The agrarian problem has caused more trouble in Ireland than any other,
and statesmen have long recognised that on its definite settlement
depends the hope of permanent peace and progress over the greater part
of the country. It is not, and never has been, the real cause of rural
depopulation, for, as we have seen, the increase of the rural population
was most rapid at the time when agrarian conditions were at their very
worst, whilst on the other hand emigration continues almost unchecked in
counties where the question has been virtually settled. And in 1881 the
late Mr. J.H. Tuke discovered by an analysis of the census returns that
the only "townlands" in which the rural population was actually
increasing were those scattered along the western seaboard of Ireland,
where the tenure and the conditions of existence seemed most hopeless.
But, as the Devon Commission announced in 1845, it was an essentially
defective system of land tenure that lay at the root of the perennial
discontent with which Ireland was troubled, and things went from bad to
worse until the Party organised for the defence of the Union and the
social betterment of Ireland took up the task of settling the question
by the transfer on fair terms of the ownership of the soil from the
large landowners to the tenants.
The system of land tenure in England has been the growth of custom
gradually hardening into law; in Ireland the traditional custom was
suddenly abolished, and English law substituted in its place. The
English law was no doubt a better law, and one more fitted to a
progressive community; but in Ireland it violently upset the traditional
law of the country, and, consequently, was met with sullen and
unremitting hostility. By Irish law, the tribe was owner; the tribesmen
were joint proprietors, and the forfeiture of the chief did not involve
the forfeiture of the land occupied by the tribesmen. By English law,
however, these latter, such of them as were not expelled or exiled,
suddenly found themselves transformed from joint-owners into tenants at
will. Further, the difficulty of dealing direct with tenants,
experienced by landlords who were in very many cases absentees, led to
the abominable "middleman" system by which the owner leased great
stretches of land to some one who undertook to "manage" it for him, and
who in turn sub-let it in smaller patches at rack-rents to those who, to
get back their money, had to sub-let again at still higher rents. The
result was, as an official report in the eighteenth century states: "It
is well known that over the most part of the country, the lands are
sub-let six deep, so that those who actually labour it are squeezed to
the very utmost." And Lord Chesterfield, when Viceroy, complained of the
oppression of the people by "deputies of deputies of deputies." The
eighteenth-century policy of checking or suppressing the industrial
enterprises of the English colony aggravated the evil until, as Lord
Dufferin expressed it: "Debarred from every other industry, the entire
nation flung itself back upon the land, with as fatal an impulse as when
a river whose current is suddenly impeded, rolls back and drowns the
valley it once fertilised."
In time the middleman tended to die out, but the evil results of the
system in preventing direct and friendly and helpful relations between
landlord and tenant remained. Here and there, even in Arthur Young's
time, enterprising and devoted landlords had established something like
the "English system" on their estates, but, as a rule, the landlord
remained a mere rent charger. The report of the Devon Commission says:--
"It is admitted on all hands that, according to the general
practice in Ireland, the landlord neither builds dwelling-houses
nor farm offices, nor puts fences, gates, etc., in good order
before he lets his land to a tenant. The cases where a landlord
does any of these things are the exception. In most cases, whatever
is done in the way of building or fencing is done by the tenant,
and in the ordinary language of the country, dwelling-houses, farm
buildings, and even the making of fences, are described by the
general word, 'improvements,' which is thus employed to denote the
necessary adjuncts of a farm without which in England or Scotland
no tenant would be found to rent it."
In a word, as one who owned land both in England and in Ireland put it,
"In England we let farms, in Ireland we let land." And by law an unjust
landlord had the power at any moment to expel a tenant or a group of
tenants, although no rent was owing, and without giving any compensation
for the "improvements" which were the sole work of the tenant. Most
landlords acted reasonably and equitably in such matters, but,
especially among the new class of purely mercantile purchasers who came
in under the Landed Estates Court after the great famine of 1846, there
were too many who insisted on their extreme legal rights, thus
disturbing the peace of the country and producing the Irish Land
Question in an acute form that called for State interference.
The systems of "compensation for improvements" (1870), and of rent
fixing by itinerant tribunals (1881), were tried in turn, but each was
found to raise more difficulties than it settled, until finally Mr.
Parnell and his Land League set the whole country in a flame, and
produced a series of strikes against the payment of any rent. For some
years it is hardly too much to say that the law of the League, with its
purely revolutionary propaganda, supplanted the law of the land and
reduced large areas to a condition of chaos, the decrees of the "village
ruffians," who ruled the situation, being enforced by systematic outrage
and assassination.
The first statesman who made a really serious attempt to meet this
appalling state of things was Mr. Arthur Balfour, who, as Chief
Secretary for Ireland, resolutely took up the task, first of repressing
crime and enforcing the law, and then of recasting the whole land system
in such a way that the tenant, transformed into an owner, would for the
first time feel it his interest to range himself on the side of the law
and of orderly government. At the same time, a systematic attempt was
made to deal with the question of perennial poverty in the extreme West
of Ireland in what came to be known as the "Congested Districts." The
construction of railways and piers, the draining of land, and the
provision of instruction in agriculture, fisheries, etc., speedily gave
promise of a new era in the economic history of a hitherto helpless and
hopeless population.
All this was done by Mr. Balfour and his successors in spite of
opposition and obstruction of a kind such as no Chief Secretary had ever
before had to encounter. Formerly, all through the centuries, whenever a
Viceroy or Chief Secretary was face to face with an organised outbreak
of crime and sedition in Ireland, both British parties united in
supporting and strengthening the hands of the executive as representing
the Crown. Mr. Gladstone's extraordinary reversal of policy and
principle in the winter of 1885-86 put an end to all this, and gravely
increased the difficulties of the Irish Government.
When Mr. Gladstone was first confronted with the demand for Home Rule,
even in the mild and constitutional form advocated by Mr. Isaac Butt,
and his Home Government Association, founded in the autumn of 1870, he
promptly declared, like Mr. John Morley, that legislative Union with
Great Britain was the only position permanently possible for an island
situated as Ireland is. In a speech at Aberdeen[19] he indignantly
asked--
"Can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that at this
time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to
disintegrate the great capital institutions of this country for the
purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind
and crippling any powers we possess for conferring benefits on the
country to which we belong."
And for fifteen years, in power or in opposition, Mr. Gladstone preached
and acted upon the same doctrine. When the Land League was founded he
denounced it as an organisation whose steps were "dogged with crime,"
and whose march was "through rapine to the dismemberment of the Empire."
The League was finally "proclaimed" by his Government as a criminal
conspiracy and its members, from Mr. Parnell downwards, arrested and
imprisoned without trial as being "reasonably suspected" of criminal
practices.
This continued until in an unfortunate moment for himself Mr. Gladstone
discovered, in November, 1885, that the votes of Mr. Parnell and his
eighty-six colleagues were necessary for his own return to power as
Prime Minister, whereupon he entered into negotiations which resulted,
on the one hand, in his securing the necessary votes, and on the other
in his accepting the principles and the policy of those whom until then
he had denounced and imprisoned as instigators to crime and sedition. He
rightly recognised that there was no half-way house, and that he could
not become a Home Ruler without accepting and defending the actions of
the Home Rulers. He worshipped what he had formerly burnt, and he burned
what he had hitherto worshipped. The result was that for several years
England beheld for the first time the scandalous spectacle of men who
had held high office under the Crown openly defending--and even
instigating--lawlessness and disorder, shielding and excusing criminals,
proved such before the courts, and thwarting, misrepresenting, and
obstructing those whose duty it was to restore order and legality in
Ireland.
Such were the difficulties that confronted Mr. Arthur Balfour as Chief
Secretary for Ireland from 1887 to 1891, difficulties which he
surmounted with such resolution and such statesmanship that he retired
from an office that has been called "the grave of reputations" with a
reputation so much enhanced as to ensure him the leadership of his party
and the gratitude of Irishmen of all classes for generations to come.
And yet his method was a supremely simple one--to reassert the supremacy
of the law, to neglect, almost ostentatiously, all merely political
cries, and to set himself seriously to deal with the real Irish
question, that of conferring some measure of security and prosperity on
a population which over wide districts had known too little of such
things.
Occupying ownership of Irish land by means of State credit was not, of
course, a new policy in Mr. Balfour's day. The Bright clauses (1869)
had introduced the principle into the Statute-book, and Lord Ashbourne's
Act (1885) had carried it several steps further. But it was Mr. Arthur
Balfour and his successors, Mr. Gerald Balfour and Mr. George Wyndham,
who carried it by a series of boldly conceived steps almost within sight
of completion. So thorough was the success of this policy of land
purchase, and so marked was the cessation of crime and outrage and
seditious agitation in every district into which it was carried, that
those who made their living by agitation grew alarmed, and did all in
their power to stop the working of the Purchase Acts. One Nationalist
member declared that the process had gone "quite far enough," and that
he wished it could be stopped. The farmers who had purchased their
holdings were declared to have become selfish, and "as bad as the
landlords." In other words, they had become orderly and industrious, and
had ceased to subscribe for the upkeep of the United Irish League and
its salaried agitators.
The unhappy result of this outcry on the part of those whose occupation
would be gone, and who would be compelled to resort to honest industry
should Ireland become peaceful and prosperous, was the passing of Mr.
Birrell's "amending" Bill, which has practically stopped for the present
the beneficent working of the Wyndham Act of 1903. Under the various
purchase Acts over 180,000 Irish farmers have become the owners of their
holdings, thanks to over one hundred millions of public money advanced
on Imperial credit for the purpose. The first task of a Unionist
government, when again in power, must be the resumption of this policy
of State-aided land-purchase--the only completely and unquestionably
successful and pacifying piece of agrarian legislation in the history of
English rule in Ireland.
Other writers will give, later on, a more detailed account of various
branches of Unionist practical policy in Ireland. The story of the
Congested Districts Board, Mr. Arthur Balfour's special work, is a
romance in itself. So well, in fact, has it accomplished its immediate
task that the time has probably come when it could with advantage be
merged in the later-created Department of Agriculture and Technical
Instruction. This department, which has been linked up with the County
or Borough Councils, by the legislation of Mr. Gerald Balfour, has done
an immense amount of educational and practical work in connection with
agriculture in all its branches, including dairying, poultry rearing,
fruit-growing, and other rural industries, not to speak of technical
instruction in matters suited for artisans and town workers.
These remarkable achievements, the work of successive Unionist
Governments from 1896 to 1906, have revolutionised the face of the
country, and are bringing about a new Ireland. The chief danger now lies
in the intrigues of discredited politicians, whose object is to divert
the eyes of the people from practical, remedial, and constructive
legislation, and to keep them fixed upon what Mr. John Morley has called
"the phantom of Irish legislative independence."