LEASE-BREAKING--GEASHILL.
The history of the Manor of Geashill in the King's County furnishes
another instructive illustration of the land question and of the
effect upon the people of the system of management, under the new
school of agents, of which Mr. Steuart Trench may be regarded as the
brightest ornament, if not the apostle. The epoch was favourable for
his mission, and he was the man for the epoch; he had been quietly
training himself for the restoration of disordered estates, and the
critical emergencies of the times thrust him into the front rank of
social reformers. When he describes the wonderful revolutions wrought
by his instrumentality, the whirlwinds on which he rode, the storms
which he directed and quelled, the chaos out of which he evoked order,
he assumes that the hurricane and the chaos were the normal state of
things. A mysterious pestilence had blighted the principal food of
the people for two or three years, and brought on a desolating famine.
Millions perished by that visitation chiefly because the legislature
had persistently refused up to that period to make any provision for
the Irish poor such as it had made centuries before for the English
poor, and because no care had been taken to distribute the population
over the waste lands which their labour would have reclaimed and
fertilized; or to improve their position, so that they might not be
wholly dependent on one sort of food, and that the most precarious and
perishable. Mr. Sadler, in his work on Population, had proved that,
even in the case of Ireland before the famine, there was really no
'surplus population;' that if the resources of the country had been
developed by a wise Government, sympathising with the people, the text
which he adopted would have been applicable there: 'Dwell in the land,
and verily ye shall be fed.' There was hasty legislation to meet the
emergency, but in all the haste, the heartless economists found time
to devise clauses and provisions, by means of which, when the small
farmers had consumed all their stock to keep their families alive,
they were compelled to relinquish their holdings in order to get food
for their famishing children. They must submit to the workhouse test,
they must not hold more than a quarter of an acre of land, if they
would get relief. Under the dire instigation of hunger, in the
stupor and recklessness of their misery, they accepted any terms the
landlords chose to impose, and so whole villages disappeared from the
landscape, swept off with the besom of destruction.
The political economists (all the new school of land-agents are rigid
political economists), taught by their prophet Malthus, ascribed the
famine and every other social evil to surplus population, and to the
incurably lazy and thriftless habits of the Celtic race. According to
them the potato blight had only hastened an inevitable catastrophe.
Therefore they set to work with all their agencies and all their
might to get rid of the too prolific race, and to supplant the native
cultivators by British settlers and wealthy graziers.
This has been done ever since by a quiet and gradual process,
steadily, systematically, inexorably, propelled by many powerful
tendencies of the age, and checked only by assassination. What are the
agrarian outrages which have become so terribly rife of late, but the
desperate struggles of a doomed race to break the instruments which
pluck them out of their native soil? A generation of instruction in
the national schools and a generation of intercourse with the
free citizens of the United States, who call no man 'master' under
heaven--have taught them that it is an enormous iniquity to sacrifice
humanity to property, to make the happiness, the freedom, the very
existence of human beings, secondary to the arbitrary power and
self-interest of a small class called landlords. They regard the
'improving landlord' system as nothing but a legal and civilised
continuation of the barbarous policy of extermination by fire and
sword which we have seen pursued so ruthlessly in the seventeenth
century. It is still the land-war, conducted according to modern
tactics, aiming with deadly effect at the same object, the slow but
sure destruction of a nuisance called the 'Celtic race.' This may be
a delusion on their part; but it is the deep-rooted conviction of
priests and people, and hence the utter inadequacy of any enactment
which will not render such a policy impossible, by making the tenure
of the occupiers independent of the will of the landlords. Until such
time the peasantry will continue to offer a bloody resistance to the
legal attempts to crush them out of the country.
In this self-defensive war, they cannot cope with the armed power
of England in the open field; and they are driven upon the criminal
resource of the oppressed in all ages and all lands--secret
combination and assassination. For this crime they feel no remorse;
first, because it is _war_--just as the soldier feels no remorse
for killing the enemy in a battle; and, secondly, because their
conquerors, and the successors of those conquerors, have taught them
too well by repeated examples the terrible lesson of making light of
human life. Poor ignorant creatures, they cannot see that, while
the most illustrious noblemen in England won applause and honours
by shooting down Irish women and children like seals or otters,
the survivors of the murdered people should be execrated as cruel,
barbarous, and infamous for shooting the men that pull down the
rooftrees over the heads of their helpless families and trample upon
their household gods. These convictions of theirs are very revolting
to our feelings, but they are facts; and as facts the legislature must
deal with them. If there be a people, otherwise singularly free from
crime, who regard the assassination of the members of a certain
class with indifference, or approbation, the phenomenon is one which
political philosophy ought to be able to explain, and one which cannot
be got rid of by suspending the constitution and bringing railing
accusations against the nation.
Mr. Trench speaks with something like contempt or pity of 'good
landlords,' a class which he contradistinguishes from 'improving
landlords.' But it should be remembered that by this last phrase he
always means agents of the Trench stamp. For he observes that the
landlord himself cannot possibly do much more than authorize his agent
to do what he thinks best; and it is rather an advantage that the
proprietor should be an absentee, otherwise his good nature might
prompt him to interrupt the work of improvement. Now there is this to
be said of the good landlords, who may be counted by hundreds, and who
are found in all the counties of Ireland. Their estates are free from
the 'poetic turbulence' in which Mr. Trench is the 'stormy petrel.'
They preserved their tenants through the years of famine, and have
them still on their estates. Nor should the fact be omitted that among
those good landlords, who abhor the idea of evicting their tenants,
are to be found the lineal descendants of some of the most cruel
exterminators of the seventeenth century. Their goodness has
completely obliterated, among their people, the bitter memories of the
past. The present race of Celts would die for the men whose ancestors
shot down their forefathers as vermin. But the improving landlords run
their ploughshares through the ashes of old animosities, turning up
embers which the winds of agitation blow into flames. We seldom hear
of Ribbonism till the improving agent comes upon the scene, warring
against natural rights, warring against the natural affections,
warring against humanity, warring against the soul.
These remarks bring us to the case of the barony of Geashill, the
estate of Lord Digby, to which Mr. Trench became agent in 1857. Lord
Digby desired to obtain his services, but he did not communicate his
desire to Mr. Trench himself, though nothing would seem easier. It was
first conveyed by Lieut.-General Porter, the confidential friend of
Lord Digby, and next by Mr. Brewster, afterwards Lord Chancellor of
Ireland. When the police received a notice that the new landlord of
Geashill would certainly meet with a 'bloody death' if he persisted in
his threatened dealings with the tenants, there was no more time
for diplomatic delicacy in approaching Mr. Trench. The landlord's
extremity is Mr. Trench's opportunity. When leases are to be broken,
when independent rights are to be extinguished, or 'contracted away,'
when an overcrowded estate is to be thinned at the least possible
cost to the owner, when a rebellious tenantry are to be subdued, and
Ribbonmen are to be banished or hanged, Mr. Trench is the man to do
the work of improvement. He admits that he never had before him an
uglier job than this at Geashill, and he had the worst apprehensions
as to the danger of the enterprise.
It was nothing less than to break 120 leases, which had been granted
from time to time by the late Lord Digby during the sixty years that
he had enjoyed the property. The value of these leases was 30,600 l.,
for the terms unexpired after his death. Among those 120 leaseholders
were the descendants of English settlers, gentlemen farmers, one of
them a magistrate, and a number of substantial yeomen, the sort of men
the country so much wanted to form an independent middle class. But to
an 'improving landlord,' the existence of such a class on his estate
is intolerable. At all hazards they must be made tenants-at-will, and
brought completely under his control.
They had built houses and planted trees; they had reclaimed the deep
bog and converted it into good arable land. They had employed the
peasantry, and given them plots of ground, and, more than all, they
had allowed a number of families to squat on bits of bog by the
roadside, where they lived as well as they could; working when
there was a demand for labour, cutting turf and selling it in the
neighbouring town of Tullamore, and perhaps carrying on some little
dealings. At all events they had survived the famine; and there they
were in 1857 with their huts standing on their 'estates,' for they had
paid no rent for twenty years, and they had as good a title in law
as Lord Digby himself. Mr. Trench seems to have been horrified at
not finding the names of these householders in the rent-books of the
estate! The idea!--that there should be within the four corners of the
King's County, even on the bog of Allen, a number of natives holding
land, without a landlord! It was monstrous. But as they could not be
evicted for non-title, they were all severally tempted by the offer
of money, in sums varying from 5 l. to 20 l. each, to sell their
freeholds to the landlord. Pity they were not preserved as a remnant
of the antediluvian period, ere the ancient tenures were merged in
floods of blood. Like a bit of primitive forest, they would be more
interesting to some minds than the finest modern plantation.
It was not so easy to deal with the 120 leaseholders. To what extent
they had improved their farms before they got the leases, Mr. Trench
does not say. But as the absentee landlord had done nothing, and spent
nothing, whatever increase to the value had been made was undoubtedly
the work of the tenants; and after the leases were obtained, they
would naturally feel more confidence in the investment of their
savings in the land. However that may be, a professional man, employed
by Lord Digby, estimated the value over and above the reserved rent
at 30,600 l., which sum the new landlord proposed to put into his own
pocket, by increasing the rent one-third. The plea for this sweeping
confiscation was, that the late Lord Digby, cousin to the present, had
only a life interest in the Irish estate, and therefore, the leases
were all illegal and worthless. Accordingly the new lord commenced
proceedings to evict the whole of the tenantry for non-title. They
were astounded. They held meetings; they deliberated; they appealed to
the landlord; they appealed to the executors of the late peer, who
had large estates in England, and died worth a million sterling in
the funds, all of which he willed away from the heir of his title and
Irish estates. Says Mr. Trench:--
'It may readily be supposed that circumstances so peculiar as these
created considerable anxiety in the district. The tenantry, _many_ of
them large and respectable land-holders, now learned, for the first
time, that their leases were good for nothing in law. They had been
duly 'signed, sealed, and delivered' to them under a full belief on
their part that the contract was not only just and honourable, but
also perfectly legal; and their feelings may be imagined when they
found that they were suddenly threatened with a total loss of the
property which they had always looked upon as secure.'[1]
[Footnote 1: 'Realities of Irish Life,' p.314.]
Pending the ejectment proceedings, they were knocked about from post
to pillar, without getting any satisfaction. The landlord referred
them to the executors, although he knew well they had no legal claim
on them whatever, and that to legal claims only could they pay any
attention. The executors again referred them to their landlord, who
was determined to break the leases, come what would. Now, if the Irish
law regulating the relations of landlord and tenant were based upon
justice and equity, the wrong done by the late earl, if any, was a
wrong for which the tenants should in no way be held responsible. The
wrong was done to the heir-at-law. To him, and not to the tenants,
compensation should have been made by the executors. And after all, it
was really to him that the money was advanced to buy up the leases,
in order to save him from assassination, for the tenants had no legal
claim upon them.
The natural, proper, and honest course, then, for the landlord, was to
have kept the 30,600 l. as compensation to himself for the mistake
of his predecessor, and to let the leases stand. If he considered
the peace of the country, if he wished to inspire in the minds of
the people respect for the rights of property, or confidence in the
Government, he would not have adopted the desperate course of breaking
120 contracts, kindling the flames of agitation, and planting Ribbon
lodges all over a district hitherto peaceful and tranquil. But he was
bent on crushing the independent yeomanry into the abject condition
of tenants-at-will. To carry out this purpose, Mr. Trench was
indispensable. He knew how to tame the wild Irish. And Mr. Trench was
equal to the occasion. He went to reside a few weeks at Tullamore, to
reconnoitre the enemy's position. He writes as if this was the first
time he made acquaintance with the estate. But his own residence
was in the Queen's County, not far off; and there is good reason to
believe that he knew all about Geashill long before; and all about
every estate belonging to an English absentee in the four provinces;
for he had, growing up around him, a young generation of land-agents,
trained in all the arts of modern management, and one of the ablest
of these, his son, Mr. T.W. Trench, became his partner in this agency.
Mr. Trench's tactics are not new, though he excels all men in their
skilful application. His plan, adopted on all occasions, is to divide
and conquer. Violent measures being dangerous and contrary to his
own feelings, he trusts to diplomacy, dealing with individuals,
taken separately into a private room, where his irresistible personal
fascination invariably brings matters to a satisfactory issue.
In this case, he went over to the English executors, and persuaded
them to advance the 30,600 l. to be distributed among the tenants,
under the guarantee of Lord Digby that this sum would cover all
possible claims. Thus provided with funds, he summoned the tenants,
not all, but ten of the most influential, to meet him at Geashill. He
left this meeting, purposely, to the last day and the last hour, as a
piece of generalship. He says:--
'They appeared puzzled and anxious, and very uncertain what to do. At
length one of them proposed that they should do nothing until they had
had an opportunity of consulting the remainder of the leaseholders, of
whom there were upwards of 120 upon the estate.
'"No," replied I, "you must come to a decision now; there is a
messenger at the door on horseback, to ride to the telegraph station
at Portarlington to stop the English witnesses coming over. This must
be done within an hour, or they will start for Ireland, and _then_ it
will be out of my power to stop the lawsuit. You must determine _now_,
each man for himself, or the lawsuit must go on."
'"Will you state the amount of money you will give to each of us?"
asked one of the party.
'"Certainly," replied I, "if you will _each come separately with me
into another room_."
'They did so. I named to each an amount something less than the sum
set down by the notary, partly as a reserve, lest any tenants holding
under these leaseholders should afterwards require to be paid, and
partly lest it might be supposed we were yielding to a legal claim
already granted. After a little consideration, they all severally
signed the consent for judgment.'
The other leaseholders followed. The leases were all surrendered, and
the holders became tenants-at-will. I had the pleasure of meeting one
of the most influential of them a short time ago at Geashill--a fine
tall, patriarchal-looking gentleman, the representative of one of the
English settlers. He was waiting about humbly and patiently for an
opportunity of speaking to the young agent, who is as courteous and
kind as he is efficient. But I could not help reflecting how different
would be the bearing of the tenant if he had been still in possession
of his lease! His dwelling-house was not as grand as the stylish villa
which the landlord has erected beside it. But every stick and stone
about the place were his own property. So also were the old timber
trees, which his ancestors planted. But now every stick and stone
and tree belong to Lord Digby, and as such the agent exhibits them to
visitors--the buildings, the gardens, the trees, the hedges, the rich
pasture fields, all having such a look of comfort and independence. I
asked, 'Did you ever know a place like this old home of yours to have
been made by a tenant-at-will?' He answered in the negative.
The tenant on an 'improved estate' must be very careful about his
speech. An agent has a hundred eyes and a hundred ears. People who
seek 'favours' at the office, find it useful to be spies upon their
neighbours, to detect violations of the 'rules of the estate.' It is
mainly through the spy-system that Mr. Steuart Trench, according to
his own avowal, won most of his victories over refractory tenants. For
example, on this estate he had a woman acting as a spy at the meetings
of the Ribbonmen; and he boasted that a dog could not bark at Farney
without his knowledge. I refer to this matter here again for the
purpose of saying that I cannot regard as an improvement of the
country a system which establishes a despot on every estate, which
degrades the tenant into a day-labourer, which--land being limited and
scarce--substitutes the old, barbarous, pastoral system for tillage,
which banishes the poor and enslaves the rich. Lord Digby levelled
cottages, gardens, farms, manured the land, got an enormous crop,
which in one year paid all the expenses; and then laid out the land in
vast tracts of pasture, for which he gets from 30 s. to 40 s. an acre.
That is improvement for _him_, but not for the people, not for the
country, not for the state, not for the Queen. It may crush Ribbonism.
But for every Ribbonman crushed, a hundred Fenians spring up; and
disaffection becomes not a mere local plague, but an endemic. Mr.
Trench gives a significant hint to other landlords to follow the
example of Lord Digby, assuring them that it will '_pay_.'
A still more flagrant case of lease-breaking occurred some years ago
in the county of Galway. Dr. Hancock has put the facts of this case
before the Government in his recent report:--
'The plaintiff was the Rev. Dr. O'Fay, parish priest of Craughwell, in
the county of Galway, and the defendant the landlord on whose estate
the priest resided. About ten years ago the priest was induced to
take a farm that had been held by a former parish priest; the previous
proprietor, the father of the defendant, promising a lease for three
lives, or thirty-one years. After the priest entered into possession
the landlord ascertained that he could not fulfil his promise.
'As he did not possess such a power under the terms of the estate
settlement, he offered, instead, a lease for the priest's own
life, and 20 l. to aid in building a house. The priest continued
in possession of the farm, and paid the rent agreed on, thus, as he
alleged, accepting the arrangement proposed. He was on excellent terms
with the landlord, and expended 70 l. in permanent improvements, and
did not ask for the 20 l. which the landlord had promised. In 1854 the
landlord died, and his son, the defendant, succeeded to the property.
He gave notice to all his yearly tenants of an intention to raise
their rents. The priest claimed to have a promise of a lease, and the
agent of the property, during the landlord's absence abroad, admitted
this claim, and did not raise the rent. The landlord said he had no
notice of his father's promise; he, however, allowed the priest to
remain in possession, and the priest expended 400 l. in buildings, on
the faith that he would not be disturbed. A dispute subsequently arose
about trespass, and the fences on the boundary between the priest's
farm and some land in the possession of the landlord. The landlord
served notice to quit, and brought an ejectment. After some delay
judgment was given in his favour, subject to an application to the
Court of Chancery to compel him to fulfil his father's promise of a
lease.'
The Master of the Rolls thus characterised the law which justifies the
robbery of the tenants by unscrupulous and vindictive landlords:--
'Even if the Rev. Dr. O'Fay had no claim except as tenant from year to
year, I have no hesitation in stating that, although in point of law
on the authorities I have referred to, and particularly the case of
Felling _v._ Armitage, the petitioner's suit could not be sustained,
_yet noticing can be more repugnant to the principles of natural
justice than that a landlord should look on at a great expenditure
carried on by a tenant from year to year, without warning the tenant
of his intention to turn him out of possession_. The defendant's offer
to allow Dr. O'Fay to remove the buildings was a mockery. _I have no
jurisdiction to administer equity in the natural sense of that term,
or I should have no difficulty whatever in making a decree against the
defendant._ I am bound to administer an artificial system, established
by the decisions of eminent judges, such as Lord Eldon and Sir William
Grant, and _being so bound, I regret much that I must administer
injustice in this case, and dismiss the petition_, but I shall dismiss
it without costs. _I should be very glad for the sake of justice that
my decision should be reversed by the Court of Appeal._'
Lest it might be supposed that this was the opinion of a single judge,
we find in the Court of Appeal equally strong views stated:--It
was thrown out that it was a case for amicable settlement, but the
respondent's counsel assured the Court that his client 'had resolved
to spend his fortune, if necessary, in resisting the claim of the
Rev. Dr. O'Fay.' Lord Justice Blackburne pronounced this to be a very
irrational determination, although he had to decide that the claim
could not be sustained in law or equity.
Lord Chancellor Napier, in concluding his judgment, said:--
'I think I am not overstepping my duty in suggesting to the
respondent, that, under all the circumstances of this case, he will
best maintain the character and honour of a British officer, satisfy
the exigencies of justice, and uphold the rights of property, by
making _such an arrangement_ with Dr. O'Fay, as to the possession of
this farm, _as may leave him the full benefit of an expenditure made
in good faith, and with the reasonable expectation of having the full
benefit of it sufficiently secured by an undisturbed possession_.'
It is a favourite theory with the new school of agents and improving
landlords, that long leases cause bad cultivation; in other words,
that industry prospers best where there is no security that you can
reap what you have sown, except the honour of a man whose interest it
is to appropriate the fruits of your labours, which he can _legally_
do. Now, in every class and profession, there are failures,--persons
that are good for nothing, indolent, improvident, and thriftless. If
such a man has a long lease at a low rent, he may be overwhelmed in
debt, and leave his land in very bad condition. Others may imitate
their aristocratic superiors in their contempt for labour and their
habits of expenditure, and so get into a state of hopeless poverty on
a good estate. If there are cases where industrious sober men are the
worse for having an old lease, it should be remembered that the most
insecure of all tenures is a lease dependent on a single bad life,
which may drop at any hour. But there are other causes of the facts
urged against long tenures, for which the legislature is responsible,
not the unimproving tenant. Dr. Hancock explains this point very
satisfactorily:--
'Instances of bad cultivation and neglect of improvements, where long
leases exist, are sometimes brought forward to show the inutility of
tenure as a security for capital, and the strange economic theory
is propounded that a precarious interest is more favourable to the
investment of capital than a secure one. As well might the state of
landed property in Ireland before the Incumbered Estates Court was
established be adduced as an argument against property in land. The
remedy, however, which the legislature applied to incumbered estates
of large proprietors was not to destroy property in land, but simply
to secure its prompt, cheap, and effectual transfer to solvent hands.
'For tenants' interests under leases where the value is small, and
where the interests have become complicated, the Landed Estates
Court is too expensive, and so these interests remain often for years
untransferred, in the hands of some one who has a very limited and
often uncertain interest in them. Such a leaseholder is deterred from
making improvements by the state of the law which deprives him of the
entire value of his improvements if anyone should disturb him under
a prior charge or claim, however obscure or unknown, affecting his
interest. The remedy is to be found in an extension of the principle
of the Record of Title Act to the local registry of small leasehold
interests, and in the providing for the local sale of such interests
in a cheap manner, with an absolute title.'