theory of the
'Three F's,' the extreme demand, at this time, of the tenant class in
Ireland. 'Fair Rent' he argued, especially if adjusted by the State,
deprives a landlord of his first proprietary right, and involves his
expropriation in the long run; 'Fixity of Tenure' means a perpetuity for
the tenant, to which he has no just claim, and involves confiscation
hardly disguised; 'Free Sale' was but a corollary to legislation on these
principles.[58] At the same time, Mr. Gladstone protested, with marked
emphasis, that the Bill he was introducing was to be absolutely a final
measure; it was to effect a permanent settlement of the Irish land; Irish
landlords would have nothing more to apprehend, Irish tenants to expect.
In this instance, as in that of Home Rule, the orator was to belie
himself, and to be a curious example of the irony of Fate; within a few
years he was to legislate on the lines he had denounced as dangerous and
false; to carry into effect a scheme for dealing with the Irish land,
infinitely worse than that of the 'Three F's;' to scatter the 'finality,'
to which he had pledged his word, to the winds.
The Bill thus launched was a comprehensive and wise measure, if not free
from real, even grave, defects; it remains the only statesmanlike scheme
for the settlement of Irish landed relations that hitherto has received
the assent of Parliament.[59] It made the tenant right of Ulster, in its
various forms, as these existed in different estates, law-worthy, and
protected to the fullest extent; it gave the same sanction to the inchoate
tenant right of the southern provinces. This was, in itself, an immense
reform; but the Bill properly had a far wider sweep; it extended, with the
exception of certain kinds of lands, such as demesnes, town parks,
holdings of a residential type, and, in most cases, large pastoral
holdings, to nearly all the occupiers of the Irish soil; even the excepted
lands were partially within its scope. The first great object of the
measure was to secure to the Irish tenant the rights he had acquired to
improvements he may have made on his farm, a right hitherto not within the
pale of the law; its provisions, in this respect, were, I think,
excellent. With a true perception of the unquestionable fact that, though
the Irish landlords, especially of late years, had expended considerable
sums on their estates, still, as is inevitable under the small-farm
system, the Irish tenant, as a general rule, had made the greatest part of
the additions to the land, Mr. Gladstone provided that, subject to
limitations by no means severe, in order that the law should not run wild,
improvements made on farms, in the absence of proof to the contrary,
should be deemed to be the tenant's property, thus reversing the
presumption of English law, iniquitous when applied to Irish tenures, that
what is annexed to the soil belongs to the owner, and not to its occupant.
The ground being, so to speak, cleared, the Bill declared that, in almost
all cases, a tenant should have a right, when leaving his farm, even
though dispossessed for the failure to pay his rent, to claim
compensation, from his landlord, for his improvements; and facilities were
offered to landlords to discharge these claims through loans from the
State. In order, however, reasonably to secure right being done, in a
complex and very difficult matter, the Bill proceeded to define
improvements, and to impose restrictions on claims, to which objection
could fairly be made. Apart from unexhausted tillages and manures, an
improvement was to be a work 'suitable to a holding, and adding to its
letting value,' a description as equitable and precise as could well be
desired. And, speaking generally, claims in respect of improvements were
not to be preferred were the improvement twenty years old, except in the
case of buildings and the reclamation of waste land; nor if the
improvement were prohibited by the landlord, under the conditions laid
down; nor if it were made under a contract for value; nor if it were
forbidden by a special contract; nor if, in certain cases, the landlord
had agreed to make it; nor if the claim was barred by express written
contract, in the case of improvements made before the Bill became law;
nor, in the case, with some exceptions, of certain classes of leases; nor
if the landlord, under certain conditions, permitted a tenant to dispose
of his interest in his farm.
This measure, therefore, gave the Irish tenant farmer complete property in
his improvements, within reasonable bounds, and yet did not here invade
the just rights of the landlord; it was only to be regretted that it had
not been proposed many years before. It proceeded, however, a great deal
further, and asserted a principle, for the behoof of the tenant, which has
since been very generally condemned,[60] though in my judgment, it was
essentially right, if carried somewhat beyond proper and safe limits.
Except in the case of leases granted before the Bill, and of a class of
leases granted when it was to become law, Mr. Gladstone engrafted on the
great mass of Irish tenancies what really was a new tenant right; he was
probably convinced, though he did not say so, that this was to be an
equivalent for the joint-ownership, more or less manifest, which, in
innumerable instances, the Irish occupier had acquired in the soil. This
tenant right was given the rather ambiguous name of 'Compensation,' in the
event of 'Disturbance;' a sum varying in amount from seven to one year's
rent, according to the size of the holding, but in no case to exceed £250,
was to be paid to a tenant when dispossessed by a notice to quit, and, in
some circumstances, by other means; this was to be over and above any sum
due in respect of improvements; but this, too, as in the case of the
last-named sum, was to be paid only when the tenant was 'quitting' the
land. Obviously this was a potential tenant right, if to be realised only
in one way; it practically gave a quasi-proprietary right in the fee, as,
when commenting on the Bill, I pointed out at the time; and I certainly
thought that the compensation was very large, and introduced a principle
into the Bill which might be abused. Two other provisions of the measure,
with respect to the position of the Irish tenant, may be briefly noticed.
No attempt was made to adjust rents, through the agency of the State, Mr.
Gladstone having expressly denounced the idea; but in the case of petty
occupiers, subjected to 'exorbitant rents,' compensation for disturbance
might be adjudged to them, even if evicted for not paying the rent, that
is, the landlord might be mulcted in very heavy penalties. In nearly all
instances, too, the tenant was declared to be entitled to 'his away-going
crops,' another privilege, sometimes of no little value, and analogous to
that secured by usage in many parts of England. So far the Bill dealt with
the Irish land on the side of occupation; but it dealt with it, also, on
the side of ownership. John Bright had urged the expediency, during
several years, of facilitating the transfer of the fee simple, in his
holding, to the Irish tenant; this policy had been carried out, to some
extent, by the Act disestablishing the Anglican Church in Ireland. The
Bill of 1870 extended the principle; it provided that the State might
advance moneys to Irish tenants, to enable them to become owners of their
farms; but--and this should especially be kept in mind--the tenant was to
supply a third part of the purchase money at least; and the transaction
was to be effected by free contract, that is, by the voluntary act of the
landlord disposing of his land. It remains to add, that the administration
of the measure, was, for the most part--subject to an appeal to the
Superior Courts--entrusted to the County Courts of Ireland, that is, to
long-established tribunals of repute.
The Bill passed through both Houses with little change; it has long been
known as the Irish Land Act of 1870. It was, in the main, I repeat, a
great reforming measure; it effected a far-reaching improvement in the
tenure of land in Ireland, and that without any marked infringement of the
just rights of property. No impartial mind can fairly object to the
protection given to the tenant right of the north and the south, or to the
compensation secured for tenants' improvements; if 'Compensation for
Disturbance' was a bold experiment, still this Parliamentary tenant right,
as it may be called, was in harmony with fact in nearly all instances.
Nevertheless, the Act had three marked defects; these largely detracted
from its practical value. It bristled with such exceptions and limitations
that it was difficult even for the learned to understand; it seemed to the
unlettered peasant a dangerous puzzle, involving him, perhaps, in lawsuits
and costs; it did not strike his imagination as a substantial boon.
Though, too, it annexed a real tenant right to nearly all farms, and thus
secured to the Irish tenant, in almost all cases, any joint-ownership he
may have acquired in the land, still this was intelligible only to
educated men; 'Compensation for Disturbance' was to be given only when an
occupier was about to leave his holding; but this was exactly what he
could not bear to do; he was, therefore, ready to accept almost any terms,
rather than face consequences he dreaded to think of. Mr. Gladstone,
again, had, in this measure, shown that he wished to assimilate Irish to
English land tenure in the long run; he sought to vindicate the just
claims of the Irish tenant; but he desired ultimately to give him the
status of his fellow in England, a long-standing, false conception of
British statesmen. The Land Act, therefore, provided that most of the
rights it conferred on the tenant might be commuted by the grant of a
lease for thirty-one years or upwards; and it further enacted that tenants
of the larger kind might 'contract themselves out' of the privileges it
gave, by voluntary agreements made with their landlords. The object of
this was to place the Irish land, by degrees, no doubt, under rather long
leases, discharged from the tenant right and other claims; but in the
circumstances of Ireland this was a mistake. This part of the Act was a
temptation to landlords, to persuade or even to force tenants to accept
leases under conditions which might be too severe, with respect to rent
and many other things, and to forego rights they would otherwise have
enjoyed, by a process which might not be a free contract; it encouraged,
in a word, unfair evasion of the law. This flaw in the measure was pointed
out from the first; Mr. Gladstone, however, denied its existence, and
characteristically shut his ears to other schemes of reform, notably to an
ingenious proposal of the late Judge Longfield to extend the Ulster tenant
right to all Irish tenancies by a very simple and self-acting process, and
to a proposal of Butt to convert tenancies at will into long leaseholds,
at the rents then current. These projects certainly deserved attention;
and, whatever their shortcomings, were easy to understand.
The Act of 1870, like the Act dealing with the Protestant Church, was
followed by a short-lived outbreak of agrarian crime put down only by
severe coercive measures. This phenomenon has been common in Irish
history, from the days of Tyrconnell to the present time; disorder has
been the immediate result of concessions; peccant humours discharge
themselves if you touch the head of an ulcer. There is some reason, too,
to believe that in a few instances--and they were very few--wrongheaded
landlords, alarmed at the prospect before them, began to harass and even
to dispossess tenants; they aimed at 'clearing' their estates, in order to
evade the law; conduct of this kind naturally provoked indignation in some
places.[61] Nevertheless, the Land Act of 1870 was generally well received
in Ireland, though it fell short of the popular demand, and it was ill
understood by the tenant classes;[62] many farmers availed themselves of
its benefits, especially those holding under the Ulster custom. Five or
six years of prosperity followed, the brightest perhaps ever seen in
Ireland; agricultural prices were high, harvests extremely good; the
material progress of the country was decided; the peasantry seemed, as a
rule, contented; agitation abandoned, as it were, the land, and
concentrated itself on the Home Rule movement. Mr. Gladstone, always
optimistic, and proud of his own offspring, boasted, towards the close of
his first Ministry, that his recent legislation had done wonders; the Land
Act had reconciled Irish landlords and tenants, and had greatly increased
the selling price of land; he refused to see how much of all this was due
to a cause wholly independent of himself, the comparative well-being of
nearly all Ireland. As had happened in the period from 1854 to 1870, this
tranquillity was not deeply founded or complete; as then, it was, in a
great degree, deceptive. The peasantry were living fast in a good time;
banks and traders had made large advances to them on the security of
tenure the law had created; their position became such, in some districts,
that a season of distress might reduce many to sudden poverty, and be
productive of the necessarily resulting evils. Rents, again, were rising
as the country grew in wealth, though except in comparatively few cases--a
fact that should be steadily kept in view--they were still, as a rule, by
no means excessive; they were far below the rents of thirty years before;
but this gradual rise was of course not popular. In some instances,
too--but these were very rare, as was conclusively proved at a subsequent
time--tenants, under more or less pressure on the part of their landlords,
had accepted leases excluding them from the advantages of the law, and not
equitable in some respects, or had wholly 'contracted themselves out' of
the Act; this naturally caused alarm and distrust in many peasant
dwellings. But the principal reasons that content was really less than it
seemed to be in landed relations were altogether of a different nature.
Like too many even excellent reforms in Ireland, the Land Act of 1870
became law too late; twenty years before it would have been hailed as an
extraordinary boon; it was now regarded as almost a half measure, in view
of the socialistic ideas about the land afloat. At the same time,
Fenianism continued to make its influence felt; Irish-Americans continued
to flit through the country denouncing British rule and Irish landlords,
and calling upon the peasantry, as in 1798, to rise. Even in these years
of prosperity, though rents were well paid, there was a secret movement
against rent beneath the surface of things, so well concealed that it was
absolutely unknown by the Government.
Meanwhile, in the midst of apparent peace, the elements of trouble in
Ireland still quiescent were to come to a head and to give rise to a
movement. The most formidable to British rule though skilfully masked,
which had been seen since the rebellion of 1798. Revolutionary schemes in
Ireland have always fastened on the land as the chief source from which
they could derive strength; the United Irish movement as I have pointed
out, was connected with a peasant movement against the payment of rent.
This idea had been brought into marked prominence by John Finton Lalor,
one of the rebels of 1848, a comparatively unknown but a sagacious man;
'You must associate' he wrote, 'the cause of Irish liberty, for which the
people really care little with a cause for which they care a great deal;
an inert mass must be yoked to a powerful engine; the Irish landlord must
be driven from the land and the peasant masses be made its owners; and the
fall of English power will follow that of its landlord garrison.' These
words fell for the moment on unheeding ears; but the tradition has
continued from that day to this the destruction of Irish 'landlordism' was
one of the objects of the Fenian leaders of 1865-67, and they denounced
the Irish gentry in atrocious language, though they did not know how to
carry out their policy. This teaching was eagerly adopted by Michael
Davitt, a Fenian, who had been convicted of a crime against the State;
during a long imprisonment at Dartmoor, he brooded 'on his country's
wrongs,' but satisfied himself that if the independence of Ireland was a
patriot's first object, this could be attained only by uprooting the
existing land system, by hounding on the occupiers of the soil against its
owners, and by handing it over as spoil to the peasantry. Davitt was
released from Dartmoor at the close of 1877; he attended a meeting in
Dublin at which Parnell was present, and two of the assassins of the
Phoenix Park tragedy; and he became supreme in the ranks of the Fenian
societies, known as 'the Irish Republican Brotherhood,' which still
retained a feeble life in Ireland, and even in England and Scotland. A
short time afterwards he made his way to the United States, where he found
the Fenians divided into two parties, known under the general name of the
Clan na Gael, but having different objects, though with a common purpose.
Both parties were for liberating Ireland 'from the Saxon yoke;' but the
most violent and the most active sought to attain this end by expedients
of desperate force; a 'skirmishing fund' had been established; 'England
was to be invaded' by small bodies of 'resolute men;' her capital and
chief towns were to be destroyed by dynamite. The other party, more
prudent, but with similar aims, had been struck by Parnell's attitude in
the House of Commons, and by the success of his unscrupulous tactics; its
leaders began to think that something might be done by 'constitutional
means;' they gradually came to an agreement with Davitt, that 'the
overthrow of English domination' was to be their ultimate end; but that
efforts in this direction were to be linked with energetic efforts to
subvert 'the landlord system, a disgrace to humanity and to the
civilisation of the present century;' to banish the Irish landed gentry
from their country, and to secure their estates for their tenantry. This
movement, though rebellious in no doubtful sense, was nevertheless to have
a legal disguise; the wolf was to wear sheep's clothing; the 'formation of
a peasant proprietary, and the abolition of arbitrary evictions,' were to
be its proposed objects.[63]
Treason, seeking support from socialistic greed, was thus the origin of
the Land League conspiracy, for this was its only legitimate name. I have
glanced at this movement, on its political side, as it was associated with
the cause of Home Rule; I must here consider it on its agrarian side, the
most prominent, if not the most dangerous, to the State.[64] The compact
between Davitt and the moderates of the Clan na Gael was called the 'New
Departure;' Davitt returned to Ireland to stir up what became known as the
'Land War;' Fenian emissaries went to Ireland, about the same time, in
order to collect arms and to drill peasants, with a view to a possible
rising should the occasion be found. Meanwhile, Davitt had addressed
himself to what was more immediately at hand; in the spring of 1879 he got
a meeting together, in his native county, Mayo, at which 'landlordism' and
all its works were savagely denounced; during the following months other
meetings of the same sort were held, but as yet only in the western
province of Connaught. At these gatherings the crusade against the landed
gentry went on; rebellious utterances were blended with ferocious
diatribes against[65] landlords sometimes marked out for vengeance by
name; and the peasantry were called on to keep 'a firm grip on their
lands;' these would become their own should they only be steadfast. The
Land League movement was now launched on its course; but it was known to
be an essentially Fenian movement; it was subsidised from Clan na Gael
funds; it was supported by a murderous Clan na Gael print; it was
condemned in the severest language by an aged Catholic prelate, one of the
few of O'Connell's surviving friends. The movement, however, as yet was
not of much strength; Davitt had opinions about the 'nationalisation of
the land,' which, like those of the Fenian leaders of 1865-67, were not to
the mind of the peasantry; his efforts, hitherto, had not had much
success. In this position of affairs he addressed himself to Parnell, who
had had Fenian sympathies and associations for years, and had, we have
seen, attracted Fenian admiration abroad; what passed between the two men
has not transpired; but Parnell, if with reluctance, consented at last to
become the head of the Land League and to direct the movement. The
measures he adopted were skilfully designed, in harmony with the 'New
Departure,' and with the double-dealing nature of a true conspirator. A
Central Land League was established in Dublin; it was to have 'branches'
extending through the country; it was to make a steady attack on the land
system. Its professed objects, however, were constitutional, nay, fair; it
was 'to agitate against rack-rents and unjust evictions,' and to
'facilitate the ownership of the soil by its occupants.' The ultimate
purpose of the League, nevertheless, was that of the Fenian chiefs; of its
seven high officers four were Fenians; it was wholly supported by Fenian
moneys; its most prominent members made a boast of their Fenian
sentiments.[66] It was, in a word, a rebellious organisation in a
constitutional garb; it was the embodiment of what Parnell avowed
afterwards: 'A true revolutionary movement in Ireland should, in my
opinion, partake both of a constitutional and an illegal character. It
should be both an open and a secret organisation, using the Constitution
for its own purposes, but also taking advantage of its secret
combination.'[67]
The Land League established, under these auspices, gradually made some
progress in the western parts of Ireland, always centres of poverty more
or less developed. It had not, however, as yet, become a power in the
land; Parnell went to the United States, as I have mentioned before, in
order to obtain support for the 'New Departure.' He was the grandson of a
distinguished American; the elections for a President were near; it was
necessary to bid for the Irish vote; the chief of the League was invited
to say what his Irish policy was in the Representative House of the
people; and this he did in moderate and carefully chosen language. His
real attitude, however, was very different; he associated with well-known
Fenian leaders, became acquainted with a contributor to the _Irish World_,
the worst journal of the Clan na Gael press; and more than once gave
utterance to what was plain treason, notably to the 'last-link' speech
already referred to. He obtained considerable funds for the League in
Ireland, and before long founded a similar League in America, which became
a Fenian organisation of the very worst type. Meanwhile a season of
distress had visited Ireland; this quickened the elements of disorder
being already let loose. The harvest of 1878 was not good; that of 1879
was the worst known since the Great Famine; the prosperity of the country
suddenly came to an end. There was a universal calling in of demands,
especially from tenant farmers, who, I have said, had been rather
extravagant, and had become involved in debt;[68] the whole class suffered
more or less, though there was very little extreme indigence, and Lord
Beaconsfield's Government was not slow in providing relief, which private
charity largely increased. In these circumstances the landed gentry acted
as any class would naturally act; a considerable number made remissions of
rent; if a large majority, as certainly was the case, insisted upon their
legal rights--conduct which must be pronounced unfortunate--it must be
recollected that an agitation of extreme violence had been directed
against the whole order; and that Mr. Gladstone had declared that, after
the Land Act, there were to be no more concessions. The League now
acquired new power; its branches spread over large parts of the west; its
directors, from members in the House of Commons, to its avowed agents, and
to the 'village ruffians,' who carried out its bidding in many places,
rioted in atrocious threats against landlords whether good or bad; and a
movement against the payment of rent began. The teaching which had been
spread abroad during many months, bore the fruits which were to be
expected from it; there was a sudden outbreak of agrarian crime, and of
Whiteboyism in its worst aspect; it deserves special notice that this was
confined to the counties where the League was in real force. The
landlords, under these conditions, were often driven to enforce their
claims; attempts were made to show that the evictions that followed were
the sole causes of this social disorder. But it is absolutely certain that
this was not the case; it was the Land League which provoked the
evictions, and was responsible for the incidental crime.[69]
The spring of 1880 had come; Lord Beaconsfield had been driven from
office, in an evil day for the renown of England; Mr. Gladstone had been
returned again to power, on the flood of a tide of democratic sympathy.
Lord Beaconsfield was not an author of any very large Irish reform, but he
understood Ireland much better than his impetuous rival; he had seen from
the first the real nature of the Land League movement; in his address to
the nation, when he dissolved Parliament, he declared that an 'attempt
scarcely less dangerous than famine and pestilence' was being made to
separate Ireland from Great Britain, words treated by Mr. Gladstone with
scornful ridicule, but words of real truth. The incoming Minister had of
late taken little heed of Irish affairs; he had been engaged in his
crusade in Midlothian, and in stirring up the multitude on the Eastern
question; but he had clung to his optimistic Irish faith; he had solemnly
announced that Ireland was 'contented and happy,' when the country was
suffering from unquestionable distress; he had even refused to renew a
measure for the repression of agrarian crime, when agrarian crime was
formidably on the increase, and the Land League was rapidly growing in
strength. At last, however, partly opening his eyes to the facts, he
appointed a Commission charged to report on Irish land tenure; and he
introduced a Bill slightly to amend the Land Act of 1870, showing thus
from the outset that he choose to regard a conspiracy against the State on
its economic side mainly, and not in its far more grave political aspect.
A word must be said on this measure, which had its origin, to a great
extent, in sheer and audacious falsehood. By this time Parnell was at the
head of some sixty adherents in the House of Commons; he had linked the
Home Rule and the Land League movements; his followers were, in many
instances, chiefs of the League; they induced Mr. Gladstone to listen to
them, on representations characteristically untrue. Evictions were on the
increase in Ireland, owing to the onslaught made by the League on the
landed gentry; Parnell and his band unscrupulously exaggerated the number,
perhaps twenty-fold, by confounding ejectment decrees of the Courts with
evictions actually carried out; Mr. Gladstone appears to have accepted
this shameful statement. The new 'Compensation for Disturbance' Bill, as
it was called, provided that in the case of certain classes of tenants,
although they had failed to pay their rents, compensation, withheld, we
have seen, under the Act of 1870, might be afforded them, under rather
strict conditions; this was certainly an innovation of a startling kind,
but something was to be said for it, in the existing position of affairs.
The House of Commons, however, disliked a measure nicknamed 'payment by
reason of non-payment,' and limited its application in many ways; and the
House of Lords, unfortunately, I think, threw it out.
This Bill, closely circumscribed as it was, would not have extended,
perhaps, to many tenants; it was condemned by Parnell and his satellites
as a sham. Its rejection, however, gave an opportunity to the League; its
leaders proclaimed at meetings, never so frequent before, that Ireland
had nothing to expect from a foreign Parliament; the attack on
'landlordism' became more intense; treasonable and predatory harangues
increased in vehemence. The influence of the conspiracy spread beyond
Connaught, over nearly all Munster, and parts of Leinster; wherever it was
felt it was attended with agrarian crime; 'crime,' as Mr. Gladstone
exclaimed, 'always dogged its footsteps.' Offences of this kind
portentously multiplied; they had been eight hundred and sixty-three at
the close of 1879; they were two thousand five hundred and eighty-nine at
the close of 1880;[70] and these included a number of barbarous murders,
and of other atrocious deeds of outrage and blood, especially of the
mutilation of the cattle of those opposed to the League. A kind of servile
war springing from the land had set in; and during this whole period the
spokesmen of the League, whether in the highest or the lowest grades,
continued to denounce the landed gentry, though they knew that their
utterances were the direct incentive to far-spreading crime. Parnell,
however, infinitely the ablest of the conspirators, perceived that this
brutal disorder would incense Parliament, and, besides, could not have
decisive results; the cool, calculating schemer laid down a plan of
operations for the League, which he hoped would be less openly detestable,
and much more effective. Orders were issued that tenants should, in every
part of Ireland, repudiate the rents they had agreed to pay, and should
pay only such sums as had been assessed on land by a valuation made by the
State for rates, a standard long acknowledged to be much too low; every
landlord who should reject these terms was to incur the vengeance of the
League. By these means Parnell expected, and not without reason, that a
great combination for the forcible reduction of rent would be formed, and
that numbers of farmers would flock in to the League, but he knew that
his proposal was simply a defiance of the law, and that it would be
resisted by many of the landed gentry; he hit on an expedient through
which he believed he would attain his end. Should any landlord refuse to
accept the sum offered instead of the proper rent, and should proceed to
dispossess the defaulting tenant--and practically he could have no other
remedy--the evicted farm was to be left derelict; it was to be smitten, as
it were, by the interdict of the League; and any wretch who should dare to
take it was to be banned by the whole neighbourhood; he and his, and those
who dealt with him, 'were to be shunned as lepers,' and 'treated as
traitors to the cause.'[71] In this way, the crime of 'boycotting,' as it
has ever since been called--its origin may be traced to the great Tithe
War in Ireland--was made part of 'the unwritten law' of the League; and
Parnell professed, whether sincerely or not, that through this device the
League would baffle the law, and the landlords, as a class, as unhappily
it did, in too many instances. Having thus armed the conspiracy with
increased power, he cynically began to deprecate crimes of violence: the
device of 'boycotting' was a more excellent way; it would before long
'bring landlords to their knees,' and would ultimately 'plant the tenant
in his farm to be held at a nominal rent,' should he only be true to the
League. At the same time the astute plotter found other means to extend
his authority and that of the conspiracy he ruled. He appealed to the
elective Local Boards in each county, composed for the most part of tenant
farmers, to join the League, and to carry out his policy; and continuously
but steadily he brought the force of the League to bear upon the
administration of the law, by the intimidation of juries, magistrates, and
even judicial persons.
The teaching of Parnell was disseminated by the League and its agencies,
especially at gatherings of peasant mobs; it was largely followed wherever
the League prevailed. In hundreds of instances tenant farmers were
compelled or induced to tender sums, 'at Griffith's valuation,' as it was
called, in lieu of the rents they were bound to pay; and on the rejection
of the offer, refused to pay anything. A widespread combination against
rent was thus set on foot, sustained by a principle of greed which held it
together; the League was more completely organised than it had been
before; it made its way into ten or eleven counties, the only centres in
which it was formidably strong. In these circumstances the landed gentry
acted, as an order of men so assailed would act; not a few accepted the
terms imposed on them, and took their rents at the reduced scale, the
majority resisted the mandates of the League, and appealed to the law to
enforce their rights. The terrors of the League were at once directed
against those who had dared to defy it; in a certain number of instances
landlords and agents were brutally murdered, for popular passions had been
let loose for years; in many more 'boycotting' was carried out with such
fatal effect that scores of families were driven out of Ireland, banned,
persecuted, deprived even of the necessaries of life; in many others the
demesnes of gentlemen were ravaged by 'Land League hunts,' overrun and
half destroyed by savage mob gatherings. Evictions of course increased as
the law was being trampled under foot; it is hardly necessary to say that
Parnell's doctrine was here ruthlessly applied; evicted farms were left
deserted and waste over thousands of acres; the fears caused by
'boycotting' had become so intense, that no 'land-grabber,' as the name
was, would dare to take them; the success of the League was in this
respect remarkable. The vengeance of the conspiracy, too, was extended
universally to another class of persons. Tenants in numbers of instances
paid their rents, either from an honest motive, or through dread of
eviction; the payment was often made at night, and under a pledge of
secrecy; but wherever they were discovered the League marked 'the
traitor's doom;' they were sometimes 'boycotted' almost to death;
sometimes murdered, often visited by gangs of ruffians--significantly
known as Parnell's police; the victims were shot in the legs, or the hair
of their women was cut off, or their cattle were cruelly mutilated and
maimed. It deserves special notice that, as was to be expected, Parnell's
warning against open crime was but little heeded; 'boycotting,' as Mr.
Gladstone said, truly 'was but a passive thing;' it 'required
assassination as its sanction;' the peasantry had been stirred up, in
places, to frenzy; although Parnell made few violent speeches at the time,
his satellites still gave a free rein to their wicked licence. Agrarian
crime increased to an appalling extent; it had reached in 1881 a total of
four thousand four hundred and thirty-nine cases, nearly two thousand more
than those of the preceding year.[72]
In the spring and summer of 1881, the power of the League was at its
height; in its organisation and working it bore a strong resemblance to
the Jacobin societies of the Revolution in France. It was directed by a
council from a central office in Dublin; its orders were sent thence to
the bodies connected with it; these, scattered over many parts of the
country, enforced its decrees through 'boycotting' crime, and terror.
'Obnoxious' persons, landlords, agents, 'land-grabbers,' and tenants who
had paid their rents, were denounced and exposed to the League's
vengeance; officers of the law and of justice were especially banned; even
those thought to be 'luke-warm' in the cause were declared 'suspected.' In
some districts the regular government was practically superseded by the
government of the league, described by Mr. Gladstone as 'a scheme of
anarchic oppression;' in these a Reign of Terror was really supreme. It
will never be known to what extent the League made use of Whiteboyism and
its secret conclaves in order to carry out its purposes; the central body,
controlled by Parnell, probably did not, but the affiliated bodies
certainly did; it is impossible to account otherwise for the enormous
increase of agrarian crime; the branches of the League, it is generally
supposed, overshadowed, so to speak, the Whiteboy societies; these were
active agents in the atrocious deeds that were done. It is scarcely
necessary to refer to what the condition of social life was wherever the
influence of the League was great; despair settled on the hearts of
thousands, who felt themselves exposed to unseen perils, and existed, as
it were, in an atmosphere of crime; and it must be borne in mind that for
one member of the better class, fifty probably of the humbler, who had
transgressed the law of the League, were kept in a state of moral dread
and torture. By this time the Fenian League in the United States, formed
by Parnell, but ruled by the Clan na Gael, had completely joined hands
with the League at home; its emissaries were found in many parts of
Ireland; its organ, the _Irish World_, 'spread what it called the light,'
the teaching of treason, murder, and dynamite; and it supplied the parent
League with, probably, nine-tenths of its funds, for it is a significant
fact, deserving special notice, that the contributions of the peasantry to
the League were, from first to last, small. Large parts of Ireland were
thus in a deplorable state; but it is a complete mistake to suppose, as
has been asserted, that the authority of the League was general throughout
the whole island. Protestant Ulster, with a true instinct of what the
conspiracy was, a movement against British rule in Ireland, kept aloof
from the League, in angry contempt; and though its influence was more
widely diffused, it was confined, I have said, to comparatively few
counties if regarded as a dangerous and formidable power. It is also
absolutely untrue that the movement was the uprising of an injured
peasantry against oppressive landlords. There was little distress in 1880
and 1881, when the League was rapidly growing in strength, for the
harvests of those years were above the average; and the Commission lately
appointed by Mr. Gladstone had reported that over-renting in Ireland was
not common, though instances of over-renting were of course to be
found.[73]
The centre of disturbance formed by the Land League was, I have said,
comparatively small; and it was, for the most part, limited to backward
and poor districts; its wicked and sordid teaching did not command the
sympathies of the more intelligent and better parts of Ireland. Its
influence, however, spread, in different degrees of strength, over nearly
the whole of Catholic Ireland, and it was more or less supported by the
Catholic priesthood, in many instances yielding to the pressure of their
flocks. Within the bounds where it did not create a Reign of Terror, it
was joined by thousands who thought it a constitutional movement,
especially by peasants only seeking an improved tenure; and it is not
pretended that even a majority of those who took part in it had
treasonable or rebellious objects in view. But it was not the less a
conspiracy hatched abroad, and aiming at the subversion of British power
in Ireland; this was the policy its leaders avowed; and a conspiracy must
be judged by the acts and words of those who direct it. The state of
anarchy in Ireland had become such, in the spring of 1881, that the
Government was compelled to try to put it down; a prosecution against
Parnell and his chief lieutenants had failed; a Bill, resisted by
obstruction, more persistent than had been ever known before, passed
through Parliament with the object of repressing the Land League. The
measure, however, was not well designed; minor agents of the League,
'village ruffians,' 'Parnell's police,' and the like, were imprisoned in
large numbers, no real punishment; but the chiefs of the conspiracy were
not brought within the law; the funds of the League were removed to Paris;
the movement went on in its destructive course. 'Coercion,' nevertheless,
was beginning to produce its effects, as it has always done in Irish
disorders, when Mr. Gladstone made a sudden change in his policy, never
made before by a Minister at the head of the State. He had denounced the
conspiracy in passionate language; he had partly at least seen what its
objects were; 'it aimed at dismemberment through rapine;' but always a man
of phrases and not of action, he had shrunk in every passage of his career
from facing difficulties where popular feelings were involved; and while
Ireland was still in a terrible state, he resolved to make a great
concession to the League, and to effect a complete revolution in the Irish
land. It was a surrender akin to that of Majuba, made with little
information, and without mature reflection; whether its author believed,
as I have remarked, that the conspiracy was most dangerous on its agrarian
side, or was willing to propitiate Parnell, at the expense of the Irish
landed gentry, he inaugurated the legislation, ever since pursued, which
has resulted in destroying the property of the Irish landlord, without
gaining the sympathy of the occupier of the Irish soil, has reduced the
land system of Ireland to a ruinous chaos, and has, in essential respects,
been an absolute failure.
Mr. Gladstone's position was difficult when he introduced his new Irish
Land Bill; his speech in the House of Commons, lucid as regards details,
was apologetic, ambiguous, often beside the subject. He went out of his
way to praise Irish landlords, 'acquitted,' he declared, by the late
Commission; he deeply regretted a new experiment on the Irish land. He
retained his admiration for the Act of 1870, but insinuated that it had
been injured in the House of Lords; had this not been the case, it would
have settled the Irish land question. He passed over his solemn pledges,
on the faith of which millions had been lent on Irish estates, that the
legislation of eleven years before was final; here he took refuge in
appeals to 'Divine Justice,' in the 'light of which' a statesman must
walk, as if Divine Justice was an excuse for a gross breach of faith. He
then unfolded his plan of reform; he endeavoured, with an ingenuity all
his own, to distinguish it from the schemes he had emphatically condemned
in 1870; but in this respect mystification was at fault; the measure was a
clumsy imitation of the 'Three F's,' and where it differed, it differed
greatly for the worse. Anticipating objections certain to be made, the
orator dismissed 'political economy to Saturn' with a confident gesture;
for some untold reason the philosophy of Adam Smith could not possibly
apply to the order of things in Ireland. But by many degrees the most
important part of the speech, in view of events which have since happened,
was that in which Mr. Gladstone announced that should the measure really
injure the Irish landlord, the State was bound to provide an indemnity. He
denied, indeed, that the Bill could have any such effect; it would be a
boon, he gravely said, to the Irish landed gentry; but should the contrary
be the case, 'compensation' would be clearly their right. 'I do not
hesitate to say'--these were his very words spoken after the Bill had made
much progress--'that if it can be shown, on clear and definite experience,
at the present time, that there is a probability, or if after experience
shall prove that, in fact, ruin and heavy loss has been brought on any
class in Ireland by the direct effect of this legislation, that is a
question which we ought to look very directly in the face.' The same
meaning was even more clearly expressed: 'I should certainly be very slow
to deny that where confiscation could be proved, compensation ought to
follow,' and several of Mr. Gladstone's lieutenants spoke in the same
sense.[74]
The Bill, I have said, applied the principle of the 'Three F's' to the
relation of landlord and tenant in by far the greatest part of Ireland. As
in the case of the Land Act of 1870, it excluded certain classes of lands
from its scope, demesnes, residential holdings, town parks, and large
pastoral farms; it extended also only to tenants at will, that is, subject
to a notice to quit; it left tenants under leases outside its purview. It
was confined, too, to 'present tenants in occupation,' at or near the
existing time; it had no reference to 'future tenants,' that is, to
tenants holding by contracts made after the Bill should pass, or a few
months afterwards. Subject, however, to these exceptions, on the whole not
large, the measure placed tenancies in Ireland under the 'Three F's,' but
with conditions of tenure peculiar to itself, and hitherto unknown in
Ireland, or in any part of Europe. 'Fair Rent,' which, under the Ulster
Custom, was settled by a bargain between landlord and tenant, was to be
adjusted through the intervention of the State, legislation akin to the
mediæval statutes regulating the price of bread, and the wages of labour.
'Fixity of Tenure' was not to be a perpetuity in name; Mr. Gladstone
feared that the speeches would be thrown in his teeth, in which he had
declaimed against the idea; it was to be a lease for fifteen years, but
capable of being renewed for ever, as a rule, through a periodical and
costly lawsuit. 'Free Sale' was to be conceded under somewhat strict
conditions; and the landlord was to be afforded a right of pre-emption in
the case of such sales, in accordance with the analogy of the Ulster
Custom. An estate virtually perpetual, at a State-settled rent, was thus
to be carved out of the landlord's fee, and given to tenants actually in
possession of the land; it was created in absolute derogation from the
landlord's rights; it was a large if partial expropriation, in no doubtful
sense. As to the interest of landlords in what was left of their property,
they were to retain what are usually known as 'royalties'--timber,
minerals, mines, and privileges of sport; they were to have the ordinary
remedies for enforcing payment of rent; and the statutory leases were to
be subject to certain conditions, taken, for the most part, from the
Ulster Custom, the violation of which might lead to their forfeiture. A
tribunal, called the Land Commission, was to be set up to carry the law
into effect, that is, to 'fix fair rents,' and to make tenures 'fixed;' it
was to be assisted by dependent agencies, known as Sub-Commissions, which,
Mr. Gladstone intimated, were to be quite subordinate, and from which
appeals to the Land Commission were to run; but a sinister feature of an
untried revolutionary scheme--the decision of the Land Commission as
respects 'fair rent'--was to be final. Subject to an appeal to the Land
Commission, the Irish County Courts were empowered to administer the law;
but it was foreseen that they would not do much in this province. The new
modes of tenure might be applied to lands, by agreements between landlords
and tenants carefully guarded; and Mr. Gladstone believed that this would
be the ordinary course of dealing. The Bill, he thought, would not cause
litigation to any great extent; it would operate as a self-acting force to
lead to friendly contracts.[75]
So much for the scope of the Bill and the classes of tenants to which its
benefits were to extend. A most important change was made in the measure,
which contained, originally, nothing of the kind; this has been attended
with far-reaching results. As we have seen, tenants were to be compensated
for their improvements, under the Act of 1870; but the compensation was
to be paid only when they were leaving the land; Mr. Healy, one of the
ablest of Parnell's lieutenants, induced Parliament to accept a provision
exempting tenants' improvements from rent, when the adjustment of 'fair
rent' was to be made. However equitable in principle this might appear to
be, it was, in the peculiar state of Irish land tenure, unjust in the
extreme to landlords, as I shall endeavour to point out afterwards; and it
has been a source of litigation, as mischievous and demoralising as can
well be conceived. The Bill, like the Act of 1870, prohibited the
subdivision and subletting of farms--an inveterate evil practice of the
Irish peasant--under conditions possibly rather too strict; and it made
changes, in that statute, which require attention. It added weight, so to
speak, to the law, in the tenant's interest; it increased the amount of
compensation in respect of disturbance; it limited the power of
'contracting out,' to a smaller class of tenants than had been the case
before, in fact, to large capitalist farmers; and it provided that
tenants, who had accepted leases excluding them from the benefits of the
Act of 1870, through illegitimate conduct on the part of their landlords,
should be exonerated from such unfair contracts. It thus greatly amended
the original Land Act; but it left many of its defects untouched; it is
only right here to add that despite the lying clamour raised by the
subsidised Press of Parnell--lying has ever since been part of its
stock-in-trade--the instances were exceedingly few in which 'forced
leases,' as they were called, were set aside by the Courts. A remarkable
feature of the Bill has yet to be noticed: Mr. Gladstone, as was the case
eleven years before, had still the wish, so characteristic of British
statesmen, to assimilate Irish to English land tenure; for this reason, as
I said, he deprived 'future tenants' of the advantages of the Bill; these
were to hold their farms on the footing of pure contract. This was a
shortsighted and bad arrangement; it tempted directly ill-conditioned
landlords to dispossess tenants, whenever a chance offered, and to create
'future' tenants so as to discharge their estates from a burden; it
revealed marked ignorance of the affairs of Ireland. The Bill dealt, also,
with the land on the side of ownership; it gave additional facilities to
tenants to purchase their holdings; the State was empowered to advance
three-fourths of the moneys; but the tenants were to find the remaining
fourth; the transaction was to be still a purchase, and not in the nature
of a gift.[76]
The Bill became law, with very little change; the House of Lords, though
fully alive to its evils, did not amend it in any important respect; the
Peers had in mind, perhaps too much, what had followed the rejection of
the Bill of the year before. Mr. Gladstone and his followers maintained at
the time, and the statement has been ever since repeated, that the Land
Act of 1881, its popular title, was but a natural development of the
original Act of 1870; but this assertion is not only untrue, but
absolutely contrary to the truth. The Act of 1870, no doubt, considered as
a whole, annexed a large tenant right to the estate of the landlord, and
to that extent placed a burden on it; but it preserved for the landlord
the ownership of the land; it did not interfere with his rent, his first
proprietary right; above all, it was, in the main, in accord with fact,
and just. The Act of 1881 was almost the exact opposite; it deprived the
landlord of the ownership of his land, and nearly converted him into a
mere rent-charger; it created against him a perpetuity at a State-settled
rent; it really all but made the tenant the owner of the land; it was, in
short, inconsistent with fact, and essentially unjust. The Act of 1881,
too, established a principle, never heard of before in civilised
countries, that tribunals of the State were to fix the rate of rent; this
not only annihilated the most important of landed contracts, entirely to
the landlord's detriment, it inevitably tended to cut down rents
wholesale, as Judge Longfield had predicted would be the case. 'It is
probable,' wrote that great authority, 'that the value of land, as fixed
by any tenant-right measure, would be less than half the rent, which a
solvent tenant would be willing to pay;'[77] the prediction has been too
well verified. The Act of 1870, in a word, was a remedial law, fairly
adjusting the rights of landlord and tenant; the Act of 1881 was a
socialistic law, despoiling the landlord of his property wholesale, and
handing it over to a dependent who had no claim to it; it was sheer
confiscation hardly disguised; and it should be added that the exemption
of tenants' improvements from rent, as affairs stood in Ireland, was a
grave wrong to the landlord. The Act of 1881, to speak plainly,
transformed the Irish land system iniquitously for the benefit of a single
class; and it directly promoted litigation of the very worst kind, on an
enormous scale, embittering, and still further dividing, the classes
connected with the land. The evils of this legislation, a monument of
reckless unwisdom, were at once manifest to well-informed persons; the
Duke of Argyll and Lord Lansdowne resigned office rather than take part in
a measure of the kind; Lord Ashbourne, the present holder of the Great
Seal in Ireland, caustically remarked that Parliament would do much better
should it deprive Irish landlords of a fourth part of their rents on the
spot. The verdict of enlightened and impartial opinion in Ireland was very
much the same.
I shall comment on the administration of this law in another chapter;
enough to say here that what was bad was made, by many degrees, worse. The
conduct of Parnell, as regards the measure, was characteristic; he assumed
an attitude of moderation, and proposed to make 'a trial of the Act by
test cases;' he wrote to his Fenian friends in the Far West that the Act
was a mockery; he allowed the Land League to riot in lawlessness as
before. Mr. Gladstone, always incensed when his will was crossed, shut him
up in prison under the recent statute, with several prominent leaders of
the League; the reply was a manifesto against the payment of any rent,
unhappily obeyed in some districts, though every symptom of exceptional
distress had passed away. A brief but violent struggle was the result; the
peasantry refused to pay a shilling in several counties; and as the
principal agents of the League were within four walls, flights of
viragoes, like those of the French Revolution, were let loose to preach,
far and near, the evangel of 'no rent.' This conflict, however, was not
lasting; agrarian crime and disorder, indeed, still continued frequent;
but the Government was too strong for the 'Ladies' Land League;' by the
spring of 1882 its triumph appeared to be certain. But Mr. Gladstone,
'unstable as water' in view of what he deemed popular movements, would not
steadily persist in vindicating the law; the imprisonment of the chiefs of
the conspiracy and their subordinates, in large numbers, seems to have
made him feel sore if unworthy misgivings; he surrendered to the enemies
of the State, for the second time, and entered with Parnell into the
famous 'Kilmainham Treaty,' as shameful as the Glamorgan Treaty which cost
Charles I. his head. The 'Suspects,' as they were called, were set free in
scores; the Lord-Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary indignantly left their
posts; a new Government for Ireland was formed, charged to carry
'conciliation,' as the phrase was, out, that is, to make fresh concessions
to Parnell and his creatures. But the auspicious prospect was suddenly
darkened by the frightful assassinations of the Phoenix Park; these
cannot be justly laid to the charge of the League, indeed were against
Parnell's interest, for it was generally expected he would obtain high
office; but two agents of the League were implicated in the crime; and the
Press of the League began soon to plead for the murderers. The mind of
England was now thoroughly roused; Mr. Gladstone, bowing at once to
England's will, carried through Parliament the severest repressive measure
that has ever, perhaps, been applied to Ireland. The battle with the
League was soon brought to a close; the conspiracy indeed resisted for a
time, and crime, as always, was attendant on it; and the Clan na Gael gave
it all the assistance it could, in large subsidies which had never ceased,
in the dissemination in Ireland of its incendiary journals, and especially
by 'carrying the war into England,' and fulfilling its threats to attack
her chief towns by fire and dynamite, outrages, however, that really came
to nothing. But 'coercion,' as has been invariably the case in Ireland,
produced its effects; agrarian crimes, which, in 1882, if less than those
of the year before, were, nevertheless, three thousand four hundred and
thirty-two in number, had fallen to eight hundred and seventy in 1883.[78]
The Land League was paralysed, if not destroyed; its organisation was, in
name, suppressed by its framers. It reappeared, however, at once, in a new
form; the skill of Parnell in masking a conspiracy was never more fully
displayed. He felt that the Land League could not cope with the law; that
the crimes of violence and blood, which attended its course, gave the
Government opportunities to put it down; that its openly avowed purposes
were a danger to it. He set up, therefore, the 'National League' in its
stead; the professed object of the association was to promote 'Home Rule,'
while it upheld the rights of the occupiers of the Irish soil, and kept
the Irish land, so to speak, in view; it was thus apparently a mere centre
of a constitutional movement. Through these means, and under these
pretences, the astute and able plotter swept into his net thousands who
had held aloof from the Land League; many of the middle classes joined the
National League, notably hundreds of the clergy of the Catholic Church in
Ireland; the peasantry gave it increased support; its influence spread
beyond its predecessor's limits. The National League, however, was only
the Land League under another name;[79] its leaders and officials were the
same men; its 'branches' were those of the League it replaced; its real
objects were exactly the same, the overthrow of British rule in Ireland,
and the annihilation of the Irish landed gentry. But the methods it
employed to work out its ends were, to a great extent, different; open
agitation was kept down; public meetings, likely to be violent, were not
held; the perpetration of agrarian crime was not encouraged. The movement,
in a word, was comparatively secret and below the surface; but it was
essentially the successor of the Land League in its aims; we may say of
it, with a slight change, in the words of the poet--
'Facies non una sororum,
Nec diversa tamen.'
'Boycotting' was now made the chief weapon of the reformed conspiracy;
'National League Courts' were held regularly in many districts, at which
this barbarous interdict was systematically pronounced on persons
violating 'the unwritten law' of the old League; the persecution against
landlords, agents, 'land-grabbing' peasants who were 'disloyal and
traitors,' and traders suspected of dealing with 'rotten sheep,' was
carried on with a pertinacity and ingenuity hardly known before; the
number of derelict farms augmented; and the Government found it far from
easy to deal with these crimes. At the same time, 'the Nationalist Press,'
as it had been named, fully revealed the purpose of the conspirators;
trusting to impunity, under the law of libel, which depended upon the will
of juries, it was even more treasonable and seditious than before; and it
gave infamous license to defamation of personages in high places, worthy
of the abominations of the Père Duchesne.[80] Ireland, however, remained
in comparative peace while the recent measure of repression continued in
force; but this was injudiciously allowed to expire in 1885--a strange act
on the part of a Conservative Ministry; and in a short time agrarian
disorder broke out afresh. Crimes of this class had fallen, in 1884, to
seven hundred and sixty-two in number; they were one thousand and
fifty-six in 1886; and 'boycotting' had increased fourfold.[81]
The National League remained quiescent, while Mr. Gladstone was making
another surrender, and endeavouring to carry Home Rule through Parliament.
Upon the rejection of the measure of 1886, its activity was renewed; and
it found considerable support from the American Fenians, who, from first
to last, had been its chief paymasters. I have referred to the Convention
at Chicago graced by Parnell's envoys, and to the wild boast that the
English 'government of Ireland was to be made impossible;' the treasonable
aspect of the conspiracy became at once manifest. The League was assisted
by another season of distress, from 1886 to 1888; the number of its
adherents greatly increased; it began, like its predecessor, to defy the
authority of the State. I have already dealt with this movement on its
political side; I shall not repeat what I have already written: how the
League endeavoured to stir up disorder in Ireland; how it declared open
war against the Castle; how it tried to terrorise the ministers of the
law; how it made 'boycotting' more effective than it had ever been; how,
if responsible for many grave deeds of blood, it mainly relied on this
malign influence, which tortured hundreds of victims in many districts,
and was fitly compared to 'the pestilence that walks in darkness;' how Mr.
Gladstone and the Opposition, to the disgrace of both, gave the conspiracy
their support and excused its crimes; and how it was ere long put down by
Mr. Balfour strongly seconded by Rome. But I must say a word on the
agrarian side of the movement; for this illustrated the increased
ingenuity of the League. Some of its leaders issued a mandate against the
payment of rent, except upon reductions to an enormous extent; should the
landlords refuse, the tenants, on every estate, were to lodge their rents
into what was called the 'War chest,' a common fund to be held in trust;
the object of this being to prevent the secret payment of rent, which had
repeatedly, we have seen, taken place, and to put a stop to 'defection
from the cause.' The 'Plan of Campaign' as was its name, was thus ushered
on; it was a criminal plot of the very basest kind; but though it proved
successful in some instances, and it caused much agrarian disorder and
crime, it was, on the whole, a comparative failure. The peasantry,
close-fisted and shrewd, distrusted the so-called 'trustees of the War
chest;' they generally declined to put their money in it; the 'Plan' was
only carried out on few estates, though it compelled many landlords to
make reductions of rent; it is remarkable that Parnell did not approve of
the swindle. Long, however, before the defeat of the League, there had
been a thousand instances of agrarian crime: five thousand miserable
beings had been 'boycotted,' in many cases with frightful results; a
thousand had been placed under the protection of the police. As had
happened during the _régime_ of the Land League, these victims were nearly
all of the humble classes.
In 1887 another change was made in the Irish land system, essentially a
development of the Land Act of 1881. That measure, I have said, applied to
tenants at will only, that is, liable to be dispossessed by a notice to
quit; it did not apply to tenants under leasehold tenures. A sharp
distinction, therefore, was drawn between the two classes; a farmer, with
land on one side of a ditch, could secure the advantages of the 'Three
F's;' his neighbour, on the other side, could not; the distinction was so
palpably harsh, that many landlords in Ireland saw its injustice, and
enabled leasehold tenants to obtain the benefits of the law. An Act,
prepared by Lord Salisbury's Government, brought ordinary Irish
leaseholders within the Land Act of 1881; these were given a right to have
'fair rents' fixed, and 'fixity of tenure' and 'free sale' under certain
conditions. The Act of 1887, also, empowered the Courts to set aside
perpetual leases unfairly obtained; and it relaxed the restrictions of the
Act of 1881 with respect to subletting and subdivision, and the exclusion
of 'town parks.' It improved, moreover, the law of ejectment,
facilitating the vindication of the rights of the landlord; and--a strange
provision--it enabled a middleman, in certain events, to creep out of his
contract, and to free himself from the rent due to his superior landlord.
In consequence of the fall of prices that had lately occurred, and the
depression of agriculture that had been the result, the Act, too, reduced,
for a short period of time, 'fair rents' that had been already fixed; and
it contained other enactments wholly in the interest of the occupier of
the Irish soil. Regarded as a whole, something was to be said for the
measure, on the principles of the legislation of 1881; but the liberation
of the middleman from the payment of a debt has been attended with grave
wrong, and was an ominous precedent leading to others of the kind. The new
law was, of course, another inroad on the rights of the Irish landlord,
another innovation made against his interests; it has certainly
strengthened his claim to compensation for the loss of his property,
acknowledged by Mr. Gladstone to be unquestionable, should it be
reasonably made out. For the rest, the National League made a boast that
the Act had been wrung by its efforts from a foreign Parliament; the Act
certainly, like that of 1881, was a concession, derogating from the rights
of a powerless class, in the hope of weakening a conspiracy against the
State, by detaching from it large classes supported by it, and handing
over to these what had belonged to the Irish landed gentry.[82]
The Land Act of 1887, it has been alleged, was the principal cause that
disorder in Ireland was suppressed, and that comparative peace was
restored. The measure may have had effects in this direction; but these
assuredly were not great; the number of leaseholders was not large; the
reductions made in 'fair rents' were temporary and small. In truth, as
agrarian war, stirred up by the Land League, did not diminish when the Act
of 1881 was passed, but was brought to an end by what is called coercion,
the agrarian war, stirred up by the National League, was quelled, not by
the Act of 1887, but by resolute government, assisted by a repressive
measure infinitely less stringent than that of 1882, and, in some degree,
I have said, by Rome. It is worse than unwise to ignore plain facts; grave
outbreaks of disorder and crime in Ireland can only be put down by severe
means, and invariably have been put down by these; that 'force is no
remedy' is mere false sentiment. The violence, nay, the power, of the
National League decreased rapidly and greatly after about 1889; the
conspiracy seemed well-nigh to have dwindled away. This was partly because
Parnell, negotiating with Mr. Gladstone, in the hope of obtaining Home
Rule, discouraged agitation of every kind in Ireland, and in order to
hoodwink the English people, and to bring about the 'Union of Hearts,'
represented, with his followers, that Ireland was at perfect peace, and
only awaited 'self-government' to be completely happy. But infinitely the
most potent reason was that the fall of Parnell almost broke up the
League; his creatures split into angry factions, exasperated against each
other by furious discord; as the result the organisation of the League was
shattered; the peasantry and the Catholic priesthood fell away from it. At
the same time the Fenians in the United States, much its best supporters,
withdrew the subsidies they had hitherto lavished; the League became
penniless and almost powerless. By 1895 the conspiracy showed scarcely a
sign of life; agrarian crime had sunk to a very low ebb; there was no sign
of a movement against the payment of rent; order prevailed, it may be
said, throughout the community. The conspiracy, nevertheless, was not
dead; its leaders, if quiescent, had not disappeared; well-informed
observers knew that the end had not come. I have described in another
chapter, by what means, and through what conditions, it revived gradually
under Lord Salisbury's third Government, and acquired strength that may be
on the increase; it is not yet formidable, in any real sense, and its
leaders are not to be named with Parnell; it is not receiving funds as yet
from America; but the United Irish League is its true successor; and this
commands eighty votes in the House of Commons. Time only can show if a
period of agrarian strife and crime may not be about to open again for
Ireland; it is foolish optimism to assert that this is impossible, or to
contend that the agrarian legislation of the last twenty years, as regards
the Irish land, will necessarily, or even probably, produce this fortunate
result.
In 1891 another change was effected in Irish landed relations, as usual in
the interest of the tenant, and against his landlord. Middleman tenures
had well-nigh been extinguished; but some hundreds, probably, were still
to be found; and as a middleman, through the legislation of 1887, was
enabled to repudiate his contract, in certain cases, and to escape the
payment of rent to his superior landlord, he was now to obtain an
advantage in other instances. The large majority of this class of
intermediate owners, originally created in the eighteenth century, held,
at least, in present times, by perpetual leases, which had long ago, as a
rule, been converted into estates in fee farm, that is, estates in fee,
subject to a perpetual rent; Parliament passed an Act in 1891, enlarged
and amended five years afterwards, declaring that, in cases in which
tenants of this kind were 'in _bonâ fide_ occupation' of lands, under
rents which, in the judgment of the Land Commission, should be 'a full
agricultural rent,' they might either agree with their landlords to redeem
the rent at a price to be determined by that tribunal, or, should the
landlords refuse their consent, might have 'fair rents' fixed as in the
instance of common farming tenants.[83] The application of this law could
not extend far, for tenants of this description were very few; but it
asserted a strange, and, I think, a most vicious principle. The Act
practically forced a superior landlord, often a poor man, either to accept
a price assessed by a Court over which he had no control, in lieu of a
rent, in all probability reasonably well secured, or, as an alternative,
to submit to have a 'fair rent' fixed on the land, the rent to be
discharged from improvements made by the tenant. If, therefore, a tenant
of this kind had built, say, a valuable house, on his holding, which would
thus largely add to the security for the rent, this--at least, so it is
generally believed--was not to be taken into account in fixing 'the fair
rent;' and this principle, it may confidently be predicted, will be
extended further. Should a tenant, at a 'fair rent,' in this predicament,
be evicted for the failure to pay the rent, a law, in all human
probability, will be made, to obtain for him compensation, under the Act
of 1870, from the benefits of which he would be, as affairs stand,
excluded. The result might be that if, as would often happen, the
improvements he had made were of great value--his interest, in the land,
being a perpetual interest--the sum the landlord would be adjudged to pay,
might swallow up the whole value of the rent, and practically confiscate
his whole property.[84]
In 1896 another inroad was made on the rights of Irish landlords, and
another dole given to the tenant class in Ireland; the descent to Avernus
had proved easy; a Conservative Government had followed it since 1887.
This fresh legislation was mainly in the interest of the Presbyterian
farmers of Ulster, who had supported the Union almost to a man, and
possessed no little political weight; but who, always separated more or
less from their landlords, had shown dissatisfaction with the fixing of
'fair rents,' and had begun to cry out for what is called 'the compulsory
purchase' of the estates of their landlords, a policy on which I shall
comment afterwards. The Bill contained just and well-devised provisions;
it improved the procedure for fixing 'fair rents,' if not nearly as
thoroughly as it ought to have done; it protected the leases creating
'fixity,' under the new tenure--Mr. Gladstone, flying in the face of the
ablest lawyers, had passionately declared that these were sacrosanct--in
instances in which these might have been annulled; it proposed, what I had
always considered right, that old arrears of rent ought not to be allowed
to hang over the heads of tenants, and that rent could not be recovered on
eviction, if due for upward of two years.[85] But the Bill abounded in
principles dangerous and false; it was, taken as a whole, a mischievous
measure; it was another mine sprung upon the Irish landed gentry. Lands
hitherto excluded from the benefits of the 'Three F's,' under the Acts of
1881 and 1887--that is, demesnes, town parks, residential, and pastoral
holdings--were largely brought within the scope of the Bill, that is, they
were made subject to 'fair rents,' and, if held by tenants, were
practically taken away from the landlords; the provisions of the Bill, as
to demesnes, were especially harsh; many a mansion and demesne, which
might happen to be let, would really become the property of the tenant,
the owner being put off with a rent-charge. The worst proposals of this
measure, however, were those relating to improvements made by tenants,
exempted from rent, we have seen, by the Act of 1881. The Courts of
Justice in Ireland had rightly declared with one voice, that improvements
of this kind were not to be discharged from rent, unless they were the
improvements treated by the Act of 1870, that is, rents might be charged
on tenants' improvements, if these did not fall within the definition laid
down by that law, or if they were outside the limitations it had imposed,
in order to shut out obsolete and unjust claims, which might harass and do
grievous wrong to landlords. All this was completely changed by the new
measure; the definition of improvements was wholly altered, in order to
secure their being exempted from rent; the restrictions in point of time,
and many other matters, as regards claims for improvements, were largely
swept away, and the power of 'contracting out' of such claims was still
further abridged. The whole law, in a word, as to tenants' improvements,
as these were to create exemption from rent, was placed on altogether a
new basis; this was detrimental in every respect to the landlord, and gave
advantages to the tenant, in my judgment, utterly unjust.[86]
The Bill contained other provisions, all in the same direction, that is,
for the advantage of the Irish tenant, and to his landlord's loss,
especially one relaxing the law as to the subdivision and subletting of
farms, an inveterate and very pernicious practice. It introduced, also, a
new principle, on which I shall say some words afterwards, with respect to
another experiment on the Irish land, that is, what is called Land
Purchase, under conditions, not thought of before, until they were laid
down by a Conservative Government. The measure was hustled through the
House of Commons with such indecorous haste, that Sir Edward Carson, now a
law-officer of the Crown, walked out of that Assembly to express his
disgust; it narrowly escaped defeat in the House of Lords, loyal as the
Peers to Lord Salisbury are; indeed, though hardly debated, its vices were
soon made manifest. It is unnecessary to point out what the general
character of the Act is; it enlarged very considerably the sphere of the
'Three F's,' greatly increasing the wrong done to the Irish landlord, by
doing away with the restrictions, placed by Mr. Gladstone, in 1870, on
illegitimate claims in respect of improvements; its direct tendency was to
reduce rents wholesale, and to promote more litigation between landlord
and tenant; and if it encouraged tenants to make improvements on their
farms, its plain effect, I will not say its purpose, was to 'improve the
Irish landlords out of their estates,' the contemptuous phrase of a great
master of Equity. Its mischief, however, went a great deal further;
tenants making improvements are only exempted from rent, in respect of
these, by this Act; they are not within the protection of the Act of 1870,
if improvements of any kind are excluded by it; if a tenant, therefore,
makes an improvement on his farm, which is not 'suitable' to it in a real
sense, say, builds a mansion upon a petty holding, he will not be entitled
to compensation, should he quit it, even though dispossessed for
non-payment of his rent. But tenants, in these circumstances, like those I
have referred to before, would assuredly proclaim that they had here a
great and real grievance; and they would be relieved from it, doubtless,
by another law, giving them compensation, perhaps, to their landlord's
ruin. A dangerous principle is thus hidden within the Act; this will
probably be asserted against the owners of ground rents, not only in
Ireland, but in England and Scotland; and the law, taken as a whole, has
strengthened the claim of the Irish landed gentry to be indemnified, as
was solemnly promised, for what they have suffered from the legislation
begun in 1881.
While the Irish land system was thus being dealt with, on the side of
occupation, during many years, experiments were made on it, likewise on
the side of ownership. Resenting the legislation that had produced the
'Three F's,' Conservative politicians took it into their heads that Mr.
Gladstone had 'created' 'dual ownership,' as they gave it the name, in
Ireland; they insisted that this was simply an intolerable thing.
Unfortunately Mr. Gladstone had no more 'created dual ownership' than he
had created the mountains and lakes of Ireland; he had only developed the
joint ownership, which the Irish tenant possessed in his holding, in
thousands of instances, if he had developed it under the very worst
conditions. This theory, however, at which Burke would have laughed with
contempt, and which revealed the incapacity to understand Irish land
tenure, ingrained, it would appear, in the English mind, was eagerly taken
up and found much support; it was resolved to extend the process of
converting tenants in Ireland into owners of their farms, by a method
hitherto untried, and unknown in any part of Europe. Under the Church
Disestablishment Act, and the Land Acts of 1870 and 1881, the State had
advanced money to the occupier of the Irish soil, in order to enable him
to acquire his farm; but it had made it incumbent on him to contribute
part of the price; the transaction, therefore, was, in a real sense, a
purchase. This, the only security for honesty and thrift, was taken away
in 1885; Parliament passed an Act enabling the Irish tenant to become
owner of his holding without paying down a shilling; the State was to
advance the whole price; and the State was to be repaid by a terminable
annuity, charged on the land, and extinguished at the end of less than
half a century. This terminable annuity was to be much less than a true
rent, or even than a 'fair rent' adjusted by the State; the transaction,
therefore, was not a purchase, but a gift, akin to a bribe, another
largess bestowed on the tenant class in Ireland, and another injury, as I
shall prove, inflicted on the Irish landed gentry. This 'Land Purchase,'
as it was falsely called, was to be voluntary on the part of landlord and
tenant; it was to be conducted on the footing of free contract, as had
been the case under the preceding statutes; the State was to obtain a
guarantee from the landlord; and Parliament voted £5,000,000 to carry out
this policy.
Exactly as had happened in the case of the Encumbered Estates Act, this
scheme of 'Land Purchase' was pronounced successful; some scores of
landlords sold land, some hundreds of tenants bought it; the real nature
of the proceeding and its inevitable results were ignored; it was even
boasted that 'dual ownership' would be got rid of, nay, that the Irish
Land Question was being finally 'settled.' But when the first sum of
£5,000,000 had been expended, and Parliament was asked to vote a second
sum, it began to hesitate as to this dealing with the Irish land; the
British taxpayer demurred and growled; with a true instinct he disliked
the security; it was found very difficult to procure the funds required,
large as the majority was of Lord Salisbury's Government. His Ministry,
however, adhered to the new policy; and Parliament enacted a measure in
1891, which I have always thought unconstitutional in the highest degree,
not to speak of the evils it was certain to produce. By this Act a sum of
about £30,000,000 was made forthcoming to facilitate 'Land Purchase,' to
abolish 'dual ownership,' and to change Irish tenants into owners of land;
this sum was to be secured by the methods before referred to, that is, by
terminable annuities less than any equitable rent, and by guarantees on
the part of selling landlords; but, furthermore, a whole series of funds,
devoted to Ireland, for Irish purposes, and absolutely essential to her
most important needs, were appropriated to make good any default on the
part of 'purchasing' tenants, in the payment of annuities charged on their
farms; and even the Irish counties were rendered liable in the last
resort. Should, therefore, tenants in Ireland, who had acquired the
ownership of their farms, refuse to pay those annuities on any pretence,
say, through an appeal made by a Land League conspiracy--the manifesto
against all rent cannot be forgotten--this extraordinary spectacle would
then be seen: the State would have a right to seize upon the grants made
for National schools and lunatic asylums throughout Ireland; these
institutions would be shut up; children and madmen would be let loose
through the country; and the owner of an Irish estate would have to pay
for the dishonesty perhaps of his former tenants. The late Lord Randolph
Churchill severely condemned this scheme; I agree with him it was utterly
unjust, and but too characteristic of the contempt of the rights of
Ireland, unhappily often displayed by British statesmen.
Only a sum, it will be observed, of about £40,000,000, that is, two of
£5,000,000, and some £30,000,000 more, has thus been made available for
'Land Purchase;' this obviously could not transfer even a fourth part of
the Irish land, valued, we have seen, by Mr. Gladstone at £300,000,000--in
a remarkable speech in reply to Lord George Hamilton--and almost certainly
worth from £150,000,000 to £200,000,000. The process of doing away with
'dual ownership' and making tenants in Ireland owners of their farms,
having been pronounced by its authors slow, the Act of 1896, referred to
before, enabled the landlord's guarantee to be dispensed with, and
provided that, in the case of hopelessly embarrassed landlords, whose
estates were being offered for sale in the Courts, the tenants should
virtually have a right of pre-emption, thus asserting a principle, on
which I shall dwell afterwards, and known as the 'Compulsory Purchase' of
the Irish land. I shall point out, in another chapter, the present and the
inevitable future results of this policy of so-styled 'Land Purchase;'
suffice it to say here, that, in my judgment, it betrays utter ignorance
of the Irish land system, and of the customs and inclinations of the Irish
peasant; that it proceeds on an essentially immoral principle, the bribery
of a class to promote its welfare; that, from the very nature of the case,
it cannot abolish 'dual ownership;' that, human creatures being what they
are, it cannot, as is being already proved, establish a thriving body of
occupying owners on the Irish soil; that it must create sharp and unjust
distinctions in Irish land tenure, iniquitous to the landlord and to every
tenant, who may be excluded from its benefits; that it must directly tend,
as it is even now tending, to arouse a cry for a wholesale confiscation of
Irish estates, the most shameful and wrongful Ireland has yet witnessed;
and that so far from settling the Irish Land Question, it must necessarily
unsettle it from top to bottom. As respects the legislation I have briefly
described, on the side of the occupation of the Irish land--by many
degrees the most important--I shall also comment upon its results in a
subsequent chapter, after examining its administration by the tribunal it
has set up. But a word may be said, in this place, on its essential
character: from 1881 to the present time, it is absolutely without a
precedent in civilised lands; it has trampled on economic science and the
truths it teaches, as, indeed, its chief author made his boast; it has
created a mode of land tenure in Ireland not in accord with fact, which
has virtually deprived the Irish landlord of real ownership in his estate,
has turned him into a kind of annuitant, and has virtually changed the
Irish tenant into a kind of owner, but under conditions absolutely bad;
its inevitable tendency was to cut down rents wholesale, without regard to
the simplest justice; it established a system of mischievous litigation
between landlord and tenant, demoralising and increasing the division of
classes; it exhibited, on an enormous scale, characteristic contempt of
Irish rights of property; and finally, if Parliamentary pledges are to be
fulfilled, and gross wrong is not to be consecrated by law, it has given
the Irish landlord a great and legitimate claim to compensation from the
State. As we survey this unwise and destructive medley of law, we are
forcibly reminded of the words of Burke:--'I am unalterably persuaded that
the attempt to oppress, degrade, impoverish, confiscate, and extinguish
the original gentlemen, and landed property of a whole nation, cannot be
justified under any form it may assume.'[87]