THE STATE OF IRELAND.
It will be well that they who are interested only in the sensational
incidents of our story to skip this chapter and go on to other parts
of our tale which may be more in accordance with their taste. It
is necessary that this one chapter shall be written in which the
accidents that occurred in the lives of our three heroines shall be
made subordinate to the political circumstances of the day. This
chapter should have been introductory and initiative; but the facts
as stated will suit better to the telling of my story if they be told
here. There can be no doubt that Ireland has been and still is in
a most precarious condition, that life has been altogether unsafe
there, and that property has been jeopardised in a degree unknown
for many years in the British Islands. It is, I think, the general
opinion that these evils have been occasioned by the influx into
Ireland of a feeling which I will not call American, but which has
been engendered in America by Irish jealousy, and warmed into hatred
by distance from English rule. As far as politics are regarded,
Ireland has been the vassal of England as Poland has been of those
masters under which she has been made to serve. She was subjected to
much ill-usage, and though she has readily accepted the language, the
civilisation, and the customs of England, and has in fact grown rich
by adopting them, the memories of former hardships have clung to
her, and have made her ready to receive willingly the teachings of
those whose only object it has been to undermine the prestige of the
British Empire. In no respect has she more readily taken to her bosom
English practices than in that of the letting and the hiring of land.
In various countries, such as Italy, Russia, France, and the United
States, systems have grown up different from that which has prevailed
in England. Whether the English system or any other may be the
best is not now the question. But in answering that question it is
material to know that Ireland has accepted and, at any rate for two
centuries, has followed that system. The landlord has been to his
tenants a beneficent or, occasionally, a hard master, and the tenants
have acknowledged themselves as dependent, generally with much
affection, though not unfrequently with loud complaint. It has been
the same in England. Questions of tenant-right, of leases, and of the
cruelty of evictions have from time to time cropped up in Ireland.
But rents were readily paid up to 1878 and 1879; though abatements
were asked for,--as was the case also in England; and there were
men ready to tell the Irish from time to time, since the days of
O'Connell downwards, that they were ill-treated in being kept out of
their "ould" properties by the rightful owners.
Then the American revolt, growing out of Smith O'Brien's logic and
physical force, gave birth to Fenianism. The true Fenian I take to be
one desirous of opposing British power, by using a fulcrum placed on
American soil. Smith O'Brien's logic consisted in his assertion that
if his country wished to hammer the British Crown, they could only
do it by using hammers. Smith O'Brien achieved little beyond his own
exile;--but his words, acting upon his followers, produced Fenianism.
That died away, but the spirit remained in America; and when English
tenants began to clamour for temporary abatements in their rent, the
clamours were heard on the other side of the water, and assisted the
views of those American-Irish who had revivified Ribandism and had
given birth to the cry of Home Rule.
During the time that this was going on, a long unflagging series
of beneficial Acts of Parliament, and of consequently ameliorated
circumstances, had befallen the country. I was told the other day by
an Irish Judge, whose name stands conspicuous among those who are
known for their wisdom and their patriotism, by a Roman Catholic
Judge too, that in studying the latter laws of the two countries, the
laws affecting England and Ireland in reference to each other, he
knew no law by which England was specially favoured, though he knew
various laws redounding to the benefit of Ireland. When the cry for
some relief to suffering Ireland came up, at the time of the Duchess
of Marlborough's Fund, it was alleged in proof of Ireland's poor
condition that there was not work by which the labourers could earn
wages. I have known Ireland for more than forty years,--say from 1842
to 1882. In 1842 we paid five shillings a week for the entire work
of a man. As far as I can learn, we now pay, on an average, nine
shillings for the same. The question is not whether five shillings
was sufficient, or whether nine be insufficient, but that the normal
increase through the country has been and can be proved to be such as
is here declared.
I will refer to the banks, which can now be found established in any
little town, almost in any village, through the country. Fifty years
ago they were very much rarer. Banks do not spring up without money
to support them. The increase of wages,--and the banks also in an
indirect manner,--have come from that decrease in the population
which followed the potato famine of 1846. The famine and its results
were terrible while they lasted; but they left behind them an
amended state of things. When man has failed to rule the world
rightly, God will step in, and will cause famines, and plagues, and
pestilence--even poverty itself--with His own Right Arm. But the cure
was effected, and the country was on its road to a fair amount of
prosperity, when the tocsin was sounded in America, and Home Rule
became the cry.
Ireland has lain as it were between two rich countries. England,
her near neighbour, abounds in coal and iron, and has by means of
these possessions become rich among the nations. America, very much
the more distant, has by her unexampled agricultural resources put
herself in the way to equal England. It is necessary,--necessary at
any rate for England's safety,--that Ireland should belong to her.
This is here stated as a fact, and I add my own opinion that it is
equally necessary for Ireland's welfare. But on this subject there
has arisen a feud which is now being fought out by all the weapons of
rebellion on one side, and on the other by the force of a dominating
Government, restrained, as it is found to be, by the self-imposed
bonds of a democratic legislature. But there is the feud, and the
battle, and the roaring of the cannons is heard afar off.
I now purpose to describe in a very few words the nature of the
warfare. It may be said that the existence of Ireland as a province
of England depends on the tenure of the land. If the land were to be
taken altogether from the present owners, and divided in perpetuity
among any possible number of tenants, so as to be the property of
each tenant, without payment of any rent, all England's sense of
justice would be outraged, the English power of governing would be
destroyed, and all that could then be done by England would be to
give a refuge to the present owners till the time should come for
righting themselves, and they should be enabled to make some further
attempt for the recovery of their possessions. This would probably
arrive, if not sooner, from the annihilation of the new proprietors
under the hands of their fellow-countrymen to whom none of the spoil
had been awarded. But English statesmen,--a small portion, that is,
of English statesmen,--have wished in their philanthropy to devise
some measure which might satisfy the present tenants of the land,
giving them a portion of the spoil; and might leave the landlords
contented,--not indeed with their lot, which they would feel to be
one of cruel deprivation, but with the feeling that something had
at any rate been left to them. A compromise would be thus effected
between the two classes whose interests have always been opposed to
each other since the world began,--between the owners of property and
those who have owned none.
The statesmen in question have now come into power by means of their
philanthropy, their undoubted genius, and great gifts of eloquence.
They have almost talked the world out of its power of sober judgment.
I hold that they have so succeeded in talking to the present House
of Commons. And when the House of Commons has been so talked into
any wise or foolish decision, the House of Lords and the whole
legislating machinery of the country is bound to follow.
But how should their compromises be effected? It does not suit the
present writer to name any individual statesman. He neither wishes to
assist in raising a friend to the gods, or to lend his little aid in
crushing an enemy. But to the Liberal statesmen of the day, men in
speaking well of whom--at a great distance--he has spent a long life,
he is now bound to express himself as opposed. We all remember the
manner after which the Coercion Bill of 1881 was passed. The hoarse
shrieks with which a score of Irish members ran out of the House
crying "Privilege," when their voices had been stopped by the
salutary but certainly unconstitutional word of the Speaker, is
still ringing in our ears. Then the Government and the Irish score
were at daggers-drawn with each other. To sit for thirty-six hours
endeavouring to pass a clause was then held by all men to be an
odious bondage. But when these clauses had thus roughly been made to
be the law, the sugar-plum was to follow by which all Ireland was to
be appeased. The second Bill of 1881 was passed, which, with various
additions, has given rise to Judge O'Hagan's Land Court. That, with
its various sub-commissioners, is now engaged in settling at what
rate land shall be let in Ireland.
That Judge O'Hagan and his fellow commissioners are well qualified
to perform their task,--as well qualified, that is, by kindness,
by legal knowledge and general sagacity as any men can be,--I have
heard no one deny. In the performance of most difficult duties they
have hitherto encountered no censure. But they have, I think, been
taxed to perform duties beyond the reach of any mortal wisdom. They
are expected to do that which all the world has hitherto failed in
doing,--to do that against which the commonest proverbs of ancient
and modern wisdom have raised their voice. There is no proverb more
common than that of "_caveat emptor_." It is Judge O'Hagan's business
to do for the poorer party in each bargain made between a landlord
and a tenant that against which the above proverb warns him. The
landlord has declared that the tenant shall not have the land unless
he will pay L10 a year for it. The tenant agrees. Then comes Judge
O'Hagan and tells the two contracting parties to take up their pens
quickly and write down L8 as the fair rent payable for the land. And
it was with the object of doing this, of reducing every L10 by some
percentage, twenty per cent. or otherwise, that this commission was
appointed. The Government had taken upon itself to say that the
greed of Irish landlords had been too greedy, and the softness of
Irish tenants too soft, and that therefore Parliament must interfere.
Parliament has interfered, and L8 is to be written down for a term
of years in lieu of L10, and the land is to become the possession of
the tenant instead of the landlord as long as he may pay this reduced
rent. In fact all the bonds which have bound the landlord to his land
are to be annihilated. So also are the bonds which bind the tenant,
who will sell the property so acquired when he shall have found that
that for which he pays L8 per annum shall have become worth L10 in
the market.
It is useless to argue with the commissioners, or with the
Government, as to the inexpediency of such an attempt to alter the
laws for governing the world, which have forced themselves on the
world's acceptance. Many such attempts have been made to alter these
laws. The Romans said that twelve per cent. should be the interest
for money. A feeling long prevailed in England that legitimate
interest should not exceed five per cent. It is now acknowledged that
money is worth what it will fetch; and the interests of the young,
the foolish, and the reckless, who are tempted to pay too much for
it, are protected only by public opinion. The usurer is hated, and
the hands of the honest men are against him. That suffices to give
the borrower such protection as is needed. So it is with landlords
and tenants. Injury is no doubt done, and injustice is enabled to
prevail here and there. But it is the lesser injury, the lesser
injustice, which cannot be prevented in the long run by any attempt
to escape the law of "_caveat emptor_."
It is, however, vain to talk to benevolent commissioners, or to
a Government working by eloquence and guided by philanthropy,
regardless of political economy. "Would you have the heart," asks
the benevolent commissioner, "to evict the poor man from his small
holding on which he has lived all his life, where his only sympathies
lie, and send him abroad to a distant land, where his solitary tie
will be that of labour?" The benevolent commissioner thus expresses
with great talk and with something also of the eloquence of his
employers the feeling which prevails on that side of the question.
But that which he deprecates is just what I could do; and having
seen many Irishmen both in America and in Ireland, I know that the
American Irishman is the happiest man of the two. He eats more; and
in much eating the happiness of mankind depends greatly. He is better
clothed, better sheltered, and better instructed. Though his women
wail when he departs, he sends home money to fetch them. This may
be for the profit of America. There are many who think that it must
therefore be to the injury of England. The question now is whether
the pathetic remonstrance of the tear-laden commissioner should be
allowed to prevail. I say that the tenant who undertakes to pay
for land that which the land will not enable him to pay had better
go,--under whatever pressure.
Let us see how many details, how many improbabilities, will have to
be met before the benevolence of the commissioner can be made to
prevail. The reductions made on the rent average something between
twenty and twenty-five per cent. Let us take them at twenty. If a
tenant has to be evicted for a demand of L10, will he be able to live
in comfort if he pay only L8? Shall one tenant live in comfort on a
farm, the rent of which has been reduced him from L100 to L80, and
another, the reduction having been from L20 to L16? In either case,
if a tenant shall do well with two children, how shall he do with six
or eight? A true teetotaller can certainly pay double the rent which
may be extracted from a man who drinks. Shall the normal tenant earn
wages beyond what he gets from the land under his own tillage? Shall
the idle man be made equal to the industrious,--or can this be done,
or should it be done, by any philanthropy? Statesmen sitting together
in a cabinet may resolve that they will set the world right by
eloquence and benevolence combined; but the practices to which the
world have been brought by long experience will avail more than
eloquence and benevolence. Statesmen may decree that land shall be
let at a certain rate, and the decree will prevail for a time. It
may prevail long enough to put out of gear the present affairs of
the Irish world with which these statesmen will have tampered. But
the long experience will come back, and bargains will again be
made between man and man, though the intervening injuries will be
heartbreaking.
But the benevolence of the Government and its commissioners will
not have gone far. The Land Law of 1881 has, as I now write, been
at work for twelve months, and the results hitherto accomplished
have been very small. It may be doubted whether a single reluctant
tenant,--a single tenant who would have been unwilling to leave his
holding,--has been preserved from American exile by having his L10
or L20 or L30 of rent reduced to L8 or L16 or L24. The commissioners
work slowly, having all the skill of the lawyers, on one side or the
other, against them. It is piteous to see the hopelessness of three
sub-commissioners in the midst of a crowd of Irish attorneys. And the
law, as it exists at present, can be made to act only on holdings
possessed by tenants for one year. And the skill of the lawyers is
used in proving on the part of the landlords that the land is held by
firm leases, and cannot, therefore, be subjected to the law; and then
by proving, on behalf of the tenants, that the existing leases are
illegal, and should be broken. The possession of a lease, which used
to be regarded as a safeguard and permanent blessing to the tenant,
is now held to be cruelly detrimental to him, as preventing the
lowering of his rent, and the immediate creation for him of a tenancy
for ever. It is not to be supposed that the sub-commissioners can
walk over the land and straightway reduce the rents, though the
lands would certainly be subject to such reduction did not the law
interfere. In a majority of cases,--a majority as far as all Ireland
is concerned,--a feeling of honesty does prevail between landlord and
tenant, which makes them both willing to subject themselves to the
new law without the interference of attorneys, and many are preparing
themselves for such an arrangement. The landlord is willing to lose
twenty per cent. in fear of something worse, and the tenant is
willing to take it, hardly daring to hope for anything better. Such
is the best condition which the law has ventured to anticipate.
But in either case this is to be done as tempering the wind to the
shorn lamb. The landlord is anxious if possible to save for himself
and those who may come after him something of the reality of his
property, and the tenant feels that, though something of the nobility
of property has been promised to him by the Landleaguers, he may
after all make the best bargain by so far submitting himself to his
shorn landlord.
But on estates where the commissioners are allowed their full swing,
the whole nature of the property in the land will be altered. The
present tenant, paying a tax of L8 per annum which will be subjected
to no reduction and on which no abatement can be made, in lieu of a
L10 rent, will be the owner. The small man will be infinitely more
subject to disturbance than at present, because the tax must be
paid. The landlord will feel no mercy for him, seeing that the bonds
between them which demanded mercy have been abrogated. The extra
L2 or L4 or L6 will not enable the tenant to live the life of ease
which he will have promised himself. If his interest has been made
to be worth anything,--and it will be worth something, seeing that
it has been worth something, and is saleable under its present
condition,--it will be sold, and the emigration will continue. There
are cruel cases at present. There will be cases not less cruel under
the _regime_ which the new law is expected to produce. But the new
law will be felt to have been unjust as having tampered with the
rights of property, and having demanded from the owners of property
its sale or other terms than those of mutual contract.
But the time selected for the measure was most inappropriate. If good
in itself, it was bad at the time it was passed. Home Rule coming
across to us from America had taken the guise of rebellion. I have
met gentlemen who, as Home-Rulers, have simply desired to obtain
for their country an increase of power in the management of their
own affairs. These men have been loyal and patriotic, and it might
perhaps be well to meet their views. The Channel no doubt does
make a difference between Liverpool and Dublin. But the latter-day
Home-Rulers, of whom I speak, brought their politics, their
aspirations, and their money from New York, and boldly made use of
the means which the British Constitution afforded them to upset the
British Constitution as established in Ireland. That they should not
succeed in doing this is the determination of all, at any rate on
this side of the Channel. It is still, I believe, the desire of most
thinking men on the Irish side. But parliamentary votes are not given
only to thinking men; and consequently a body of members has appeared
in the House, energetic and now well trained, who have resolved by
the clamour of their voices to put an end to the British power of
governing the country. These members are but a minority among those
whom Ireland sends to Parliament; but they have learned what a
minority can effect by unbridled audacity. England is still writhing
in her attempt to invent some mode of controlling them. But long
before any such mode had been adopted,--had been adopted or even
planned,--the Government in 1881 brought out their plan for securing
to the tenants fair rents, fixity of tenure, and freedom of sale.
As to the first, it will, of course, be admitted by all men that
rents should be fair, as also should be the price at which a horse is
sold. It is, however, beyond the power of Parliament to settle the
terms which shall be fair. "_Caveat emptor_" is the only rule by
which fair rents may be reached. By fixity of tenure is meant such a
holding of the land as shall enable the tenant to obtain an adequate
return for his labour and his capital, and to this is added a
romantic and consequently a most unjust idea that it may be well to
settle this question on behalf of the tenant by granting him such a
term as shall leave no doubt. Let him have the land for ever as long
as he will pay a stipulated sum, which shall be considerably less
than the landlord's demand. That idea I call romantic, and therefore
unjust. But, even though the beauty of the romance be held sufficient
to atone for the injustice, this was not the poetical re-arrangement
of all the circumstances of land tenure in Ireland. Freedom of sale
is necessarily annexed to fixity of tenure. If a man is to have the
possession of land in perpetuity, surely he should be allowed to sell
it. Whether he be allowed or not, he will contrive to do so. Freedom
of sale means, I take it, that the so-called landlord shall have no
power of putting a veto on the transaction. We cannot here go into
the whole question as it existed in Ulster before 1870; but the
freedom of sale intended is such, I think, as I have defined it.
Whether these concessions be good or bad, this was, at any rate,
no time for granting them. They seem to me to amount to wholesale
confiscation. But supposing me to be wrong in that, can I be wrong
in thinking that a period of declared rebellion is not a time for
concessions? When the Land Bill was passed the Landleague was in full
power; boycotting had become the recognised weapon of an illegal
association; and the Home-Rulers of the day,--the party, that is, who
represented the Landleague,--were already in such possession of large
portions of the country as to prevent the possibility of carrying out
the laws.
At this moment the Government brought forward its romantic theory
as to the manipulation of land, and, before that theory was at work,
commenced its benevolent intentions by locking up all those who were
supposed to be guilty of an intention to carry out the Government
project further than the Government would carry it out itself. It
is held, as a rule, in politics that coercion and concession cannot
be applied together. Ireland was in mutiny under the guidance of
a mutinous party in the House of Commons, and at that moment a
commission was put in operation, under which it was the intention of
the Government to transfer the soil of the country at a reduced price
to the very men among whom the mutineers are to be found. How do the
tidings of such a commission operate upon the ears of Irishmen at
large? He is told that under the fear of the Landleague his rent
is to be reduced to an extent which is left to his imagination;
and then, that he is to be freed altogether from the incubus of a
landlord! He is, in fact, made to understand that his cherished
Landleague has become all-powerful. And yet he hears that odious men,
whom he recognises only as tyrants, are filling the jails through the
country with all his dearest friends. Demanding concessions, and the
continued increase of them, and having learned the way to seize upon
them when they are not given, he will not stand coercion. Abated rent
soon becomes no rent. When it is left to the payer of the rent to
decide on which system he will act, it is probable that the no-rent
theory will prevail.
So it was in 1882. Tenants were harassed by needy landlords, and when
they were served with forms of ejectment the landlords were simply
murdered, either in their own persons or in that of their servants.
Men finding their power, and beginning to learn how much might be
exacted from a yielding Government, hardly knew how to moderate their
aspirations. When they found that the expected results did not come
at once, they resorted to revenge. Why should these tyrants keep them
out from the good things which their American friends had promised
them, and which were so close within their grasp? And their anger
turned not only against their landlords, but against those who
might seem in any way to be fighting on the landlords' side. Did a
neighbour occupy a field from which a Landleaguing tenant had been
evicted, let the tails of that neighbour's cattle be cut off, or the
legs broken of his beasts of burden, or his sheep have their throats
cut. Or if the injured one have some scruples of conscience, let the
oppressor simply be boycotted, and put out of all intercourse with
his brother men. Let no well-intentioned Landleaguing neighbour buy
from him a ton of hay, or sell to him a loaf of bread.
But as a last resource, if all others fail, let the sinner be
murdered. We all know, alas! in how many cases the sentence has been
pronounced and the judgment given, and the punishment executed.
Such have been the results of the Land Law passed in 1881. And under
the curse so engendered the country is now labouring. It cannot be
denied that the promoters of the Land Laws are weak, and that the
disciples of the Landleague are strong. In order that the truth of
this may be seen and made apparent, the present story is told.