After six years’ experience of the Act of 1903 it became evident that

further legislation was required if Land Purchase was to go on. In two

important matters Mr. Wyndham’s Act needed amendment. Under the financial

provisions of the Act the money required for advances to enable tenants to

purchase their holdings was provided by the issue of a Stock bearing

interest at 2-¾ per cent. But it turned out that at no time after the

passing of the Act could the money be raised on these terms, except at a

large discount averaging over 12 per cent. The Act provided that a fund

known as the Irish Development Grant should bear any loss due to the issue

of Stock at a discount. This Fund made available a sum of £160,000 a year.

The first issue of Stock under the Wyndham Act was made at 87, or a

discount of 13 per cent. Thus, to provide £100 in cash over £113 of Stock

had to be issued. The interest on this “excess Stock” was not paid by the

tenant purchasers, and was to be provided for out of the Development Grant

so long as that Fund was available, and afterwards would fall on the

Guarantee Fund, which meant the Irish Ratepayers. In the year 1909 it,

however, appeared that the charge for “excess Stock” necessitated by the

continual flotation of Stock at a large discount had so eaten into the

Development Grant that that Fund had become exhausted, and consequently

all subsequent issues of Stock for Land Purchase purposes would have to be

made at the expense of the Ratepayer. Agreements amounting to 56 millions

of Purchase Money were pending. To finance these Agreements a sum of about

£250,000 a year for the period of sixty-eight and a half years would have

to be provided by Irish Ratepayers, and were all the agricultural land in

Ireland to be sold the charge on the ratepayers would amount to an annual

sum of £877,000.

It became evident that the Irish Ratepayers would not tolerate Land

Purchase on these terms. Mr. Birrell, accordingly, by his Land Act passed

in December, 1909, provided that the charge for excess Stock to finance

all pending Purchase Agreements should be provided by the Treasury instead

of the Ratepayers, thus relieving the latter of a capital sum that might

exceed over £7,000,000. As regarded future Purchase Agreements, the Act

provided that the Vendors should be paid in 3 per cent. Stock, and that

Purchasers should pay an Annuity of 3-½ per cent. instead of 3-¼ per cent.

The other matter in which the Act of 1903 required amendment was as

regards the provision of the Bonus. A sum of 12 millions was provided by

Mr. Wyndham for the purpose of encouraging landlords to sell. On the

assumption that £100,000,000 would be sufficient to complete Land

Purchase, this Bonus Fund was distributed at the rate of 12 per cent. on

the Purchase Money advanced. This rate was to be continued for a period of

five years. On the expiration of that period (November 1st, 1908) it was

found that proceedings for sale of Estates had been instituted to an

amount of between 70 and 80 millions, and that the amount remaining to be

sold would probably approximate to another 80 millions. The Treasury

accordingly, in accordance with powers given them in the 1903 Act, reduced

the percentage from 12 to 3 per cent. at which rate it would remain for at

least five years were a new Act not passed. Mr. Birrell’s Act, however,

removed the 12 million limit, and provided for the payment of a graduated

Bonus at rates ranging from 3 to 18 per cent., according to the number of

years’ purchase of the rent at which the landlords sell. The old rate of

Bonus tempted landlords to stand out for a high price: the new graduated

rate offers an inducement to them to sell at a low price. It was

calculated that under the new provisions the capital sum for Bonus would

amount to at least 15 millions, which is likely to cost over 17 millions,

owing to the necessity for excess Stock.

As before stated, Agreements representing 56 millions of purchase money

were awaiting completion through the Land Commission in 1909. In 1903 it

had been calculated that the annual output of the Land Commission would be

five millions, and at that rate it would take more than eleven years to

complete these agreements. The block was due partly to the difficulty of

raising more than a limited amount of money in each year; partly to the

impossibility of any department dealing with more than a limited number of

sales in a year; and partly to the great rush of applications in 1908 when

the bonus revision was impending. The Act of 1909, in order to relieve the

block, gave Vendors under pending agreements an option to take 2-¾ per

cent. Stock at 92 (3 per cent. investment) in whole or part liquidation of

their Purchase Money. By virtue of certain statutory regulations, all

Vendors who exercise this option will be paid in a special priority

sometimes years sooner than if they elected to be paid entirely in Cash.

Cash Sales, Stock Sales, and Future Agreements are dealt with _pari

passu_, each class claiming on a separate fund.

Land Purchase under the voluntary system operated least of all in places

where its operation would have been most beneficial, and the congested

districts derived comparatively little benefit from the Act of 1903.

Table of Number of Purchasers and Amount of Advances under the various

Land Purchase Acts

The following table gives a summary of the number of tenant purchasers and

the amount of advances issued under the various Acts from 1869 to March

31st, 1912:

TABLE I

Act. No. of Amount of

Purchasers. Advances.

I—Irish Church Act, 1869 6,057 1,674,841

II—Landlord and Tenant Act, 1870 877 514,536

III—Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1881 731 240,801

IV—Land Purchase Acts, 1885, 1887, 25,367 9,992,536

1888, and 1889

V—Land Purchase Acts, 1891, 1896 46,810 13,633,665

VI—Irish Land Act, 1903 144,630 48,824,884

VII—Evicted Tenants Act, 1907 641 356,487

VIII—Irish Land Act, 1909 5,062 1,435,175

Total 230,175 76,672,925

The following represent the Number of Purchasers and Advances—comprised in

cases at present pending under the 1903 and 1909 Acts, (_i.e._, on March

31st, 1912).

TABLE II

Purchasers. Advances

applied for.

Act of 1903 118,360 35,794,157

Act of 1909 40,733 7,094,725

(Includes lands of an estimated value of £4-½ millions for the purchase of

which the Congested Districts Board are in negotiation.)

TABLE III

Table giving (1) the Number of Holdings; (2) Area; (3) Poor Law Valuation;

and (4) the Purchase Money of (_a_) Lands Sold and Vested; (_b_) agreed to

be Sold but not yet Vested; and (_c_) in respect of which proceedings for

sale had not been instituted up to March 2nd, 1912:

(_a_) _b_) Lands (_c_)

Lands _agreed to Lands in

_sold_ and be sold_ respect of

_vested_ but _not which

in yet _proceedings

purchasing vested_ in for sale

tenants, purchasing have not

or in the tenants been

Estates (including instituted_

Commissioners lands under the

or comprised Land

Congested in Estates Purchase

Districts for the Acts (the

Board, for sale of estimated

resale to which to Purchase

Tenants. the Money of

Estates same being

Commissioners calculated

and on basis

Congested of

Districts Purchase-Price

Board of Poor

proceedings Law

have been Valuation

instituted. of lands

sold to

March

31st,

1910,

under the

Act of

1903).

Acts

1870-1896.

Number of 73,812 73,812

Holdings

Area 2,508,938 2,508,938

Poor Law £1,399,188 £1,399,188

Valuation

Purchase £24,779,176 £24,779,176

Money

Acts

1903-1909.

Number of 143,618 167,319

Holdings

Area 4,637,183 4,291,725 7,301,798 16,230,706

Poor Law £2,418,136 £2,250,372 £3,993,971 £8,662,479

Valuation

Purchase £49,202,298 £45,536,851 £82,263,747 £177,002,896

Money

Gross

Totals.

Number of 217,430 167,319

Holdings

Area 7,146,121 4,291,725 7,301,798 18,739,644

Poor Law £3,817,324 £2,250,372 £3,993,971 £10,061,667

Valuation

Purchase £73,981,474 £45,536,851 £82,263,747 £201,782,072

Money

NOTE.—This Table is based on the assumption that all the land in Ireland

valued as agricultural land will come under the operations of the Land

Purchase Acts.

TABLE IV

Table giving Rates of Annuity (distinguishing amounts for Interest and

Sinking Fund) and number of years payable under the various Land Purchase

Acts:

Purchase Rate of Rate of Rate of Number of

Act. Annuity. Interest Sinking years

comprised Fund payable.

in comprised

Annuity. in

Annuity.

1881 5 3-½ 1-½ 35

1885 4 3-1/8 7/8 49

1891 4 2-¾ 1-¼ 49

1896 As in Act 73

of 1891,

subject to

decadal

reduction.

1903 3-¼ 2-¾ ½ 68-½

1909 3-½ 3 ½ 65-½

Part II. The Statutes Relating to the Relief of Congestion in Ireland.

Two Classes of Occupiers in Ireland—Establishment of the Congested

Districts Board

Most of the earlier Statutes which have been summarised in the first part

of this chapter deal with the rights and obligations of Irish Tenants

without any attempt at Economic discrimination. No distinction was drawn

between the occupiers of uneconomic holdings and those who were able to

make a living and pay a rent out of their farms. Some slight recognition

of the fact that the smaller tenants had a special claim to protection was

shown by the Compensation for Disturbance Clause (Section 3) of the Act of

1870, which enacted that a tenant of a holding valued at £10 or under

might be awarded a sum not exceeding seven years’ rent, while a tenant

above £100 Valuation could not in any case receive more than one year’s

rent. Beyond that, however, nothing was done. It took many years to get

the Irish Administration to understand that something more than “Fixity of

Tenure” was necessary if the periodical famines and endemic misery of the

poorer occupiers of the West and South of Ireland were to be fought

successfully. It was, however, finally recognised that, in many parts of

the country, the average character of the holdings was below the level

which is necessary in order to make a reasonable standard of living

possible, and it was then resolved to adopt special means to meet the

evil. The establishment of the Congested Districts Board in 1891 was the

outcome of this resolve. It was the first attempt made to discriminate by

legislation between the two great classes of Irish occupiers, namely,

those whose holdings were capable of affording a means of livelihood and

of paying a rent; and those who were so impoverished as to be incapable of

supporting themselves without assistance from outside.

The word “Congestion,” as applied to land, has acquired a special and

peculiar meaning in Ireland. It has become a term of art, and, like many

another word of the kind, has travelled far from its original meaning. It

does not mean, as might be supposed, “pressure of population.” The

definition of a “Congested District” given in the Act of 1891, is a

district in which more than 20 per cent. of the population live in

electoral divisions of which the total rateable value, when divided by the

number of the population, gives a sum of less than 30s. for each person.

This definition is, of course, arbitrary, and in fact includes many

districts through which a man might drive for miles without seeing a human

habitation, and excludes districts in which the population is in truth

“Congested.”

The word connotes not the over-population of particular localities, but

rather the condition of the people in those localities. Owing to various

reasons, mainly historical, a population which, having regard to the means

of subsistence, may be called excessive, is to be found on the large area

of poor land that extends along the western seaboard of Ireland from

Donegal to Cork. In some regions it is really “congested” and, as in such

places the poverty of the people is most pronounced and obtrusive, the

problem was supposed to be one of “congestion,” and so the word came to be

used. The true area of congestion is, of course, the western part of the

Island, but it must not be supposed that the same problem does not arise

in other parts of Ireland—(even in the province of Leinster)—in an acute

form. This was recognised by the framers of the Land Act of 1909, and now

the Estates Commissioners are empowered to purchase compulsorily, not only

any congested estate, but also, in the case of any estate which does not

as a whole come within the definition of a “Congested Estate,” any

townlands forming part of the Estate which are themselves “Congested.” The

definition of a “Congested Estate” is “an Estate not less than half the

area of which consists of holdings not exceeding seven pounds in rateable

value or of mountain or bog land or not less than a quarter of the area of

which is held in rundale or intermixed plots.” There is a further power

given to the Commissioners to acquire compulsorily untenanted lands. Under

these powers the Estates Commissioners will be able to do for the rest of

Ireland what the Board is doing for the Congested Districts, namely: to

turn the present uneconomic holdings into economic ones by the addition

thereto of other lands; and further, by the consolidation of holdings held

in rundale or in intermixed plots, to put an end to the waste of effort

inherent in such a system.

Statutes Dealing with Congestion

(Act of 1891—Act of 1893—Act of 1894—Act of 1896—Act of 1899—Act

of 1901—Act of 1903—Act of 1909)

The Congested Districts Board was founded under the authority of Section

34 of the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891, to continue for twenty

years, “and thereafter until Parliament shall otherwise determine.” It was

given power (Section 39) to aid migration and emigration within a

congested districts county, to sell suitable seed potatoes and seed oats

to occupiers, to aid and develop agriculture, forestry, the breeding of

live stock and poultry, weaving, spinning, fishing (including the

construction of piers and harbours, the supply of fishing boats and gear,

and industries connected with fishing), and any other suitable industries.

Powers were also given for the enlargement of holdings whether subject to

purchase annuities, or to rents to private owners, but these powers were

so circumscribed and guarded, as to be unworkable. The Board was granted

an income to commence with of £41,250 a year. In 1893 an Act was passed

(56 & 57 Vic., c. 35) which gave the Board power to acquire land and to

hold it as landlords for the enlargement of holdings and for the purpose

of the Land Purchase Acts. In 1894 another Act was passed which enabled

the Board to give to the Land Commission, on selling to a tenant

purchaser, a guarantee for the repayment of the annuity. Such guarantee

enabled the Land Commission to dispense with their retention of any sum

out of the purchase money as a guarantee deposit, a practice which, if

followed, would have seriously crippled the operations of the Board. The

Land Law Act of 1896 gave power to the Board to obtain an advance from the

Land Commission for the purchase of estates “in like manner as if the

Board were a tenant purchasing his holding.” This Act contained some

provisions that greatly hampered the Board. Thus an advance could not be

obtained by a tenant valued at under £10 for the repurchase of his holding

from the Board. Also Section 40 (2) enabled Court tenants and temporary

tenants to obtain advances under the Purchase Acts in the case of sales of

estates under the section in the Land Judges’ Court. This meant that the

lands that were most required by the Board for the Relief of Congestion

were commonly disposed of to graziers and others. The Congested Districts

Act of 1899 cleared away these two obstacles to the work of the Board, and

also enabled the Land Commission to make advances for the redemption of

head rents and other “superior interests,” and increased the Parliamentary

Grant from £6,500 to £25,000. The Congested Districts Board Act of 1901

gave a limited power of dealing with obstructive tenants in the

rearrangement of the estates purchased. It also gave the Board all the

powers of entry on a holding subject to a statutory tenancy for the

purposes of mining, quarrying, cutting timber or turf, opening or making

roads, fences, drains, and water-courses, hunting, fishing, shooting,

etc., given to the landlord by Section 5 (subsection 5) of the Act of

1881, and further extended these powers to holdings not subject to

statutory tenancies. The Act also enabled the Board to purchase land

outside a congested districts county with the approval of the

Lord-Lieutenant. The Land Act of 1903 gave facilities to the Board for the

purchase of estates, similar to those given to the Estates Commissioners

under the Act. It also gave the Board the discretionary power of deciding

whether an advance should be made to a purchaser; of what amount the

advance should be; and how far the security was sufficient. The collection

of the purchase annuities so made, was, however, still left to the Land

Commission. The Act added £20,000 to the annual income of the Board, to be

drawn from the Irish Development Grant (Section 38).

Under Mr. Birrell’s Act of 1909 the constitution, powers, duties and

income of the Board were reconstituted and enlarged. The new Board

consists of fourteen members, three of whom are _ex-officio_, namely, the

Chief Secretary, the Under-Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant and the

Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture; nine are appointed by the

Crown; and two are paid permanent members. The annual income of the Board

was raised from £86,250 to £250,000, and its operations were extended so

as to comprise the counties of Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon, Mayo,

Galway, Kerry, and parts of the counties of Clare and Cork. It was enacted

that thenceforward no Congested Estate could be sold under the Land

Purchase Acts in a congested districts county to persons other than the

Congested Districts Board without the consent of that Board; that the Land

Commission before entering into an agreement for the purchase of any land

in a congested districts county, should obtain the consent of the Board;

and the power of purchasing estates and land compulsorily through the

Estates Commissioners was given to the Board within all congested

districts.

Up to February 1st, 1911, the Congested Districts Board had purchased

estates of the value of £1,813,568, and of this, lands of the value of

£1,710,304 then remained unsold. The remainder, so far as they were

“tenanted lands,” had been sold to the tenants, and, so far as they were

“untenanted lands,” had been used in enlarging the neighbouring holdings

or in the creation of new holdings. In the latter cases, the new farms

were fenced and drained and houses built thereon. On some estates where

the tenants held in rundale or had joint rights of grazing over parts of

the land, the Board “striped” the whole estate, giving to each tenant an

enlarged and compact holding, properly drained and fenced. An example of

the excellent work done on such an estate can be seen by anyone who will

pay a visit to Clare Island at the mouth of Clew Bay in the County of

Mayo. An example of the work done in creating new holdings can perhaps

best be seen on the Dillon Estate in the County of Roscommon.

Since the passing of the Act of 1909 the most extravagant ideas as to the

powers of the Board have got abroad among the people of the congested

areas, and applications are being made to them from every estate—almost

from every parish—to purchase and divide up particular lands. The area of

the congested counties under their control amounts to 7,658,114 acres, or

about one-third of the whole of Ireland. Even assuming that a large number

of these applications should not be granted, there still remains a residue

of work to be done which would tax the capacity of a Board many times

stronger both in resources and staff than the Congested Districts Board.

At the present time the Board is possessed of large tracts of land which

they annually let on grazing contracts or which they stock themselves.

This is not as it should be, for, when the people see lands taken by the

Board used year after year as pasture, they begin to lose faith in the

capacity and usefulness of the institution.

It is not the fault of the Board. It would take a much bigger income than

they possess and a much bigger staff than they command, to cope with the

work which they have to do and which ought to be done.

Parliament has now given them enormous and compulsory powers. Immense

pressure will be put on them to exercise these powers, and in many cases

if the powers were exercised it would be for the lasting benefit of the

country. If the Board are to carry out fully the work which they have been

created to do, the Government must in the near future again come to their

assistance. With their present resources, their task is well-nigh

impossible.

Part III. Statutes Relating to the Provision of Allotments of Land and

Dwellings for Agricultural Labourers in Ireland.

(Act of 1883—Act of 1885—Act of 1886—Act of 1891—Act of 1892—Act

of 1896—Act of 1903—Part IV. of the Irish Land Act, 1903—Act of

1906)

Previous to the Act of 1883 little or nothing had been done to meet the

want of better housing for the agricultural labourers in Ireland. Their

condition was deplorable. The houses in which they lived were almost

everywhere throughout the country of the worst description. In fact, they

were little better than hovels.

By the Acts of 1883 to 1906, the Rural District Councils of Ireland were

empowered to obtain loans to provide suitable dwellings and allotments of

land for agricultural labourers. The loans might be applied, subject to

the approval of the Local Government Board, for any of the following

purposes: the acquisition of land either for new cottages and allotments

or for additional allotments; the acquisition of existing houses; the

erection of new houses; the legal, engineering and incidental expenses in

connection with these purposes. The amount of land which might be allotted

to any one labourer was not to exceed one statute acre.

The expression “agricultural labourer” is defined by Section 4 of the Act

of 1886 as “a man or woman who does agricultural work for hire at any

season of the year on the land of some other person or persons, and shall

include handloom weavers and fishermen doing agricultural work as

aforesaid and shall also include herdsmen.” By Section 93 of the Land Act

of 1903 (Part IV. of which is construed as one of the Labourers Acts) the

earlier definition is enlarged so as to include “any person (other than a

domestic or menial servant) working for hire in a rural district whose

average wages in the year preceding the lodgment of any representation

under the Labourers Acts affecting him do not exceed two shillings and

sixpence a day, and who is not in occupation of land exceeding one quarter

of an acre.” These definitions are very wide and, practically speaking,

enable the Sanitary Authority to provide cottages and allotments for all

labourers in rural districts, who are thus placed on somewhat the same

footing as artisans in urban districts are placed under the Housing of the

Working Classes Act. The Rural District Councils are given power to

acquire, compulsorily or by agreement, the necessary lands from the owner

either by purchase of the fee simple or on a lease for a term not

exceeding ninety-nine years. If the lands are acquired compulsorily in

fee, the amounts to be paid to the owners and occupiers are fixed by an

arbitrator appointed by the Local Government Board; if the lands are

acquired compulsorily for a term of years, the rents to be paid are fixed

by the Land Commission.

If the Council cannot agree with the owner as to the price to be paid,

they must prepare a scheme showing the lands it is purposed to take, and

the scheme must be confirmed by an Inspector of the Irish Local Government

Board. Any person interested can appeal, at their option, either to the

County Court Judge or to the Local Government Board. In either case the

decision is final. There is no appeal against the price fixed by the

arbitrator unless the amount awarded exceeds one thousand pounds.

Prior to the passing of the Act of 1906, the loans for the purposes of the

Labourers Acts were advanced by the Commissioners of Public Works and were

repayable by annuities which included principal and interest. The rates of

interest varied according to the number of years during which the

annuities were payable, and at the passing of the Act of 1906 were as

follows:

Period. Rate of Annuity

Interest. covering

Principal and

Interest.

20 years 3-½ per cent. £7 0s. 9d.

30 years 3-¾ £5 12s. 2d.

40 years 4 £5 1s. 1d.

50 years 4-¼ £4 17s. 2d.

The Act of 1906 enabled the Rural District Councils to obtain advances for

the purposes of the Labourers Acts up to 4-¼ millions from the Land

Commission out of the Irish Land Purchase Fund, and provided that such

advances were to be repayable in like manner as the advances under the

Irish Land Act of 1903, that is to say, by annuities at 3-¼ per cent.

(covering both principal and interest) and payable for 68-½ years. This

annuity rate has been continued in the case of advances for the purposes

of the Labourers Acts by the Irish Land Act, 1909, which Act increased the

annuity rate to 3-½ per cent. in respect of all advances for lands

purchased under the Land Purchase Acts since September 15th, 1909.

It will thus be seen that the terms of repayment for loans under the

Labourers Acts were made much easier by the Act of 1906 than they were

under the previous Labourers Acts. That Act further provided that only 64

per cent. of the charge was to be borne by the local rates; the remaining

36 per cent. being defrayed, as to 16 per cent. out of the Labourers’

Cottages Fund established by the Act, and as to 20 per cent. out of the

Irish Development Grant. There was placed at the disposal of the Local

Government Board the following sums for the purposes of the Labourers’

Cottages Fund: A capital sum of £150,000 taken from the Petty Sessions

Clerks’ Fund; a principal sum of £7,000 taken from the Ireland Development

Grant, an annual sum of £6,000 to be deducted from the Exchequer

Contribution mentioned in Section 5 of the Land Purchase Act of 1891, and

an annual sum of £9,000, equivalent to the savings to be effected by the

abolition of two Irish Judgeships and a reduction in the salary of the

Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

By an amending Act passed in 1911 a further sum of £36,000 cash, and 2-½

per cent. Consolidated Stock to the nominal value of £30,000, both taken

out of the Fund of Suitors in the Supreme Court, were added to the

Labourers’ Cottages Fund.

The effect of the change made by the Act of 1906 has been to reduce the

charge per £100 on the rates from £4 17s. 2d. (the lowest amount payable

before that Act) to £2 1s. 7d. the amount payable now—a reduction of

almost 57 per cent.

Under the Acts of 1883 to 1896, 22,588 cottages were built, and the loans

sanctioned amounted to £3,600,000. Under the Act of 1906, 12,821

additional cottages have been built, 5,057 are in course of erection, and

others have been sanctioned or are awaiting sanction. The loans sanctioned

under the Act amount to close on 4-¼ millions. This is the amount provided

for by the Act of 1906. Another million on the same terms as the 4-¼

millions was provided by the amending Act of last year.

The average cost of each cottage built has been £175, and the average rent

paid for a cottage with half an acre of land is 10d. per week, and for a

cottage with an acre of land about 1s. per week.

The Labourers Act of 1906 included agricultural labourers in the class of

persons to whom a parcel of untenanted land might be allotted by the

Estates Commissioners, where the agricultural labourer had for a period,

not less than five years immediately preceding, been resident on the

estate or in the immediate neighbourhood thereof, but it provided that in

no case should any advance be made to a labourer to purchase a parcel of

land so long as he was in occupation of a tenancy under the Acts. The Act

also empowered the Estates Commissioners to make advances to Rural

District Councils, as trustees under Section 4 of the Irish Land Act,

1903, to purchase parcels of untenanted land for the purposes of the

Labourers Acts.

The Labourers Acts and their administration have been, on the whole,

extremely successful. No legislation passed during the last thirty years

was more entirely needed, and none has been more beneficial to the

country. The benefit is one which no one who travelled through Ireland

thirty years ago, and who travels through it again to-day can fail to

remark.

Where dilapidated hovels stood formerly, decent cottages stand to-day. A

great deal still remains to be done, but what has been done has been, on

the whole, well done. Up to the present there has been no inquiry ever

asked for into the working of the Acts. That fact in itself shows that no

serious dissatisfaction has been felt with their administration. However,

from time to time complaints are heard which should be attended to;

complaints as to the unsuitability of the people for whom cottages have

been built; as to the size or workmanship of the cottages; as to a number

of the cottages, remaining untenanted; and more often as to jobbery in

respect of the sites chosen. Considering the amount of work done, it is

surprising that the complaints have been so few. Nevertheless, it would be

well that an inquiry should be held. It would tend to prevent any existing

abuses from increasing.

Part IV. Compulsory Registration of Land in Ireland.

In the year 1865 a Record of Title Act was passed for Ireland. Its

operation was confined to lands sold through the Landed Estates Court.

About 680 titles were recorded under it. It failed, largely because it was

not compulsory.

In the year 1891 the Local Registration of Title (Ireland) Act was passed.

All lands sold under the Land Purchase Acts and vested in purchasing

tenants subject to land purchase annuities, are thereby required to be

registered in the central or local offices of the Land Registry. There is

a local office in each county in Ireland and a central office in the City

of Dublin, which is also the local office as regards lands in the county

of Dublin. When the holdings are vested in the purchasing tenants by the

Land Commission that department furnishes to the Land Registry the

necessary particulars for the registration of the lands. These particulars

are entered on the registers and the boundaries of the holdings are

delineated on the registry maps. A certificate, which is a copy of the

folio of the register, is then issued to the purchaser.

All subsequent dealings with the land must be registered, and no estate is

acquired by the transferee of registered land until his name is put on the

register as owner of the lands transferred (Section 25).

All registered land is divisible on the death of the registered holder

intestate “_as if it were personal estate_” (Section 85).

Lands acquired by Rural District Councils under the Labourers Acts are

also compulsorily registered in the Land Register.

The title of each purchasing tenant is registered on the application of

the Land Commission and without any application by him. As no

investigation of any of these titles is possible, each holding is

registered “subject to equities,” that is, subject to any rights of third

persons interested in the land. Before a transfer of the holding is

executed these equities are, as a rule, discharged.

When the work of the Land Purchase Acts has been completed, practically

the whole land of Ireland will be registered. The principal effect of such

registration will be to facilitate the sale of land by reducing the cost

and simplifying the process of transfer. Registration of title exists

wherever a peasant proprietary has been established. It is almost a

necessary concomitant of such ownership.

The Irish Act has been conceived on right lines, but it will in the near

future need much amendment.

It needs simplification. The process of registration is too complicated

and too slow; there are too many burdens on the lands which do not require

registration, and in consequence, there are too many matters which, on a

sale, must be inquired into and so add to the price of transfer. Above

all, registered land should be declared to be personal property and should

not merely be made to descend “_as if it were personal estate_.” These

words have already on numerous occasions occupied the attention of the

judges, and their full meaning has not yet been made clear. The effect of

the various decisions is that, while registered land descends on a death

intestate to the next of kin as if it were personal estate, for every

other purpose it is to be regarded as “real estate.” To a lawyer the

position is full of interest; to the ordinary layman it is absurd; for the

community it is most mischievous.

PART II. A HISTORICAL ARGUMENT

VIII.—Irish Nationality. BY MRS. J. R. GREEN

“Justice requires power, intelligence, and will.”—(_Leonardo da

Vinci_.)

“Sinister information,” reported a Governor of Ireland under Henry VIII.,

“hath been of more hindrance to the reformation of Ireland than all the

rebels and Irishry within the realm.” The complaint is as true to-day as

it was nearly four hundred years ago, for false tongues still gain power

through ignorance. Irish history has the misfortune of being at the same

time trite and unknown. Men hear with the old acquiescence the old

formulæ, and the well-known words carry to them the solace of the ancient

prejudices.

There is indeed in these latter days a change of accusation. In former

times Irishmen were marked off as an inferior people, but within the last

few years the attack is altered; and it is now the fashion to assume that

the Irish fail, not as individuals, but only in their corporate capacity.

To Irishmen is still denied “the delight of admiration and the duty of

reverence.” Holding in their hearts the image of a nation, they are warned

not to ask whether it was a nation of any value, whether there has been

any conspicuous merit which justifies the devotion that the Irish people

feel to their race, and which may claim the regard of others. For it is

not enough to have the mere instinct of passion for our country, unless

our heart and reason are convinced that we give our allegiance to a people

that, in spite of human errors, has been of noble habit and distinguished

spirit.

The policy of “Unionist” leaders is to meet the Irish desire for an

uplifting pride in the life of the Irish commonwealth by a flat denial.

Ireland, we are told, is not, nor ever has been, nor ever can be, a

nation. A disorganized and contentious people, incapable of rightly using

any polity Irish or English, we have not, it is said, even the materials

of a nation. We are only “material,” to use an old Irish expression, for

an Empire. The island in fact was never a kingdom till England gave it a

king worthy the name; so how could it be a nation? To the gift of a king

England added her invention of a Parliament, but the failure of Parliament

in Ireland was open and flagrant; how then talk about a nation?

“There are Englishmen and Scotchmen,” says Mr. Balfour, “who

really suppose that England has deprived Ireland of its own

national institutions, has absorbed Ireland, which had a polity

and a civilization of its own—has absorbed it in the wider sphere

of British politics; and who think that a great wrong has thereby

been done to a separate nationality.... It is a profound illusion.

It has no basis in historical fact at all.”

He gives a history of his own.

“Those whom the Nationalists choose more particularly and

especially to call Irishmen, namely, the original inhabitants of

Ireland—those who were there before the Celt and before the Saxon

and before the Norman—never had the chance of developing, they

never could have developed, a polity of their own, any more than

the Highlanders. That does not mean that they are in any sense

inferior, but it does mean that all this talk of restoring to

Ireland Irish institutions, and of governing Ireland according to

Irish ideas, has no historic basis whatever.”

It is for such wayward imaginings that the historic claim of Ireland is

denied. What meaning shall we give to this new dogma of the partiality of

Nationalists for some pre-Celtic race—whether Iberian, or whether (as some

explain the phrase) Finn MacCumhaill and his followers, ingeniously

regarded by Mr. Balfour as having adorned Ireland before the Celtic age?

Where was the “Saxon” settlement in Ireland between the Celts and the

Normans? What is the comparison of the Highlanders with the original

inhabitants of Ireland? Why should Mr. Balfour’s doubts of a pre-Celtic

polity put an end to all talk of Irish institutions and Irish ideas?

To come to somewhat later times, under the clan system, says Mr. Balfour,

it was impossible to rise to civilization. “And when England dealt with

Ireland, Ireland was completely under the tribal system” (a theory false

to history). The superior English polity in due time, however, spread its

hand over Iberian chaos. “An Irish Parliament is a British invention”—the

word, with Mr. Balfour’s easy adjustment of history to politics, is

probably chosen to give the Scotch a gratuitous share in the credit, with

a compliment to their spirit; for, as he says, “my Lowland ancestors in

Scotland had precisely the same contempt for my Highland fellow-countrymen

as the English had for the Irish in Ireland”—(the word Lowland being here

misused in a non-historic sense). “Every political idea in Ireland is of

English growth—the Irish dependent Parliament, the Irish independent

Parliament—it is all of British extraction.” Mr. Balfour seems to imagine

in his indifferent way that the “dependent form” was the first; he seems

to guess that it was a single form, “_the_ dependent Parliament”; and he

calls his “independent Parliament” “a practically sovereign legislature.”

It would be hard to gather more fundamental errors into one sentence. At

any rate in his simplified scheme both forms of “the British invention”

failed in Ireland. But in the success of the Union and the assembly at

Westminster, England has established successfully what Mr. Balfour calls

“the unity which we have inherited from our forefathers.”

Such are the “General Principles” which Mr. Balfour—speaking with all the

authority of an “Unionist” statesman, head of a great English party,

leader for a generation of those who refuse to Ireland any claim to

national memory or national hope, absolute ruler for four years of that

island—has issued in his book “Aspects of Home Rule” to rally his

followers. This confusion of fictions, in all their brave untruth,

furnishes the historic background and justification of the Unionist creed.

We might not easily expect an “Imperial” leader so far to forego respect

for himself or for his public.

There is an Old Irish proverb: “Three candles that illumine every

darkness: truth, nature, knowledge.” But Mr. Balfour is as a man for his

pleasure wandering in the dark among the tombs of vain things. And from

places of death comes as of old “sinister information” to minister to

ignorance and prejudice, and to be still the hindrance to the reformation

of Ireland.

These comprehensive charges cover the two strongly-contrasted periods of

Irish history—the period of Gaelic civilization, and that of Norman, or

later of English settlement. All races are alike condemned. The one people

had no institutions. The other misused what were given to it. In either

case the fault is said to be “Irish”—the general word of contempt.

Confounded together by Mr. Balfour for his own purposes, the two

accusations have nothing in common, and must be separately considered if

we wish to think justly.

We may, however, observe that to both races is denied the praise of a

“nation” or “nationality.”

The definition of a “nation” may be varied: every man has his opinion,

for, as the old Irish saying went, “’tis his own head he has on him.” But

in the matter nature and history cannot be wholly set aside, and we may

attach some importance to the unity of a country, the persistence of its

race, and the continuity of its life. If we consider outward form, who

ever thinks of the map of Great Britain as a whole? The form that is in

men’s minds is of two configurations, one of England and one of Scotland,

two countries mapped out on separate sheets. The names of the countries

have changed, Alban and Scotland; Britain and England; and the title of

the whole is a somewhat awkward evasion or compromise. Ireland on the

other hand has its unchangeable boundaries fixed by the Ocean, its

provinces from immemorial times subordinate territories of the undivided

country. Its successive peoples, perhaps for some four thousand years,

have never known it but by one name, Erin; or by the variations of that

name as it passed into other speech, Iberia, Hibernia, Ire-land. The Old

Irish knew it some fourteen hundred years ago as their “Fatherland.” As

far back as we can go the unity of the country as a whole is prominent in

their thought; as, for example, in an ancient poem on the passing of the

pagan world and the triumph of Christianity:

“God’s counsel at every time concerning virgin Erin is greater

than can be told; though glittering Liffey is thine to-day, it has

been the land of others in their turn.”

In the Middle Irish period a legend of the coming to Tara of the most

ancient of all the sages carried to the people the same rapt love of

Ireland. When all the assembly rose up before him:

“There is no need to make rejoicing for me, for I am sure of your

welcome as every son is sure of his foster-mother, and this, then,

is my foster-mother,” said Fintan, “the island in which ye are,

even Erin, and the familiar knee of this island in which ye are,

namely, Tara. Moreover it is the mast and the produce, the flowers

and the food of this island that have sustained me from the deluge

until this day. And I am skilled in its feasts and its

cattle-spoils, its destructions and its courtships, in all that

have taken place from the deluge until now.”

Every race in turn that entered Ireland drank in the spirit of the soil:

all became citizens of the one land. Even that gift of “English invention”

and “British extraction,” the Pale Parliament, was by mere human nature

and necessity stirred to loyalty for “the land of Ireland.” “More

conveniently,” so they urged in a statute of 1460, “a proper coin distinct

from the coin of the realm of England was to be had therein.” And the

Anglo-Norman colonists decreed that of the coins they ordered one should

be called an “_Irelands_,” with that name engraven on it, and the other a

“_Patrick_,” with the name and cross of the national Irish saint.

This persistence of the name of Ireland with its national pride, and its

perpetual recalling of a distinct people, was displeasing to Englishmen in

the height of their “godly conquest.” If the name was extinguished the

fact might be more easily denied. They pleaded, as we learn in the Carew

Papers (I. 251-2), for its disappearance, in the true spirit of modern

Unionism. When Paul IV. gave to Philip and Mary the title of King and

Queen of Ireland:

“Men of judgment, ... thought it a vanity, not seeing what profit,

either of authority or honour, it might bring to a King to have

many titles in the country which he possesseth, considering that

the Most Christian King is more honoured by the only title of King

of France, than if his state were divided into as many kingly

titles as he hath provinces.... But it seemed hard to induce

England to quit that which two kings had used, and the Queen, not

thinking much of it, had continued.”

There was indeed a power in nature far older than the habit of two English

kings; and in spite of the Unionist grumblings the ancient name survived,

and the ancient fact. Cardinal Pole was appointed legate to “the realms of

England and Ireland.” Our ambassadors and consuls still carry with them

abroad the significant title “of Great Britain and Ireland”; and we may

read in a Russian newspaper concerned with the East, of the “policy of

Great Britain and Ireland in Afghanistan.”

The persistence of race in Ireland was no less remarkable than the triumph

of its name. There are some who profess to distinguish the Iberians. We

know that successive streams of immigrants, Danes, Normans, English,

French, have been merged in the commonwealth. But the Registrar-General

gives, in spite of outgoings of the Celtic and incomings of Teutonic

peoples, an overwhelming majority of men of Celtic blood and name—a

majority which is in fact less than the truth, owing to the continual

change during centuries of Celtic into English surnames. But it is not on

purity of race that Ireland, any more than other countries, would rely.

Difference in blood was recognised, but it was not held a bar to

patriotism. Ireland was the common country to which all races who entered

it were bound by every human interest. It had a unity of its own, which as

“the Pale” shrank and the sense of country deepened, laid hold on the

minds of the later as of the earlier inhabitants. Belfast Orangemen

indeed, as “the loyalists of Ireland,” accepted the doctrine in 1886 that

a Parliament in Dublin chosen by the whole Irish people “must be to them a

_foreign_ and _alien_ assembly.” It was the echo of an old fiction. We

know that the ascendency of a constantly recruited English group, above

all of safe men born in England and consequently held worthy of trust

there, was for seven centuries the favourite dream of English politicians;

and that it invariably failed before the broader and humaner influences

that move communities of men dwelling side by side under the equal

heavens. Faithful citizens of Norman or English stock did brave service

for their country: “Ireland-men” they called themselves, or “commonwealth

men,” or “good ‘country men’ as they would be gloriously termed.” What

name indeed is there for men of Ireland to take unless they frankly own

their country? The term chosen for them by _The Times_: “The British

Colony on the other side of St. George’s Channel” will scarcely endure.

Mr. Balfour is probably the last statesman to press a claim to ascendency

in the partial favour of Great Britain for a selected group, “who, of all

others in the United Kingdom, surely deserve the protection of England and

Scotland.” It is a curious return in these days of equal citizenship to

the tyrannical distinctions of the middle ages—“wild Irish our enemies,

Irish rebels, and obedient English,” who had varying claims on the

dominating race according to their deserts.

To return, however, to the special charges urged against Gaelic life in

Ireland. The island may be the same, and the race of ancient date, and

with no less than their ancient pride; but what of that, if the people

could not have, nor ever did have, a polity of their own, nor any Irish

institutions nor an Irish idea of government? “The fiction has been

assiduously propagated,” says a Unionist writer in the _Morning Post_, “by

the Irish extreme section ... that the nationhood of Ireland is a thing

which once had an actual objective existence.... But such teaching,

however romantically attractive, is simply incompatible with the plain

facts of history. Ireland as a political entity dates from the period of

the conquest by England, when for the first time the princes and

chieftains with their followers were fused into something like national

unity.” So Macedon might have boasted that for the first time it had put

some order into Greece, given it a political entity, and brought it into

line with modern Imperial civilization.

Is this unhistoric statement all the Unionists have in the end got to give

us of the Irish story? Is there nothing behind it—no trace of any soul of

the people in Ireland? How then was it that with so incomplete a military

or political organization, they could defy for centuries the whole power

of England? Ireland in fact drew her strength from a remarkable State

system of her own. In the Gaelic form of civilization the national

sentiment did not gather round a military king, as in the Teutonic states,

but round a common learning, literature, and tradition; and this exalted

belief in the spiritual existence of a nation, though it is not the

English idea of a kingdom, may belong nevertheless to a high order of

human aspiration. It produced in Ireland a literature which has not been

surpassed among any people for its profound and ardent sense of

nationality.

The union of the Irish people lay in the absolute community of learning,

institutions, and law. Irish law was one of the most striking products of

Irish genius. If we know nothing of its beginnings, we see it as a body of

custom that spread over the entire country, varying not at all from

province to province. Highly finished, highly technical, worked on for

hundreds of years by successive commentators, it still remained the law of

the people, and claimed their allegiance—an allegiance could only have

been possible to a law founded on reason and justice, and expedient and

efficient in practice. If we take that which in an agricultural country

comes home to every peasant—the land system—the native law in Ireland was

equal, enduring, and respected. The farmer was assured a fair rent and

compensation for improvements. No chief in Ireland could molest the people

in their ancient privilege; he could neither evict them, nor take their

grazing-lands, nor make a forest waste and impose a forest law for his

hunting. Five hundred years after the Norman invasion Irish farmers

holding under the old Irish law were still paying the same rent that their

forefathers had paid centuries before. It is certain that no system can

wholly prevent misfortune, injustice, or usurpation; but there seems to

have been among the people a social content far beyond that in mediæval

England, a long security of farmers, a passionate belief in their land

system, an extraordinary tenacity in its defence against any other, and as

far as we can see no bitterness of classes. A satirist might mock at the

depth of the chief’s pocket, as deep as the pocket of the Church or of the

poet; but the Irish no more wanted to get rid of the chief than of the

poet or the priest. In Tudor times the only way in which a chief could be

absolutely alienated and divided from his people was by pledging him to

the English land system and government.

The Irish were further reminded of their essential unity by the great

genealogical compilations in which every element of the population, Celtic

and aboriginal, free and unfree, were traced to a common ancestry. Pride

in the country which they possessed was maintained by the _Dinnsenchus_ or

collection of topographical legends dealing with hundreds of places,

mountains, rivers, earthworks, roads, strands, venerable trees, in every

nook and corner of Ireland—none elsewhere—all evidently things of interest

to the whole people. The dignity of their race and history was recalled to

them in the semi-legendary history of pagan Ireland—which is really a

great epic in prose and verse, in two main sections, the Book of Invasions

and the Irish Book of Kings. The subject of this work is simply Ireland.

It has no other connecting motive than to satisfy the desire of the Irish

to possess a complete and brilliant picture of Ireland from all antiquity.

The charge was a solemn one, and carried out by generations of scholars

with exact fidelity. There is no parallel elsewhere to the writing down of

the great pagan epics five hundred years after Christianity, with no more

direct influence of Christianity on them than we might find in the Odyssey

or the Iliad.

Nor was their language the least of the spiritual possessions of the

Gaelic people—that language which, following their people over Scotland,

Lowlands and Highlands and the Isles, remained for some fourteen centuries

the symbol of immemorial unity of their race. The pride of the race in

their language was beyond that of any other people in Europe outside of

the Greeks and Romans. Grammars of Irish were written in the eighth or

ninth centuries, perhaps earlier, full of elaborate declensions and minute

rules, accounts of obsolete words and forms and esoteric literary jargons,

treatises on the Ogham alphabet, dictionaries of celebrated men and women

of Ireland from remote antiquity, numerous festilogies of the national

saints in prose and verse, with their pedigrees and legends. What mediæval

language in Europe had a school of grammarians, and at what date? It may

seem strange to Englishmen that this affection should have stirred the

hearts of pastoral and agricultural people; but no Irish man was far

removed from the immaterial and spiritual life of his country. The famous

works in verse and prose, the stories, the hymns, and the songs of heroes

old and new, were known by heart, and handed down faithfully for centuries

in thousands of cabins; and the Irish tiller of the ground in remote

places has even in our own day a rich vocabulary of six or seven thousand

words. The pleasure and pride of art, so widely diffused among the mass of

the people by the Irish scheme of life and education, became a natural

part of the Irishman’s thoughts. Their main concern in the Danish

devastations was the threatened destruction of an ancient order of

civilization. Before the “flood of outlanders,” says the “Colloquy of the

Sages,” written probably before 850, “every art will be buffoonery, and

every falsehood will be chosen.” Poems would be dark, music would be given

over to boors, and embroidery to fools and base women so that no more

beauty of colour could be expected; everyone will turn his art into false

teaching and false intelligence, to seek to surpass his teacher.

Instruction and skill would end, they lamented, with lawful princes and

sages, belief and offerings, the respect of ranks and families, due honour

of the young to the old, the ordered hospitality of the wealthy, and the

high justice on the hilltop: “On every hill-top treachery will adventure.”

The great expression of Gaelic life was the assembly of the people, those

“parles upon hills” that seemed so grievous to Elizabethan rulers. In

every Federal State, such as Leinster or Munster, and in every petty

State, they were the ever-recurring guarantee of the national

civilization. The feeling of the people is shown by the constant

references to “frequent assemblies,” “an assembly according to rules,” “a

lawful synod.” The serious organization of these gatherings in stately

form had been brought to a fine art. The business and science of the

country was there open to the whole democracy. Many were the directions

for the right conduct of those who took part in the assemblies—against

stiffness of delivery, a muttering speech, hair-splitting, uncertain

proofs, despising books, inciting the multitude, very violent urging,

playing a dangerous game to disconcert the meeting, above all against

ignorant or false pleading. The authority of the assembly in its

exposition of the law was never questioned by the people.

“Irishmen,” wrote an English judge to Henry VIII., “doth observe

and keep such laws and statutes which they make upon hills in

their country firm and stable, without breaking them for any

favour or reward.”

“As touching their government in their corporations where they

bear rule,” wrote an Englishman, Payne, from Connacht in 1589, “is

done with such wisdom, equity, and justice, as demerits worthy

commendations. For I myself divers times have seen in several

places within their jurisdictions well near twenty causes decided

at one sitting, with such indifference that, for the most part,

both plaintiff and defendant hath departed contented; yet many

that make show of peace and desireth to live by blood do utterly

mislike this or any good thing that the poor Irishman doth.”

A poem of about 1100 A.D. describes how the people of Leinster, by their

tribes and families, celebrated their fair of Carman—Carman reputed to

have come “from delightful Athens westward.” Every third year they held

the feast and two years for the preparation. The kings sat in order in

their Forud (a word cognate with _Forum_), surrounded by their councillors

and retinue. “Each one sits in his lawful place, so that all attend to

them to listen.” The women were seated in the same manner, “a noble, most

delightful host, women whose fame is not small abroad.” There was a week

for considering the laws and rights of the provinces for the next three

years. “There aloud with boldness they proclaimed the rights of every law

and the restraints.” “Annals there are verified, every division into which

Erin was divided; the history of the household of Tara—not insignificant,

the knowledge of every territory in Erin, the history of the women of

illustrious families, of courts, prohibitions, conquests.” The accurate

synchronisms of noble races, “the succession of the sovereign kings, their

battles and their stern valour,” “Fenian tales of Finn, an untiring

entertainment,” proverbs, maxims, royal precepts, occult poetry,

topographical etymologies, the precepts of law-givers and sages—all came

in their turn; and inscribed tablets, and books of trees, satires, and

sharp-edged runes.

While the memory of their origin, laws, and the title of every man to his

land, was thus imprinted on the people’s minds, every other element of

their civilization was displayed. Every day of the seven there was a show

of the national sport of horse-racing. Commerce had its three markets—a

market of food; a market of live stock, cows and horses; and the great

market of “the foreign Greeks,” where gold and noble clothes were wont to

be, carried from the branching harbours that brought hosts into the noble

fair. There were trumpets and music of all sorts, and poets, exerting

their utmost power till each art had its rightful meed in proper measure

from the king. Professors of every sort, both the noble arts and the base

arts, were there selling and exhibiting their competitions and their

professional works to kings, and rewards were given for every art that was

just or lawful to be sold or exhibited or listened to. The people might

enjoy the rivalry of rustic buffoonery, pipes, fiddles, chainmen, bonemen,

and tube players, a crowd of babbling painted masks—all in their due

place. Everything was provided for—the slope of the steeds, the slope of

the cooking, the slope of the embroidering women. And finally the day of

solemnity, masses, adorations, and psalm singing, and the fast of all of

them together; and so the assembly came to an end “without breach of law,

without crime, without deed of violence, without dishonour.”

The king who presided over these assemblies was not a ruler in the

Teutonic military sense. Ireland was free from two sources of military

rule—the danger of conquest, and the fear of any attempt to force on the

people a new and alien law. Protected by distance and the ocean, the

island was long secured from foreign conquest: nor did the Irish need a

central military power to enforce a native code which was already strong

in the allegiance of the people. In this situation of comparative security

the natural aim of the Irish was to preserve their local freedom. They

objected, as the English after them have done, to military establishments

and to compulsory service as systems which were a danger to liberty—and

“liberty,” as the English officials complained, “was the only thing that

Scots and Irish constantly contended for.” Herdsmen and ploughmen who

carried on the business of the country refused to serve as soldiers for

more than a few weeks in the year, and that only after sowing and reaping

was done, and the cattle driven to pasture. Ireland was not in fact a

military country. The dangers to peace lay mainly in the Gaelic law of

succession to kingship and chieftainship, according to which the best man

of the ruling kindred was elected by the freemen. Such a system provided

frequent occasions of fighting—in rivalries of candidates and revolts of

ambitious aspirants to power, all too ready to look for outside support,

no matter where, from a neighbouring chief, a Norman baron, or an English

deputy. From such variety of petty conflicts the feudal law of

primogeniture saved other countries to some extent, though, as we know,

that too was very far from insuring peace or harmony at all times.

Ireland no doubt suffered under this very conservative system of election,

come down from the honoured past. The evils, however, were not incurable

in a country left to itself. An attempt was already made to lessen them by

the custom of electing along with the chief a Tanist or successor; and we

can trace in Ireland also the growing custom of inheritance from father to

son. The way of natural development was closed, not by the incompetence of

the Irish, but by foreign enemies, who were careful to aggravate the

mischief. It was the Danish wars and their results, and far more the wars

of the English lord deputies, which made the very life of the tribe depend

on military leadership and on that alone. The danger of local strife among

independent states was in like manner exaggerated beyond measure when the

deputies adopted the ferocious policy of advancing the English conquest by

isolating the territories, and forcing them, on one plea or another, into

civil war with their neighbours. Every territory had to maintain a retinue

of soldiers out of all proportion to the normal state. Natural conditions

were overturned, and statesmen then as now crippled the communities they

governed with preparations for war in the interests of peace.

In the same way the growth in authority of the high-king was frustrated by

external violence. During the Danish invasions the position of the

high-king was of great importance as leader and centre of the national

resistance, and head of the general assemblies of the country “to bring

concord among the men of Ireland.” After these wars, when Ireland came

more directly under European influences, efforts were made there, as in

other countries, to shape a “kingdom” in the modern sense of a centralised

monarchy. Such efforts after unity, which in Ireland, as in every other

European country, were in any case slow and difficult, found a determined

enemy in England from the time of Ruaidhri O’Conor and Henry II. onwards.

In English interests, under the English “Lord of Ireland,” the island was

to have no home-born king “coming to Tara,” as the mediæval phrase went,

and not even a strong governor of any kind.

“A phantom government,” wrote Richey, “planted at Dublin fulfilled

none of the duties of a ruler, but by its presence prevented the

formation of any other authority or form of rule.”

If any leader appeared among the Irish of authority in peace or power in

war, the whole force of England was immediately called in to his

destruction, and to reestablish confusion and strife. “Ireland were as

good as lost,” the English said, “if a wild wyrlinge should be chosen

there as king.”

It cannot be doubted that the Irish system had sprung from the soul of a

people with an intense national consciousness, that it bound the various

clans under obedience to one common law, that it gave to all the

inhabitants, rich and poor, learned and simple, an enthusiasm for their

race and country which rooted that law in their hearts, and endowed it

with a tenacity of life that no political misfortune could destroy.

The people were inspired by more than material considerations, and through

centuries of suffering nothing but death could extinguish their passionate

loyalty to their chief and devotion to their race. English governors could

never catch the reason or meaning of that patriotism. “It should seem,”

said Perrott, the ostentatious proclaimer of English superiority, “that

they think, when once they leave their old customs, ... they are out of

all frame or good fashion, according to that saying, _They which are born

in Hell think there is no Heaven_.”

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England, however, according to the Unionist teaching, offered a better

thing. She “invented” for Ireland a Parliament. What did the Irish make of

that? Here we enter on a new range of denunciations—the inadequacy to

English ideas and benevolences, not of Iberians and Celts, but of Normans

and of English themselves.

Every form of Parliament, the best that England could do, ended in

Ireland, according to Mr. Balfour, in a “series of failures.” Ireland was

already well accustomed in every one of its territories to meetings of

notables and assemblies for public business; and there was no special

difficulty in introducing among a people of their training a

representative Parliament. But from this “British invention” the Celtic

people were in effect shut out, either formally or practically. The

Parliament was conferred on Normans, who had so distinguished a history in

England, and on English Protestants. And yet, we are told, every

experiment of an “Irish” Parliament failed; under the same malign

influences, it would seem, as were set forth by a lord deputy under Henry

VIII.: “As I suppose, it is predestinate to this country to bring forth

sedition, inventions, lies, and such other naughty fruits, and also that

no man shall have thanks for services done here.”

This seems to have been the view of Mr. Litton Falkiner, who in his Essays

has drawn attention to the conspicuous faults of the Parliament as shown

in the history of Poyning’s Act. That statute, according to him, reduced

Ireland to legislative impotence, but the Parliament willingly and with no

difficulty passed it; and not only was the bridle placed in the mouth of

the Irish legislature with its own assent, but it was so placed by its own

desire, and the Parliament long and strenuously resisted its removal. An

explanation, suitable to Ireland, for this singularly irrational conduct

is given.

“Not the least curious feature in the history of the subsequent

operation of Poyning’s Law is the great inconvenience which it

occasioned to the English Government, and its corresponding

popularity with the anti-English element in the Irish

legislature.”

The conclusion would seem to be that the atmosphere of the island so

contaminated the Anglo-Norman settlers that they exchanged reason for

fantastic inconsequence, and replaced self-interest by an insanity of

“patriotism.” We have here a typical illustration of the way in which the

“Irish” Parliament has been thrown under rebuke, and the spirit of its

condemnation. It is interesting to ask whether the facts bear out this

theory of unreason, and of a wilfulness inexplicable and characteristic of

this island alone.

There is a close parallel between the history of Poyning’s Act in 1494 and

that of the Union in 1800, so that the one may help us to understand the

other. In the fifteenth century, as in the eighteenth, trade and wealth

were increasing fast in Ireland with commercial intercourse of the

peoples, and barriers were breaking down between the two races. In both

these centuries alike the commercial jealousies of England were quickened

by the growth of Irish trade, and its political fears by a question of the

Crown—by Irish preference to the House of York over that of Lancaster

under Henry VI.—and under George III., by views held in Ireland as to the

Regency. Alike with Poyning’s Act and with the Union the proposed remedy

was to bring Ireland under closer subjection to England. The statute

ordered that no Parliament should be held in Ireland till the Council had

certified to the King under the great seal of Ireland all the causes and

considerations, and the Acts that should pass in it; and had received the

King’s license under the great seal of England, as well in affirmation of

these Acts as to summon Parliament. The means used for carrying this Act

and the Act of Union were practically the same; the promise on each

occasion was that the Act would ensure the order and liberties of Ireland;

while for the unconvinced there remained threats, military demonstrations,

and bribery—both subtle and extensive. Every place of authority in the

country was newly packed with English officials, all servants of the

Lancastrian party in power. A Parliament was called from which all the

great earls were absent—Ormond, Desmond, Kildare. This mere shadow of a

Parliament—strangers, place-hunters, and men, as we shall see, under

sentence of ruin, without natural leaders, controlled by English

officials—was required to accept the King’s decree for “the whole and

perfect obedience of the country.” In Poyning’s Law notice was given of

the King’s intention to make an Act for the general resumption of his

whole revenues since 1327, an Act never equalled by any measure before or

since for throwing all civil rights and liberties into the hands of the

Crown. From pieces of parchment hanging to it with the autograph of Henry

VII. written at the top, it appears that savings were made in favour of

various persons exempting them from the operation of this Act. Thus

according to their conduct or deserts at the passing of Poyning’s Law, men

would find ruin or protection at the King’s hand. Alike in their ignoble

beginnings, Poyning’s Law and the Act of Union remained in their later

developments the source of dissension and the great battle-ground between

English rulers and Irish subjects.

So much for the passing of the Act with “no difficulty.” How it was

intended to work by Henry VII. we cannot tell, but the violent methods of

later Tudor sovereigns respected no barriers. Whenever Poyning’s Act stood

in their way, the first remedy was an Act for its “repeal”—that is, an

“exposition” how it was to be understood, or an enactment that all

statutes of that Parliament were valid, “notwithstanding Poyning’s Act.”

No Tudor ever proposed to “repeal” that part of the statute which limited

the freedom of Parliament: but only to abrogate the formalities which

interfered with his own direct method of government. The Dublin

Parliament, for its part, clearly saw that if the Act gave a tremendous

power to the Crown, it yet held provisions which were a protection, so far

as they went, from arbitrary tyranny. The preparing, before a Parliament

could be called, of Acts to which the Seal of Ireland had to be affixed

before they went to receive the Seal of England, assured some discussion

in Ireland, some degree of publicity, and some hindrance to unexpected

laws sprung upon it by a foreign and uncontrolled Executive, and rushed

through by a packed majority. Parliament, in fact, held that law and

recognised order were safeguards to liberty; and its battle in Dublin was

for the security of law, even of Poyning’s Law, against the mere will of

the King and his ministers: a motive neither trivial nor irrational.

The first conflict arose with the Parliament of 1536-7, which was called

to establish what we may call the Protestant succession, to declare Henry

head of the Church, to order the suppression of abbeys, and to decree vast

confiscations in Leinster to the King’s benefit (in many cases estates of

members of the Parliament), with the purpose of new “Plantation.” It was

not likely that such laws would be peaceably drawn up in Dublin and

offered to Henry in the form he preferred. On the first day of its

session, May 1st, 1536, therefore, the “repeal of Poyning’s Act” was

ordered—that is, to declare it void for that Parliament. The experiment

was new and untried, and the Houses obeyed. By the “repeal” Henry and

Cromwell were set free from every restriction. They could send over new

and unforeseen bills, neither known nor discussed in Ireland, without

agreement with the Irish Council, at any time before or after Parliament

opened, and could alter bills during the session as they chose. Every

shred of protection to the framing of bills in Ireland, or their

discussion there, disappeared. The usurped powers were used to the

uttermost. In seventeen days ten Acts had passed the Commons. Cromwell

wrote to delay the Act for the Succession if it was still in an incomplete

stage, probably for some changes. The King wrote to desire an astounding

Act to confer on himself all the land in Ireland. But resistance had

already begun. Parliament had attempted to protect the country by

providing in their Repealing Act that a number of matters should be

excluded from its operation, such as the liberties of boroughs, etc., and

that no laws should be enacted by this Parliament but such as were for the

honour of the King, the increase of his revenue, _and_ the commonweal of

the land. As Acts poured over from England members pleaded that they were

contrary to these conditions, and prepared to carry the matter to a court

of law. The struggle lasted eighteen months. Parliament was adjourned,

contrary to law, six times in the next year. Finally Commissioners were

sent over in September, 1537, carrying with them a series of Acts drawn up

in England, and added others of their own devising; all to be passed

“notwithstanding Poyning’s Act.” The limitations which Parliament had

attempted to set up in their “Repealing” Act were set aside by a new

“repeal,” which declared the “mere truth” of the first to be that every

Bill was valid which concerned _either_ the King’s honour, _or_ the

increase of his revenue, _or_ the common weal of the land: and that anyone

who brought the question to a suit in any court of law should suffer as a

felon.

In this first battle, Parliament, taken by surprise, was defeated. Every

attempted safeguard was thrown down, and nothing left but the royal

tyranny. “The King’s causes in Parliament take good effect,” wrote the

Commissioners; and twenty-four Acts were passed. Having finished their

work, and having discovered in searching among old Acts that this

Parliament was illegally held, they hastily dissolved it, making provision

to hide its unlawful character.

The Parliament of 1541 which gave to Henry the title of king was the only

one of the century in which we find no proposition to repeal Poyning’s

Act. Other means had been used during four years of widespread and

deceitful negotiations (1537-1541) to ensure the King’s success. A series

of false promises as to rights in land had been cunningly dispatched

through the country. There was a careful scrutiny of the coming

Parliament. Lists were drawn up for Henry’s benefit. The House of Lords

was safe. The vast majority of prelates in it were docile nominees of the

new head of the Church. Of the score of peers on the list six were

reported to Henry as having “neither wit nor company of men”; one was wise

in counsel but without any soldiers; and nine were new creations, at the

King’s bidding—six of them scarcely a month old, some indeed still waiting

for their letters patent. In the Common House were divers knights and many

gentlemen of fair possessions, but no list of these is given. The House

had evidently been packed: for an Act was passed repealing the old statute

against non-residents and proroguing of Parliaments. There was indeed a

concession to placate opponents. “From henceforth” the knights and

burgesses were to be resident, under penalty of fines—a provision well

calculated to disappoint the hopes it raised. Under these circumstances

the repeal of Poyning’s Act was for once dispensed with. Having secured

his title of King, Henry could fling away his Parliament, and no assembly

met again for thirteen years.

Queen Mary called her one Parliament in 1556 to carry two Acts which

surpassed in terror and ferocity any yet proposed. The Act for the

confiscation and plantation of Leinster lands, ordered Leix and Offaly to

be turned into the King’s and Queen’s counties, the first shires made

since the time of John; and desired they should be “planted” with “good

men.” A second Act gave power to Commissioners to perambulate the whole

realm and divide it into shires as they thought convenient, without

further reference to Parliament. Henceforth any Irish chief or Norman lord

might learn suddenly that by a mere decree of the Deputy his authority was

abolished, his territory dissolved into a chaotic mass of helpless people,

under officers speaking a foreign tongue, and laws wholly unknown to them,

the land leased out according to English tenure, new taxes imposed, and a

Commissioner with his hangmen placed in their midst to govern “in a course

of discretion.”

When Parliament met, two drafts of the Act for “the well-disposing” of

Leinster lands were “lost.” The loss or embezzlement was perhaps contrived

with the hope of resisting any third Act that might arrive after the

session had opened, as contrary to Poyning’s Law. If so, the hope was

vain. An Act was prepared to explain “how Poyning’s Act was to be exponed

and taken,” and to enact that since events might happen, (as for example

the loss of unwelcome drafts) during the time of Parliament necessary to

be provided for, which at the time of the summoning of Parliament were not

thought or agreed upon, therefore the Irish Government might send over

considerations and causes for new ordinances, and that these being

returned under the Great Seal of England might be enacted, notwithstanding

Poyning’s Act. A third draft was sent over, and the Act of Confiscation

passed—the first of the Great Plantations.

That sinister measure, “An exposition of Poyning’s Act,” was again

prepared for Elizabeth’s Parliament of 1560, which was called to declare

the Queen’s Title and her Supremacy over the Church. But the Houses

disappeared before it was brought in:

“The Lord-Deputy is said to have used force, and the speaker

treachery.... I heard,” said Dr. Lynch, “that it had been

previously announced in the House that Parliament would not sit on

that very day on which the laws against religion were enacted;

but, in the meantime, a private summons was sent to those who were

well known to be favourable to the new creed ... the few members

present assented, and the speaker won for himself the name of

being the chief author of the laws enacted against the Catholic

religion.”

The Deputy Sussex sought to calm the rage of the Parliament by pledging

himself solemnly that the Statute of Uniformity should not be enforced

during Elizabeth’s reign. So violent was the opposition of lords and

chieftains to “the laws against religion,” that Sussex, it was said,

prorogued Parliament and went to England to consult the Queen. Thus it

ended after nineteen days.

After this experience:

“We have small disposition to assent to any Parliament,” wrote

Elizabeth to the Deputy in 1566. “Nevertheless, when we call to

remembrance the ancient manner of that our Realm, that no manner

of thing there ought to be commented or treated upon, but such as

we shall first understand from you, and consent thereunto ourself,

and consequently return the same under our great seal of this our

Realm of England; we are the better minded to assent to this your

request.”

The legal correctness of this regard for Poyning’s Act disappeared in the

course of three years’ preparation for the new assembly. The Parliament

met in 1569 to find the Commons packed with strangers, contrary to the

renewed law which had been won from Henry VIII. in 1542 against the

practice. The gentry of the Pale and the Dublin burgesses protested in

vain against the return of strangers for boroughs which they had never

even seen: “the more words the more choler.” Elizabeth’s vast schemes of

confiscation and breaking up of the old Irish society were met with

hostility. Under pressure of the Deputy, therefore, a second session was

held to pass a single bill, the “Repeal of Poyning’s Act”; on the plea

that grievous sores known to the high court in Ireland could not be

reformed as not having been certified to the Queen. This bill was bitterly

opposed: “so jealous were they that they would not in long time enter into

the consideration thereof.” The remonstrants did in fact force some

concessions; that provisions made by the present Parliament for the common

weal, the augmentation of the Queen’s revenues, and the assurance to her

of lands and profits, which were certified under the Great Seal of

Ireland, and returned to Ireland under the Great Seal of England, should

first be publicly proclaimed in six cities, and only after these

proclamations should pass into law, “Poyning’s Act notwithstanding.”

The way was now clear, and the next session brought the attainder of Shane

O’Neill and the tremendous confiscation of Tyrone and other lands in

Ulster. A beginning was made of Munster confiscations. The Deputy was to

appoint English-speaking clergy to all ecclesiastical dignities in

Munster. Other Acts ordered all Ireland to be reduced to shire land; and

abolished all Irish and Anglo-Norman chieftaincies or “captainships”

except by special patent (thus depriving the chiefs of the benefit of

their indentures), under penalty of death without benefit of clergy, as

the law was drafted in England; the Parliament substituted a fine and

passed the decree with great opposition, for “the matter misliked them

more than the pain.” The Queen herself sent letters ordering Parliament to

pass a heavy impost which must ruin the Irish wine trade, in which matter

“they showed themselves so unquiet that they were more like a bear-baiting

of disordered persons than a Parliament of wise and grave men.” Taught by

experience, the Parliament now insisted on a law to limit the repeal of

Poyning’s Act, in which they explained their reasons for objecting to any

repeal at any time. Before that Act, they said, when liberty was given to

the governors to call Parliament at their pleasure, “Acts passed as well

to the dishonour of the Prince, as to the hindrance of their subjects, the

remembrance whereof would indeed have stayed us from condescending to the

repeal of the said statute,” save for their persuasion that Sydney through

his motion meant only the honour of the Queen _and_ the common benefit of

the Realm (going back in these words to the first repeal of 1536); but

they feared that the like liberty might be abused by other governors, and

therefore enacted that none other should ever use the liberty of Sydney,

and that no Bill should ever be certified into England for repealing or

suspending of Poynings’ Act unless it was first agreed on in a Session of

Parliament in Ireland, by the greater number of the Lords and the greater

number of the Common House, that is by both Houses carrying the Bill by a

separate vote.

The Parliament of 1569, distinguished by a high order of public spirit and

legal ability, was driven to its fatal close in a general war against

those “that banish Ireland and mean conquest,” a striking phrase of

Anglo-Irish patriots.

A new “Repeal of Poynings’ Act” was demanded of the Parliament in 1585.

The reason was again the same—for the more convenient passing of Acts to

deprive the people of Ireland of their land and their religion; Elizabeth

mainly anxious about her property in land, and the deputy about religious

uniformity. There was a Bill to extend to Ireland all the English laws

against Popish recusants, and demand the Oath of Supremacy as a test of

the fidelity of Parliament: an Act for the attainder of Baltinglas;

another for the attainder of Desmond, and a hundred and sixty more

“traitors,” and for the confiscation of Munster; one to limit the

landowners’ old-established rights of conveyancing of land as “likely to

tend to disinherit the Queen’s Majesty.” Such Acts could never be passed

under the formalities of Poynings’ Law.

The Viceroy, however, had to reckon with two new problems. Representatives

of the Irish race sat in the Parliament, Hugh O’Neill in the Lords, some

fourteen Irishmen in the Commons. And the effect of the enactment made by

the last Parliament was now seen in its enactment that “repeal” henceforth

must be carried by a majority in each of the two Houses, voting

separately. By fraudulently counting an absent vote Perrott declared the

Bill carried by one in the Lords: the Commons threw it out by thirty-five.

He prorogued Parliament for three days, and when it met again brought in

the Bill; again the Ireland Party in the Commons defeated the Englishmen

who supported the Government; and thus overthrew, in Perrott’s words, “the

repeal of Poynings’ Act that should have set them at liberty to treat of

that and all other things necessary for the State.” The opponents of

suspension, he said, desired only to make void the whole Parliament

because they could abide no reformation in matters of religion or State;

and would bring the new chiefs, O’Reillys, Maguires, and the rest, into

jealousy of the Parliament. The landowners and gentry, “the stirrers of

Parliament and the lawyers,” on their side declared they feared to give

despotic power to the Viceroy and distrusted his purpose, “some of the

Irishmen either mistaking or conceiving it was framed to another intent

than it did pretend, whereby they drew on them the Deputy’s disfavour, and

displeasure on him from the Queen.”

The defeat of “repeal” showed the Houses their strength. The Lords dashed

new Acts proposed against treason and the trial of accessories—statutes

namely, said Perrott, for the safety of the Queen. The Commons wrecked the

Bill for Desmond’s attainder, striking out eight score names of “men of

living” and leaving only eight. They refused, moreover, to escheat lands

protected by law, and to tax land in a manner tyrannous and contrary to

Irish custom. The “disturbers of Parliament” were met by five adjournments

in eleven months; but the devices by which these sticklers for the law

were finally subdued is too long to tell here. Parliament met at last in

April, 1586, to register the royal will. The Lords read and passed the

four Acts for the attainder of rebels in Munster. The Commons still

resisted for a week. The official intrigue to compel their submission is

confused by the bitter wrangle of the Deputy and the Treasurer for the

honour of the plot. Finally the Desmond confiscations were “wrought out”

of the Parliament with so great difficulty, said Spenser, “that were it to

be passed again I dare undertake it would never be compassed”; and the

Deputy gave the royal assent to the Bill by which over half a million

acres of Desmond land were forfeited by Act of Parliament to the Crown, as

the O’Neill land had been forfeited nearly twenty years before. After

which Parliament was dissolved, with an oration of Justice Walshe, the

Speaker, who, in “the universal comfort of all estates,” asked the Commons

“what is there more of earthly felicity that can be required,” reminded

them that the escheated lands “accepted by the Queen of us” were of far

less value than the smallest portion of Her Majesty’s charges for their

benefit, and mentioned how they had “willingly consented to attaint and

stain in blood Her Majesty’s disloyal subjects and unbar the succession of

their traitorous lines, to the end that the memory of their names may be

quite extinguished.”

Thus after a hundred years the Parliament won its first success in

refusing the repeal of Poyning’s Act. Mr. Litton Falkiner calls us to

wonder at the “curious circumstance” that “successive Parliaments of the

sixteenth century declined on patriotic grounds to abrogate the very

statute the repeal of which was to become the greatest triumph of Irish

patriotism in the eighteenth century,” and insinuates that we may here see

displayed the captious and capricious spirit that infects the

“predestinate” peoples of Ireland. Out of the old habit of contempt it has

being boldly suggested by some that the independence of Parliament, by

others that the Catholic religion, were in no way valued by Irishmen until

they made the discovery that these could be used to annoy and disconcert

England. Such unworthy suspicions must disappear as we watch the grave

conflict of men threatened with ruin, imprisonment, death, in their

struggle to defend the first rights of law, property, and religion.

It was a slow battle, with rare and scanty triumphs for defenders of the

constitution. Long silence followed the first victory of the Parliament in

refusing the repeal of Poyning’s Act: it was not summoned again for

twenty-six years. Its next meeting was amid dark threatenings. The old

sessions in Dublin had been honourably held in “the house called Christ’s

Church situate in the high place of the same, like as St. Paul’s in

London”; Parliament was now ordered to hold its debates in the Castle,

surrounded by extra troops brought to overawe an assembly which was robbed

of even the appearance of free deliberations. When they objected to being

placed over the Castle stores of powder (in a room which had been, in

fact, lately wrecked by an accidental explosion of gunpowder) and made a

reference to Guy Fawkes, their objections were set aside with a scornful

taunt “of what religion they were that had hatched such cockatrice’s

eggs.” From that time began a new and even more ominous story than before.

A fatal doom in fact hung over the two Houses in Dublin. The Irish

Parliament, which at this time had no relation whatever with the English

Parliament, depended directly and solely on the King. The royal policy of

Tudors and Stuarts, in their different ways, was to fortify their personal

authority over Ireland and its Parliament, and by this means to strengthen

the despotic and military power of the Crown; and make Ireland, without or

against its will, a peril to the liberties of England. The natural result

was to bring the Irish Parliament under the angry suspicion of the English

Parliament and people, and create a forced and disastrous hostility. Not

only was the constitutional party in Ireland cut off from the natural

support of their brethren who were fighting the battle of liberty in

England, and separated from its due share in the general struggle for

liberty; but the royal policy finally drove the English Parliament to

determine that all independent action of the Irish Parliament should be

entirely suppressed, and thus brought about a constitutional revolution

which for the first time subjected the Irish Parliament to the absolute

control, not of the King, but of the English Parliament itself. From this

time, it is evident, Poynings’ Act and its repeal took a new significance.

The Parliament which “England gave to Ireland,” that gift “of British

extraction,” was, as we know, very far indeed from the Parliament which

the English won for themselves. The English Parliament had behind it in

effect the people of England. The Irish Parliament was by the Castle

policy separated from the people of Ireland, who were utterly excluded, or

if cautiously admitted were selected in small and discreet numbers from

among those who had cut themselves off from their own people and pledged

themselves to the Government. It was sedulously weakened within by

perpetual infusion among its high officials, its peers, its prelates, and

its members from boroughs and shires, of strangers born across the sea—men

whose special mission was to “banish Ireland” and reduce all to

subservience to the interests of another country. Its Statutes were

treated with negligent contempt: “The same Statutes, for lack they be not

in print, be unknown to the most part of your subjects here ... these of

the Irishrie which newly have submitted themselves be in great doubt of

such uncertain and unknown laws,” the Deputy reported. In 1569 it was

proposed, apparently without any reference to Parliament, to print such of

the Statutes “_as it was desirable for our subjects to take note of_”; in

1571 Recorder Stanihurst carried to London the roll of 170 statutes which

were _thought meet_ to be printed by the new English settler, Carew,

(perhaps the most hated of all by the Parliament itself) and a few

officials—a selection which was in London again corrected by Burghley, and

the printing still delayed.

That a Parliament hampered, mutilated, restricted, demoralised, should

have made such a stand for the country’s interests, testifies to the

vigour of constitutional and national life in Ireland. Society indeed is

so closely bound together in any country that the most imperfect and

exclusive body of its inhabitants must feel to some degree the needs and

aspirations of the whole. Mr. A. M. Sullivan, in the last Home Rule

controversy, rightly argued that it was not what the Parliament was that

chiefly mattered, but where it was: “Anything will do, if it is only in

Ireland,” he said, “the Protestant Synod would do.” The same need for some

representative life of a people in their own land was felt by the Great

Earl of Kildare over four hundred years ago. “You hear of our case as in a

dream,” he cried to the London councillors, “and feel not the smart that

vexeth us.”

The close of the old Irish polity, the fate of the Irish Parliaments, have

a deeper lesson to teach than the supposed faults of the Irish temper,

Iberian, Celtic, or Norman. The story of the old Gaelic State, and of the

later Anglo-Irish Commonwealth, both alike reveal a power of patriotism, a

passion of human aspiration, which cannot find its final satisfaction in

material gifts; and which is ill understood by those who deny to Ireland

fair fame, dignity, and a lofty patriotism, and offer in their place

oblivion, with a promise for the future of Tariff Reform and its financial

consequences. The series of failures that have through seven centuries

followed the English dealing with Ireland have their inexorable lesson:

“That nothing has a natural right to last

But equity and reason; that all else

Meets foes irreconcilable, and at best

Lives only by variety of disease.”

IX.—Ireland As A Dependency. BY PROFESSOR A. F. POLLARD

“The ocean,” said Grattan, with reference to the connexion between Great

Britain and Ireland, “protests against separation, and the sea against

union.” The protests of natural forces cannot be ignored, and the history

of the relations between the two islands is filled with the efforts of

statesmen to find a middle way between the horns of this dilemma, and to

adjust the estranging drift of the Irish Channel, the Irish climate, and

racial divergence to the bonds of common interest imposed by the Atlantic

Ocean and foreign competition upon the British Isles. After a brief

eighteen years of uneasy legislative independence, the pendulum swung to

the other extreme, and the Act of Union inaugurated a century of restless

incorporation; but, for five out of the six and a half centuries of

English parliamentary history, Ireland had a subordinate Parliament. Union

has been the exception, not the rule, in the relations of the kingdoms.

The mere existence of an Irish Parliament was not, therefore, fatal to

England’s security or to the growth of its Empire. A Parliament sat at

Dublin while England won the battles of Crecy and Agincourt, of Blenheim

and the Nile, defied the menace of Rome, defeated the Spanish Armada, and

laid the foundations of British dominion in India, in Canada, in the West

Indies, and in South Africa. Spaniards, it is true, landed at Smerwick in

1579 and at Kinsale in 1601, and French troops landed at Carrickfergus in

1760 and at Kilala in 1798; but Spaniards also landed at Penzance in 1593,

and Frenchmen landed on English soil countless times from the days of

William the Conqueror to their descent at Fishguard in 1796. England has

ever been saved by its navy and not by its parliamentary unions, and the

attraction to foreign invaders has not been an Irish Parliament, but the

existence of Irish discontent. No invasion of Ireland, in spite of the

Irish Parliament, came so near to success as did the Jacobite risings

after the Scottish Union.

The recapitulation of these facts is, perhaps, otiose, except to allay

fears which sane politicians do not entertain; and it is more to the point

to show that the causes of Irish dissatisfaction are historical, and are

identical with those which, under similar conditions, produced a similar

discontent in England. The notion that the Irish are naturally turbulent

and disloyal, while the English are by nature the reverse, is one which

could only have grown up after England had rid itself of those irritants

which cause the Irish friction. Between the Norman Conquest and the

Revolution of 1688 England rebelled against more than half its sovereigns:

some were imprisoned, some were expelled, some were assassinated, and some

were done to death in more decorous fashion; and English treason and

turbulence were once quite as much bywords in Europe as ever Irish

disloyalty was in England. The conventional English pictures of Irish

disorder could easily be capped as late as the seventeenth century by

French descriptions of English lawlessness and barbarity. A French

guide-book, published in 1654, declared that England was inhabited by

demons and parricides, and a few years later another Frenchman averred

that the English were a cruel and ferocious race of wolves. The truth of

the matter is that English and Irish alike prefer to manage their own

affairs in accord with their own ideas, and are only contented and loyal

when this condition obtains. The Revolution of 1688 placed its realisation

within the reach of the English people, and there has been no English

rebellion since. But the sovereign remedy for disaffection was refused the

Irish and the American colonists: the latter rebelled, and, being distant,

achieved their independence. The Canadians followed suit in 1837, but

found peace and prosperity under a parliament of their own. South Africa

was converted to the cause of empire by the same expedient; only the

Irish, who are most at England’s mercy, have been condemned to nurse their

grievance and denied the conditions of loyalty.

The remedy does not apply, we are told, to Irish disorders, firstly

because parliamentary institutions are an exotic(122) unsuited to the

Irish soil and temperament, and secondly because they have been weighed in

Irish balances and found wanting. It is hard to see why they should be

regarded as more exotic in Irish Dublin than in French Quebec: Sir Wilfrid

Laurier cannot be termed a failure as a parliamentarian; British parties

at Westminster have been inconvenienced by the parliamentary skill rather

than by the parliamentary incompetence of Irish members; and the present

menace to parliamentary institutions does not come from Ireland. Nor,

indeed, is the argument one which we can employ with any consistency, for

there is hardly a word in our legal and constitutional terminology that is

not of foreign origin. Parliament itself is not of Anglo-Saxon derivation,

and nearly all the things we cherish most have been imported from

abroad—our racehorses and our religion, our alphabet and our algebra, our

trial by jury and our vote by ballot. Pure-bred civilisations have been

rare, inelastic, and unprogressive, and the test of a nation’s political

capacity lies not in its rigid adherence to its original stock-in-trade,

but in its powers of assimilation and adaptability to its environment. It

is no reproach to us that we have dethroned indigenous deities, nor to the

Irish that they have appropriated our Parliamentary weapons; for it is a

poor country which cannot borrow its neighbours’ wisdom and profit by

their experience.

The misfortune for Ireland was that in the earlier stages of its

development it borrowed so little, and retained so much of its primitive

tribal decentralisation. England would have been no less unfortunate had

William the Conqueror only succeeded in establishing a Norman Pale on this

side of the English Channel, and had England retained its connexion with

Normandy. As it was, the Normans and Angevins cured us of our primitive

tribalism, and then left England to work out its own salvation. The

severance of Normandy from England converted the descendants of William’s

companions from a Norman garrison into an English aristocracy, while the

successors of Strongbow’s followers were maintained by the English

connexion as an alien garrison quartered in the barracks of a dwindling

Irish Pale. At first, indeed, they had spread a thin veneer of

Anglo-Norman conquest over the greater part of Ireland; but baronial feuds

only added to the distraction of native septs; and when Edward I.’s

premature imperialism provoked a general Celtic reaction under Robert

Bruce in Scotland and Edward Bruce in Ireland, Anglo-Norman rule was

doomed. The conquerors either threw in their lot with the natives and

became more Irish than the Irish, or withdrew within the Pale and

maintained a troubled existence by sowing division throughout the rest of

the realm. Hence the Irish were always the enemies, seldom the subjects of

the English Crown; and outside the Pale there was no English government of

Ireland during the middle ages. Constitutional relations only existed

between England and the Pale; relations with Ireland outside the Pale were

in that state of nature, in which, says Hobbes, the life of man is “nasty,

short, brutish, and mean.” The Government had not the means to govern; it

felt and it acknowledged no obligations of duty or humanity towards its

foes outside the Pale.

This Pale, about twenty miles broad and sixty miles long, was almost as

narrow and quite as lawless as the Welsh Marches or the Scottish Borders;

and it was the nursery of the English-seedling-parliament in Ireland. A

sort of parliament containing knights from a dozen shires had been

summoned in 1295; boroughs appear to have been represented first in 1310.

It was only designed to supply the financial needs of an English

Government, and give statutory form to the edicts of Dublin Castle; and

the statutes of Kilkenny (1367), which penalised everything Irish, were

merely striking examples of the ferocity and the futility of its customary

legislation. Nevertheless, it began to strike feeble roots in Irish soil,

and when, in 1374, Edward III.’s deputy directed the clergy and laity of

the Pale to send their representatives to Westminster, their constituents,

while obeying, instructed them to reject all financial demands upon

Ireland made at St. Stephen’s. Demands made at Dublin were not, however,

much more fruitful, and for thirty years in the fifteenth century only one

Irish Parliament met. Spasmodic efforts by sovereigns and royal princes

like Richard II., Lionel and Thomas (Dukes of Clarence), and Richard (Duke

of York,) alternated with longer periods, during which the Crown abandoned

the government to the greatest chieftain in the Pale, and made believe

that the power he wielded was due to his royal commission. Richard of

York, indeed, established a reputation for vigorous rule which won him the

support of the Parliament of the Pale in his assertion of an independent

kingship in Ireland after his defeat in England in 1459; and the

Anglo-Irish, either out of gratitude to him or of spite to the Tudors,

afterwards discovered Yorkist features in every pretender to Henry VII.’s

throne. Their favour to Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck precipitated

Poynings’ laws.

These famous enactments were aimed at Dublin Castle rather than at the

Dublin parliament. The Crown had always controlled Irish legislation, but

the control had been exercised through a deputy, who was often more

powerful in Ireland than the Crown; this independence was to cease, and

the control of Irish legislation was transferred from the Irish deputy to

the English Privy Council. No Parliament was to be summoned in the Pale

without the consent, and no legislation introduced without the approval,

of that body. Acts previously passed by the English Parliament were

declared in force in Ireland, and in practice the English Parliament

proceeded to legislate for, though not to tax, Ireland without the

concurrence of its Parliament. Poynings also attempted to conquer the

native Irish, and to rule the Pale according to English ways; but the

expense proved greater than Henry VII. could bear, and, with the bit of

Poynings’ laws in his mouth, the Earl of Kildare was sent back to govern

the Pale in the time-honoured fashion.

Ireland was one of the questions upon which Wolsey and Henry VIII.

disagreed. The Cardinal’s policy was to neglect Ireland and save expenses

in that direction in order to act as the paymaster and to pose as the

arbiter of Europe, with the result that on the eve of his fall, England’s

hold on Ireland was said to be weaker than it had been since the conquest.

When Wolsey was gone, Henry’s imperialism found vent in Ireland as well as

in other spheres, and it was stimulated by the appearance as early as 1528

of Spanish emissaries at the courts of Irish chiefs. But the brutal hatred

which later conflicts engendered did not inspire the Irish efforts of

Henry VIII. His warfare in Ireland was less ferocious than that which he

waged on Scotland, or on the monks of England. If he confiscated the lands

of Irish monasteries, he shared the spoils with Irish chiefs, and he also

confiscated the lands of habitual absentees; and if he proscribed the Earl

of Kildare, he gave earldoms to O’Neill, O’Brien, and MacWilliam. Whatever

plans for the expropriation of the Irish clans were propounded to his

ears, his own policy was not expropriation, but the conversion of Irish

chiefs into Irish peers holding their lands of him as their king; and by

the common testimony of English and Irish alike, the land enjoyed greater

peace and prosperity at the end of his reign than it had within living

memory. The destruction of papal jurisdiction was no grievance to the

Irish, for pope after pope had prohibited their preferment and restricted

Irish sees to men of English race. Even Edward VI.’s Acts of Uniformity,

which were applied to Ireland without the authorisation of its Parliament,

evoked no Irish rebellion; and so mild was religious conflict that there

was no Irish martyr under Protestant Edward VI. or under Catholic Mary.

The permanent schism between the two races was, indeed, due neither to

politics nor to religion, but to the expropriation of the Irish from their

land. At the middle of the sixteenth century the antagonism between

English and Irish was slighter than that between English and Scots, or

that between Britons and Boers in 1900. Men can heal the wounds of the

conquered, but those of the disinherited fester for ever, unless the race

dies out or restitution is made. The Irish are the only white race that

the English have evicted in modern times. They ate up the land piecemeal

because there was no Irish State to be subdued by political conquest;

because their arts of division, which failed against Scottish national

feeling, succeeded against Irish septs; because the English conquest of

Ireland was, in fact, a barbarian conquest achieved by a more or less

civilised race centuries after the normal age of white barbarian conquests

had closed. No conquered States pay ransom with the wholesale confiscation

of the lands of private individuals; that is a price which is only exacted

from the disorganised and the defenceless.

This process began with an Act of Philip and Mary, supported by the Roman

Catholic Church, which was still the Church of the English rulers rather

than that of the Irish people; and the Lord-Deputy Sussex was required to

permit the Primate to “exercise and use all manner of ecclesiastical

censures against the disordered Irishry.” Leix and Offaly, where the

O’Conors and O’Mores had rebelled under Edward VI., were confiscated to

the Crown and converted into King’s and Queen’s Counties. They were to be

planted partly with English settlers and partly with such Irish as would

abjure their native language, laws, and customs. But it took more than

half a century to carry out the plantation, and eighteen rebellions broke

out before the natives could be eradicated from the soil; even when the

miserable remnants had been transplanted to Kerry, many of them straggled

back to live as hirelings on lands that had been their own. Such was the

new model on which Ireland was to be moulded into “civility and good

government;” and in 1622 a Royal Commission pronounced this plantation to

have been well begun and prosperously continued.