THE LAND SYSTEM AND THE WORKING CLASSES.
We have been told over and over again that the business of Ireland,
and all its improvements, requiring education and integrity, are
carried on 'by the Protestants, by whose intelligence, and labour,
mental and bodily, its prosperity, such as it is, has been produced.'
This assertion has been made with great confidence, by many writers
and speakers. It is a gross exaggeration, and absurd as it is gross. I
say nothing of the unseemly egotism of a dominant caste, thus parading
its own merits, flaunting its plumes, strutting and crowing over the
common folk--of this pharisaic spirit of the ascendant Protestant,
standing close to the altar, reciting to God and the world the number
of his resplendent virtues, and scornfully contrasting his excellent
moral condition with the degraded Catholic--the vile publican and
sinner, overwhelmed with enormous guilt. These monopolising Pharisees,
who laboured at such a rate to assert their natural superiority, as
the favourites of Heaven, and members of the Sovereign's church, over
a race which England enabled them to subjugate and impoverish, have
found no trumpeter so loud as Master Fitzgibbon, a chancery judge. In
the same spirit the last census has been analysed by one of the ablest
defenders of the Irish establishment, the Rev. Dr. Hume, of Liverpool,
in order to prove that everything good in Ireland has been done by
the Protestants, and everything bad by the Catholics. But he does not
state fairly the conditions of the race. He does not state that one of
the competitors had been master for centuries, well-fed, well-trained,
possessed of all advantages which give strength, skill, courage, and
confidence, while the other was ill-fed, untrained, enfeebled, and
_over-weighted_, having to work out of himself the slavish spirit
which oppression had produced, and to gain, by extra efforts, the
skill which the law had forbidden him to acquire. Nevertheless the
Catholics have acquired skill, and the extent to which the empire is
dependent on their knowledge of the industrial arts is much greater
than many people suppose. Of the farming class in Ireland, 76 per
cent. are Roman Catholics. But we are indebted to the obnoxious race
in other respects than as producers of food.
From the classification of occupations and professions, we learn that
the Roman Catholics bear the following proportions to the Protestants
of all denominations.
Persons employed in the manufacture of: Roman Catholics.
Skin clothing .77 per cent.
Woollen do. .88 "
Flax do. .43 "
Cotton do. .53 "
Straw do. .66 "
Silk do. .66 "
Miscellaneous do. .67 "
In producing furniture .84 "
In unclassed industrial employments .84 "
In amusements .80 "
In architecture .78 "
In making machinery .76 "
In conveyance and travelling .73 "
In literature and education .56 "
In charity and benevolence .52 "
In health .50 "
In science and art .47 "
In justice and government .46 "
In banking and agency .40 "
There are other suggestive figures in the census, bearing on
this question. While three-fourths of the farmers are Catholics,
three-fourths of the land-agents are Protestants, who, as a rule,
have an unconquerable antipathy to the Catholic clergy, as the only
obstacle to their absolute power over the tenants, with whom they find
it hard to sympathise. Of farm labourers and domestic servants, nine
out of ten belong to the race supposed by some to be incapable of
virtue and loyalty. Again, of the whole British army of all ranks, 37
per cent. are Irishmen, and of these Irish soldiers, 67 per cent. are
Catholics. More than three-fourths of the magistrates are Protestants;
and they bear about the same proportion on the grand juries. According
to the theory and practice of the constitution, all power, legislative
and administrative, must be based on the ownership of land. The
rate-payers have a voice indeed, but it is generally nothing but
an echo of the landlord's voice; what else can it be when they are
tenants-at-will, depending on the mercy of the proprietor for the
means of existence? In county offices, the Protestants have an
overwhelming majority. It is the same in all the offices filled by
government patronage, except the judges of the superior courts. There
Catholics are in the majority, because they had obtained seats in the
House of Commons.
On the boards of guardians the mass of the poor might expect that
a majority of guardians would be prompted by national and religious
feeling to sympathise with them, so that they would find in the master
and matron, the doctor and the relieving officer, something like the
natural tenderness which a common kindred and creed inspire. But half
the guardians are _ex-officio_ members, as magistrates; nearly all
landlords and Protestants. They have in addition 'property votes,' and
'residence votes;' so that, with their influence over the elections,
they are generally able to pack the board; and in that case the
officials are almost invariably Protestants and conservatives. I know
a union in which three-fourths of the rate-payers are Roman Catholics;
and yet, with the utmost efforts of the priests, they were not able to
elect a single Catholic guardian. To meet the landlord pressure,
some of the rate-payers were required to sign their voting papers in
presence of their pastors, yet so terrible was that pressure that they
afterwards took them to the agent's office, and, to make assurance
doubly sure, tore them up before his face. I have been told by a
priest, that such is the mortal dread of eviction, or of a permanent
fine in the form of increased rent, that he had known tenants who,
when produced in the witness-box, denied on oath acts of oppression of
which they had been bitterly complaining to himself, and which he well
knew to be facts.
Thus the land-war rages at every board of guardians, in every
dispensary, in every grand jury room, at every petty sessions,
in every county court, in every public institution throughout the
kingdom. The land-agent is the commanding officer, his office is a
garrison, dominating the surrounding district. He is able, in most
cases, to defy the confessional and the altar; because he wields
an engine of terror generally more powerful over the mind of the
peasantry than the terrors of the world to come. Armed with the 'rules
of the estate' and with a notice to quit, the agent may have almost
anything he demands, short of possession of the farm and the home of
the tenant. The notice to quit is like a death warrant to the family.
It makes every member of it tremble and agonise, from the grey-headed
grandfather and grandmother, to the bright little children, who read
the advent of some impending calamity in the gloomy countenances and
bitter words of their parents. The passion for the possession of land
is the chord on which the agent plays, and at his touch it vibrates
with 'the deepest notes of woe.' By the agent of an improving landlord
it is generally touched so cunningly, that its most exquisite torture
cannot easily be proved to be a grievance. He presents an alternative
to the tenant; he does less than the law allows. He could strike a
mortal blow, but he lends a helping hand. Resistance entails ruin;
compliance secures friendship. Give up the old _status_, and accept
a new one: cease to stand upon _right_, consent to hang upon _mercy_,
and all may be well.
Passing a cottage by the road-side, one of the kindest and best of
those agents said to me, 'See with what infatuation these people cling
to their old places! There is a man in that dilapidated cabin, with
only one acre of ground. It is an eyesore. I have offered him a nice
new slated cottage with ten acres, within a short distance, and he
obstinately refuses to quit.'
Why did he refuse? I suppose, because the place was _his own_. The
house was probably built by his father; it is the house in which he
was born, endeared to him, no doubt, by many powerful associations,
little appreciated by those who never condescend to read the 'simple
annals of the poor.' He felt, that if, like his neighbours, he moved
into a house built by the landlord, he would cease to be a free man,
and would pass under the yoke of a _master._ I was with some visitors
in one of the new cottages. The wife of the cottier with smiles
assented to all that was said as to the neatness and comfort of the
place. I thought the smiles were forced. I was last in going out, and
I heard her heave a heavy sigh. Perhaps she longed for the old home
and its freedom, envying the lot of the sturdy peasant to whom I have
alluded. Poor fellow! he must give way at last. But his proud manhood
is the stuff of which Hampdens are made.
I have devoted much time and attention to personal enquiries from town
to town, from village to village, and from house to house, seeking
corroborative evidence from men of all ranks and professions, on the
effect of the _Improved Land System_ on the working classes, and I
will here faithfully record as briefly as possible the result of my
enquiries. I must premise a few words as to the principles of the
system which is called 'English.'
1. There is the principle of _contract_, by which alone any tenant
is to be permitted to occupy land. There is to be no foothold in the
island, from the centre all round to the sea, from the top of the
highest mountain to the shore at low-water-mark, for any Irishman in
his native land, unless he obtains it by contract from a landlord and
pays for it.
2. There is the principle of _compensation_ for unexhausted
improvements at the rate of five or six per cent. on the outlay,
provided the improvements have been made with the knowledge and
consent of the landlord. A certain number of years is held to be
sufficient to recoup the tenant for his outlay. If he is removed
before that time he is entitled to the balance of his invested
capital; just as if the relation were strictly commercial, and as if
he had no further claim than his percentage. If the landlord makes the
improvement--which he prefers doing, on the new system--he requires
the tenant to pay at the rate of four to six per cent. in the form of
rent--a clear gain to the landlord, who can borrow money on much lower
terms, and can hardly invest his capital so profitably or so safely
elsewhere.
3. _Absenteeism_ is no disadvantage or loss to the country. This
principle is in great favour with the agents. There is no theme on
which they are so eloquent or so argumentative. In the absence of the
landlord the agent is all-powerful. What the Irish lord deputy was to
the Tudors and Stuarts, the Irish agent now is to the great absentee
proprietor residing in London or Paris. He will undertake to
demonstrate that the West-end of London would be just as prosperous if
the Queen and her court resided constantly at Balmoral or Killarney;
if the parliament met alternately in Edinburgh and Dublin, and if
the government offices were all at Liverpool. With the blessing of
absenteeism, houses in London would be built as fast, and would bring
as high rents; trade would be as brisk, artizans of all sorts as well
paid, life as happy, and the Londoners as well content. The Irish,
however, have, in their ignorance of political economy, conceived the
idea, that if the millions sterling sent annually out of the country
to London were spent among those by whose labour the money is made,
there would be more employment for all sorts of tradesmen, more
business for the shopkeepers, more opportunities of advancement for
the farmers' sons, more houses built, more trees planted, more land
reclaimed, more factories established, more money stirring, more
wealth, more life, more enjoyment, an immense increase of national
prosperity. The agents say that this is all a delusion.
4. The next principle of the new agents is this--and to carry it out
is the aim of all their improvements--that their mission is to produce
the greatest amount of rent from the smallest number of tenants.
5. To reduce the population by _emigration_ or other means until there
is barely a sufficient number of labourers to attend the agricultural
machines, and herd the cattle.
6. To discourage _marriage_ in every possible way, and to diminish
pauperism till there shall be no further use of the workhouses but to
serve as lying-in hospitals for the thrifty spinsters, as they do
in Cumberland and Westmoreland--where the arrangement seems the
most natural thing in the world. It is certainly not an unnatural
consequence of the practice of men and women sleeping in the same
apartment.
Now let us see the working of this new system in Ireland; for it is at
work more or less extensively in all the four provinces. The rules
of the estate, when rigidly enforced, as they generally are by the
improving agents, tend steadily, powerfully, to break down the small
farmers. They are disappearing by thousands every year. Some take
their chance across the Atlantic. Others fall into the condition of
labourers, and may earn 2 s. a day on the estate. This will last for
awhile until the land is drained, manured, and turned into permanent
pasture. Then their occupation is gone. There is nothing more for them
to do. There is no place for them, no room, no support in their native
land. The grass will grow without their labour, and the bullocks will
fatten without their care.
We are constantly hearing of the immense rise in wages since the
famine. Well, they are nominally higher, but in the old times the
labourer could get more for 8 d. or 10 d. than he can now get for 1
s. 6 d. or 2 s. Fuel is now three times as dear as it was, because the
'rules of the estate' will not allow the tenants to sell turf even
on the verge of extensive bogs. Milk, which was formerly abundant and
very cheap, is scarcely to be had at all now in the country towns
and villages, because the land is devoted to feeding sheep and 'dry
cattle.' Under the old system, the cottiers in the small towns and
villages, as well as on the roads in the country, were enabled to keep
pigs. The pig paid the rent, and made manure which was put out on the
ground of some neighbouring farmer, hired as 'conacre.' The crop of
potatoes thus obtained was a great help in the winter months, when
employment was rarely to be had. This practice still prevails in
Ulster. The farmer puts in the crop for the manure, the cottier paying
the farmer's rent--5 s. to 10 s. a rood, or whatever it may be. With
this help the family get over the winter, and feed the pig, without
which help, they say, it would be impossible to exist, even with
constant employment at a shilling a day. But on the estates of
improving landlords in the other provinces, the rules forbid the
tenant to give the use of any ground for conacre. He must not, on pain
of eviction, take manure for such a purpose, though it would help to
enrich his land for the ensuing year. The evicted cottiers and small
farmers are forced to go to towns and villages, shut up in unwholesome
rooms. When they have been thus so far got rid of, the most ingenious
devices are resorted to in order to render it impossible for them to
live. By the 'rules of the estate,' the supply of necessaries is
cut off on every side. Without fuel, without milk, without potatoes,
unless bought at a high rate for ready money, how are they to live?
The strong members of the poor man's family emigrate or go to
service; the weak ones and the young children pine away in a state
of semi-starvation, preferring that to the best fare in the hated
workhouse.
The people are fully sensible of the causes of these privations. They
know that they have been forced into this condition by the landlords
and their improving agents, induced in some cases by the temptation of
a few pounds to surrender their little holdings. The lord lieutenant
of the King's County has thus cleared an immense district, and has
himself become a grazier and a cattle-dealer on a monster scale,
attending the markets in person, and driving hard bargains with the
farmers and jobbers. By such means the population of that county has
been reduced one-third in the last twenty years. The moral aspect of
this new system is worthy of consideration. It is thus presented by
Archdeacon Redmond of Arklow, one of the most moderate and respected
parish-priests in Ireland. When lately presenting an address to Lord
Granard from his Wexford tenantry, he said:--
'I have always heard the house of Forbes eulogised for its advocacy of
civil and religious liberty, and the name of Grogan Morgan has become
a household word through this county as one of the best landlords in
Ireland. He never broke down a rooftree during or since the terrible
famine. Under his fostering care they have all tided over the
calamitous time, and are happy and prosperous in their homes. He did
not think his estate overcrowded, nor did he avail himself of the
mysterious destruction of the fruits of the earth, to clear off
beings made in God's image, and to drive them to the poorhouse, the
fever-shed, or the emigrant ship, to whiten the bottom of the sea
with their bones, or to face the moral and physical perils of
the transatlantic cities. He did not read his bible, like Satan,
backwards, nor did he turn out the Son of God in the person of His
poor. Hence his name is in benediction, and his estates are more
prosperous than the estates of those who forget God in their worldly
wisdom, and would seem to have no belief in a judgment to come. What
a happiness it is, my Lord and Lady Granard, for you to have such a
heritage, and to know that you live in the hearts of your tenantry,
who would spill the last drop of their blood to shield you and your
dear children from hurt and harm!'
Let it not be supposed that such sentiments are peculiar to the
Catholic clergy, or that their causes exist only in the south and
west. The Rev. Dr. Drew, a rector in the county Down, an Orange
chaplain, a veteran champion of Protestantism and Toryism, but an
honourable and humane man, wrote the following letter last autumn:--
If the magnificent lecture of Mr. Butt had done nothing more than
elicit this letter from Dr. Drew, it would have been much. But will
not the thoughts of many hearts be revealed in the same manner? What
a number of plain-speaking Drews we shall have denouncing tyranny when
their consciences are relieved from the incubus of the Establishment!
_To Isaac Butt, Esq., LL.D._
'My dear Butt--If every other man in the world entertained doubts of
my sincerity, you, at least, would give me credit for honesty and
just intentions. I write to you accordingly, because my mind has been
stirred to its inmost depths by the perusal of your address in my
native city of Limerick. I do not regard the subject of your address
as a political one. It ought to be regarded solely as a question of
humanity, justice, common sense, and common honesty. I wish my lot had
never been cast in rural places. As a clergyman I hear what neither
landlords nor agents ever hear. I see the depression of the people;
their sighs and groans are before me. They are brought so low as
often to praise and glorify those who, in their secret hearts, are the
objects of abhorrence. All this came out gradually before me. Nor did
I feel as I ought to feel in their behalf until, in my own person and
purse, I became the victim of a system of tyranny which cries from
earth to heaven for relief. Were I to narrate my own story it
would startle many of the Protestants of Ireland. There are good
landlords--never a better than the late Lord Downshire, or the living
and beloved Lord Roden. But there are too many of another state of
feeling and action. There are estates in the north where the screw is
never withdrawn from its circuitous and oppressive work. Tenant-right
is an unfortunate and delusive affair, simply because it is almost
invariably used to the landlord's advantage. Here we have an election
in prospect, and in many counties no farmer will be permitted to think
or act for himself. What right any one man has to demand the surrender
of another's vote, I never could see. It is an act of sheer felony--a
perfect "stand-and-deliver" affair. To hear a man slavishly and
timorously say, "I must give my votes as the landlord wishes," is an
admission that the legislature, which bestowed the right of voting on
the tenant, should not see him robbed of his right, or subsequently
scourged or banished from house and land, because he disregarded a
landlord's nod, or the menace of a land agent. At no little hazard of
losing the friendship of some who are high and good and kind, I write
as I now do.--Yours, my dear Butt, very sincerely,
'THOMAS DREW.
'Dundrum, Clough, County Down,
September 7, 1868.'
Some resident landlords employ a considerable number of labourers, to
each of whom they give an excellent cottage, an acre of land, and
the grass of a cow, with work all the year round at seven shillings
a week. The tenants are most comfortable and most grateful, while the
praise of those landlords is in the mouths of the peasantry all round
the country. But these considerate landlords are in a minority. As a
rule, on the estates where the improvement system is going on, where
farms are being consolidated, and grazing supersedes tillage, an iron
pressure weighs upon the labouring classes, crushing them out of
the country. It is a cold, hard, calculating, far-reaching system of
inhumanity, which makes the peasant afraid to harbour his own flesh
and blood. It compels the grandmother to shut the door in the face of
the poor homeless orphan, lest the improving agent should hear of the
act of sheltering him from the pitiless storm, not more pitiless than
the agent himself. The system of terrorism established by the threats
of eviction de-humanizes a people remarkable for their hospitality to
the poor. Mr. Thomas Crosbie, of Cork, a gentleman whom I believe to
be as truthful and honourable as any agent in Ireland, gives appalling
illustrations of this in his account of 'The Lansdowne Estates,'
published in 1858. Mr. Trench has given the English public several
pretty little romances about these estates; but he omitted some
realities that ought to have impressed themselves upon his memory as
deeply as any of his adventures. Mr. Crosbie found that the 'rules
of the estate,' which were rigidly enforced, forbid tenants to build
houses for their labourers, 'the consequence of which was that men and
women servants, no matter how great the number, must live under one
roof.' The rules forbid marriage without the agent's permission. A
young couple got married, and were chased away to America; and 'the
two fathers-in-law were not merely warned; they were punished for
harbouring their son and daughter, by a fine of a gale of rent.' It
was a rule 'that no stranger be lodged or harboured in any house
upon the estate, lest he should become sick or idle, or in some way
chargeable upon the poor-rates.' 'Several were warned and punished for
giving lodging to a brother-in-law, a daughter,' &c. 'A poor widow got
her daughter married without the necessary permission; she was served
with a notice to quit, which was withdrawn on the payment of three
gales of rent.' Mr. Crosbie gives a number of cases of the kind. The
following are the most remarkable. A tenant, Timothy Sullivan, of
Derrynabrack, occasionally gave lodging to his sister-in-law, whilst
her husband was seeking for work. He was afraid to lodge both or
either; 'but the poor woman was in low fever, and approaching her
confinement. Even under such circumstances his terror was so great
that he removed her to a temporary shed on Jeremiah Sullivan's land,
where she gave birth to a child. She remained there for some time.
When "the office" heard of it, Jeremiah Sullivan was sent for and
compelled to pay a gale of rent (as fine), and to throw down the shed.
Thus driven out, and with every tenant on the estate afraid to
afford her a refuge, the miserable woman went about two miles up the
mountain, and, sick as she was, and so situated, took shelter in a dry
_cavern_, in which she lived for several days. But her presence even
there was a crime, and a mulct of another gale of rent was levied off
Jeremiah Sullivan. Thus, within three weeks he was compelled to
pay two gales of 3 l. 2 s. 6 d. each. It was declared also that
the mountain being the joint property of Jeremiah Sullivan, Timothy
Sullivan, and Thady Sullivan, Timothy Sullivan was a participator in
the crime, and should be fined a gale of rent. The third, it appears,
escaped.' 'S.G.O.' narrated another horrifying case in the _Times_,
at the period of its occurrence, in 1851. Abridged, it runs thus:--'An
order had gone forth on the estate (a common order in Ireland) that
no tenant was to admit any lodger into his house. This was a general
order. It appears, however, that sometimes special orders were given;
and one was promulgated that Denis Shea should not be harboured. This
boy had no father living. He had lived with a grandmother, who had
been turned out of her holding for harbouring him. He had stolen
a shilling, a hen--done such things as a neglected twelve-year-old
famishing child will do. One night he came to his aunt Donoghue, who
lodged with Casey. The latter told the aunt and uncle not to allow him
into the house, as the agent's drivers had given orders about him.
The aunt beat him away with a pitchfork, the uncle tied his hands
with cord behind his back. The poor child crawls to the door of a
neighbour, and tries to get in. The uncle is called to take him away,
and he does so. He yet returns with hands still tied behind, having
been severely beaten. The child seeks refuge in other cabins; but all
were forbidden to shelter him. He is brought back by some neighbours
in the night, who try to force the sinking child in upon his relation.
There is a struggle at the door. The child was heard asking some one
to put him upright. In the morning there is blood upon the threshold.
The child is stiff dead--a corpse, with its arms tied; around it every
mark of a last fearful struggle for shelter--food--the common rights
of humanity.' Chief Baron Pigot tried the case, and gave a statement
of the facts in his charge which Mr. Trench ought to have quoted, as a
faithful recorder of 'realities.'
'On the western estate, that of Cahirciveen, there was some difference
in the rules. If a son or daughter married, the father was obliged
to retire with an allowance of 'a cow's grass' or grazing for his
support. 'Only the newly married person will be left on the land, or
any portion of it, even though the farm should contain 100 acres,
or even though there should be two farms. This arbitrary regulation
operates injuriously in point of morality, and keeps the land
uncultivated. The people have to go to Nedeen, a distance of forty or
fifty miles, to get leave to marry.'[1]
[Footnote 1: See the 'North British Review,' No. CI. p.193.]
The Kenmare tenantry have recovered from the fearful shock of the
famine, after thousands of deaths from hunger, and thousands shipped
off to America at 4 l. 10 s. a head. Mr. Trench's son, Mr. Townshend
Trench, the pictorial illustrator of his father's book, is the acting
agent, and an eloquent propagandist of his father's principles. The
young marquis paid a visit to his tenantry in 1868, and he was almost
worshipped. It is gratifying to know that in a speech on that occasion
he promised to see and judge for himself.
'I feel,' he said, 'that my visit to Kenmare has taught me a valuable
lesson. As you all know, I was called to my present position at a very
young age, and I felt when I came in for my property that I had
much to learn; and that is the reason why I was so anxious to travel
through the country, and study the desires and comfort of the people.
That will afford me occupation for many a year to come, and it will
afford me an occupation not only interesting but pleasing.
Nothing will do me a more hearty pleasure than to see the marks of
civilisation and progress in Kenmare--and not alone in Kenmare, but in
the whole country; and I shall hail every manifestation of improvement
with delight.'
Lord Lansdowne's system is beautiful, but it is unfinished. Let him
'crown the edifice with _liberty_.' He possesses a giant's power, and
he uses it like an angel. When he comes to trouble the waters, the
multitude gathers around the fountain to be healed. But his visits
are, like angels' visits, few and far between. Many of the sick and
impotent folk, after long waiting, are not able to get near till the
miracle-worker has departed. An absentee landlord, be he ever so good,
must delegate his power to an agent. Agents have good memories,
and their servants, the bailiffs, are good lookers-on. There is
a hierarchy in the heaven of landlordism--the under-bailiff, the
head-bailiff, the chief-clerk in the office, the sub-agent, the
head-agent. All these must be submissively approached and anxiously
propitiated before the petitioner's prayers can reach the ears of Jove
himself, seated aloft on his remote Olympian throne. He may be,
and for the most part really is--if he belongs to the old stock of
aristocratic divinities--generous and gracious, incapable of meanness,
baseness, or cruelty. But the tenant has to do, not with the absentee
divinity, but with his priest--not with the good spirit, but his
medium; and this go-between is not always noble, or disinterested,
or unexacting. To him power may be new--a small portion of it may
intoxicate him, like alcohol on an empty stomach. He was not born to
an inheritance of sycophancy; it comes like an _afflatus_ upon him,
and it turns his head. It creates an appetite, like strong drink,
which grows into a disease. This appetite is as capricious as it is
insatiable. Hence, the chief characteristic of landlord power, as
felt by the tenant, is _arbitrariness_. The agent may make any rule
he pleases, and as many exceptions to every rule as he pleases. He
may allow rents to run in arrear; he may suddenly come down upon the
defaulter with 'a fell swoop;' he may require the rents to be paid
up to the day; he may, without reason assigned, call in 'the hanging
gale;' he may abate or increase the rents at will; he may inflict
fines for delay or give notices to quit for the sole purpose of
bringing in fees to his friend or relative, the solicitor. But
whatever he may choose to do, the tenant has nothing for it but to
submit; and he must submit with a good grace. Woe to him if the agony
of his spirit is revealed in the working of his features, or in an
audible groan! Most of the poor fellows do submit, till their hearts
are broken--till the hot iron has entered their souls and seared their
consciences. When the _slave_ is thus finished, the agent and his
journeymen are satisfied with their handiwork; their 'honours' can
then count on any sort of services they may choose to exact--may bid
defiance to the priest and the agitator, and boast of an orderly and
deserving tenantry devoted to the best of landlords, who is their
natural protector. It would be wicked to interfere with these amicable
persons. Why talk about leases? The tenants will not have them; they
don't want security or independence by contract. So most of the agents
report--but not all. There are noble exceptions which relieve the
gloomy picture.
There is certainly one disadvantage connected with a settlement of the
land question which would abolish the arbitrary power of proprietors
and their agents--it would put an end to the romance of Irish
landlordism. The Edgeworths, the Morgans, the Banims, the Carletons,
and the Levers would then be deprived of the best materials for their
fictions. The fine old family, over-reached and ruined by a dishonest
agent; the cruelly evicted farmer, with his wife and children
fever-stricken, and his bedridden mother cast out on the roadside on
Christmas Eve, exposed to the pelting of the hailstorm, while their
home was unroofed and its walls levelled by the crowbar brigade; the
once comfortable but now homeless father making his way to London, and
trying day after day to present a petition in person to his landlord,
repulsed from the gate of the great house, and laughed at for his
frieze and brogue by pampered flunkeys. Then he travels on foot to his
lordship's country-seat, scores or hundreds of miles--is taken up, and
brought before the magistrates as 'an Irish rogue and vagabond.' At
length he meets his lordship accidentally, and reveals to him the
system of iniquity that prevails on his Irish estate at Castle
Squander: Next we have the sudden and unexpected appearance of the god
of the soil at his agent's office, sternly demanding an account of his
stewardship. He gives ready audience to his tenants, and fires with
indignation at bitter complaints from the parents of ruined daughters.
Investigation is followed by the ignominious eviction of the
tyrannical and roguish agent and his accomplices, a disgorging of
their ill-gotten wealth, compensation to plundered and outraged
tenants, the liberal distribution of poetical justice right and left.
Many other agents have followed Mr. Trench's example in forbidding
to marry, and commanding to abstain from hospitality and charity. An
ejectment was lately obtained at the quarter sessions in a southern
county against a widow who had married without leave, or married a
different person from the one the agent selected. But it is supposed
that the threat of assassination prevented a recourse to extremities
in this and other cases. For the people seem with one consent to have
made a desperate stand against this cruel tyranny. A landlord said
to me, 'No one in this part of the country would _presume_ to evict
a tenant now from fear of assassination. _That_ is the tenant's
security.'
The wretched outcasts, whom 'improvement' has swept off the estates,
are crowded into cities and towns, without employment, without food.
Feeling bitterly their degradation and misery, and taught to blame the
Government, they become demoralized and desperately disaffected. From
these fermenting masses issues the avenging scourge of Fenianism--'the
pestilence that walketh in darkness, and slayeth at noonday.'
For my part, I cannot understand the meaning of improving a country by
disinheriting and banishing its inhabitants. I do not understand men
who say the population is too dense, and yet give to one family a
tract of land large enough to support ten families, turning out the
nine to make room for the one. A great deal has been said about the
evils of small farms. But the most disturbed and impoverished parts of
Ireland are those in which the farms are largest; while the two most
prosperous and best ordered counties--Armagh and Wexford--are the
counties in which small farms most abound. I call a reluctant witness,
Master Fitzgibbon, to testify that when the Irish tenant, be his
holding ever so small, gets common justice and is not subjected to
caprice, he gives no trouble. That gentleman informs us that there are
650 estates of all magnitudes, from 100 l. to 20,000 l. a-year, under
the control and management of the court of chancery; the total rents
of these amount to 494,056 l. a-year payable by 28,581 tenants. These
estates are in all parts of Ireland, not only in all the provinces,
but in all the counties, without exception; and, according to Master
Fitzgibbon, they fairly represent the tenantry of the whole country.
He has 452 of the estates under his own jurisdiction, and the rents
of these amount to 330,809 l., paid by 18,287 tenants. He has now
been ten years in the office, during which 'the rents have been paid
without murmuring or complaints worth noticing.' 'The pressure of
legal remedies for these rents has been very little used; the
number of evictions absolutely trifling; and of between 400 and 500
receivers, who collect these rents, _not one has ever been assailed_,
or interfered with, or threatened in the discharge of his duty, as
far as I have been able to discover; and I am the person to whom the
receiver should apply for redress if anything of the kind occurred.
It is very well known that my ears are open to any just complaint
from any tenant, and yet I am very seldom appealed to, considering the
great number of tenants; and whenever a complaint is well-founded,
it is promptly and effectually redressed, at scarcely any expense of
costs. I believe the other three Masters would make substantially
a similar report to this in respect of the estates under their
jurisdiction.'
Master Fitzgibbon proceeds to state that 'on one estate there are
2,500 tenants, paying 13,000 l.,--being an average of 6 l. a-year.
This estate has been sold, and three of the lots fetched over 30
years' purchase of the yearly profit rents. The fourth lot is held by
small cottiers, at rents which average only 2 l., and this lot fetched
23 years' purchase. This estate has been under a receiver for three
years, and there has never been one complaint from a tenant. What is
stated of this estate may be said of every one of them in all the four
provinces.' He adds: 'Clamour, agitation, or violence of any kind I
have never had to deal with amongst the tenantry of any one of these
estates since I came into office.'
Another witness of larger views, and free from unhappy prejudices
against the majority of his countrymen--Mr. Marcus Keane, agent to the
Marquis of Conyngham--in a letter to Colonel Vandeleur, M.P., lately
gave the result of his experience for thirty years as agent of several
large estates, and as a landlord, on the Irish land question. I
submit his suggestions to my readers, as eminently worthy of the
consideration of statesmen at the present time:--
'The outline of measures submitted for your consideration combines
the very unusual recommendation of meeting, on the one hand, with
the approbation of some good landlords of the higher class (who, like
yourself, have long been practically acknowledging the just claims of
tenants), and, at the same time, of satisfying the claims of many of
the warmest advocates of the tenant class. It is calculated to protect
the farmers from selfish landlords, whose conduct has tended much to
produce the serious disaffection that now prevails.
'I need not burthen you with a lengthened recital of the facts which
render such legislation absolutely necessary to the tranquillity of
society. In outline, however, they may be briefly stated--
'_First_--The great mass of Irish tenantry have no better title to
their holdings than the will of their landlords.
'_Second_--Education is daily rendering the tenant class more
impatient of the condition of dependence which their want of title
necessitates.
'_Third_--Every good tenant must improve his land more or less, in
order to live in comparative comfort.
'_Fourth_--The rentals of Ireland are steadily following the
improvements of the tenants. Some landlords suffer a considerable
margin to exist between the actual value and the rent paid; while
others lose no opportunity of forcing the rents to the highest amount
that circumstances permit.
'_Fifth_--Although good tenants must improve in order to live
comfortably, their improvements are not one-fourth of what the
condition of the country invites, and are far below what they would be
if the occupiers were afforded equitable security.
'_Sixth_--Trade, manufactures, and industrial occupations require
local accumulations of surplus capital in order to their prosperity;
and such accumulations are hindered by the general want of security
of tenure. Society at large is therefore deeply interested in the
protection of the tenant class.
'_Seventh_--The increased expense of the governmental establishments,
civil and military, which Irish disaffection entails, renders it a
matter of imperial importance that the Irish land question should be
satisfactorily settled.
'Irish rentals have, in some counties, increased more than tenfold
since the beginning of the eighteenth century.'
The next witness shall be a landlord, one of the best and noblest of
his class. At a tenant-right meeting of the county Longford, the Earl
of Granard said:--'The proposition commences by asserting that which
has been acknowledged by successive administrations--that the present
state of the land laws of Ireland is highly unsatisfactory. The
necessity for their reform has been urged upon parliament since the
days of O'Connell up to the present time. The want of reform upon the
most vital question which affects the prosperity of Ireland has
been the fruitful source of agrarian disturbance, of poverty and
of misfortune in every county in Ireland. To take an example near
home,--what rendered Ballinamuck a by-word for deeds of violence? Why,
that system which permitted a landlord to treat the people of that
district with high-handed injustice. And why is that district
now amongst the most peaceable in the county? Because it is now
administered by its proprietor in a spirit of justice and fair play,
and because that proprietor recognises the fact that property has its
duties as well as its rights. I believe that similar results are to
be obtained everywhere that the warm-hearted and kindly people of this
country are treated with justice. In his evidence before Mr. Maguire's
committee, Mr. Curling, the excellent agent of an equally excellent
landlord--Lord Devon--speaking of his property in Limerick, said that
the most warm-hearted and grateful people he had ever met with were
the Irish. He was asked, "Grateful for what?" and he replied, "Even
for fair play." That is to say, they were grateful for that which in
every country save this would have been theirs by law. And it is to
a people thus described by, mind you, not an Irishman, but an English
gentleman--to a people, I believe, the most religious and affectionate
in Europe, that the simple act of justice, of repealing unjust
statutes, has been refused. I say it advisedly, that to the system
of land laws, which we hope to alter--which at least we are here to
protest against--are to be attributed those fearful agrarian outrages
which disgrace the fair fame of our country. A celebrated minister of
police in France, whenever he heard of a conspiracy, used to ask who
was the woman, believing that there was always one mixed up with such
organisations, and in a similar spirit, whenever I hear of an outrage
in Ireland, I am always inclined to enquire, "Who is the landlord?"
For I do not hear of such things occurring on estates where justice
and fair play are the rule and not the exception. But brighter days
are now in store for us. We have at the head of affairs the most
earnest, the most conscientious minister that has ever sat on the
treasury bench. He has promised to redress your grievances, and having
as his able lieutenants Mr. Bright, who has ever a kindly word for
Ireland, and Lord Kimberley, whose first act after giving up the
lord-lieutenancy was to say to the House of Lords that until the
church and land questions were settled there would be neither peace
nor contentment in the land--he must be successful. As to what we
want there can be no doubt. The five points of the Irish charter
are--fixity of tenure at reasonable rents; recognition of right of
occupancy as distinct from right of ownership; standard valuation
for letting purposes; retrospective compensation for 20 years; and
arbitration courts in cases of dispute between owner and occupier.'
I cannot better express the conclusion of the whole matter than in
the words of a writer in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, who thoroughly
understands the question. Nothing can be more truthful and accurate
than the way in which he puts the tenants' case:--
'"Morally," they say, "we are part-owners. We have a moral right to
live here. If a great landlord considered that he could make more
of his estate by clearing it of its inhabitants, and accordingly
proceeded to do so, he would do a cruel act. What we wish is to see
our moral rights converted into legal rights. If you ask us precisely
what it is that we wish, we reply that we wish to be able to live in
moderate comfort in our native land, and to be able to make our plans
upon the assumption that we shall not be interfered with. It is
not for us ignorant peasants to draw an Act of Parliament upon this
subject, or to say how our views are to be reconciled with your
English law, which, on other accounts, we by no means love. You, the
English Government, must find out for yourselves how to do that. What
we want is to be secure and live in reasonable comfort, and we shall
never be at rest, and we will never leave you at peace, till this is
arranged in some way or other." We do not say whether this feeling is
right or wrong, we do not say how it is to be dealt with, but we do
say that it is as intelligible, not to say as natural, a feeling as
ever entered into human hearts, and we say, moreover, that it would
be very difficult to exaggerate either its generality, its force, its
extent, or the degree to which it has been excited by recent events.
We are deeply convinced that to persist in regarding the relation
between landlord and tenant as one of contract merely, to repeat again
and again in every possible form that all that the Irish peasants
have a right to say is that they have made a hard bargain with their
landlords which they wish the legislature to modify, is to shut
our eyes to the feelings of the people, feelings which it will be
difficult and also dangerous to disregard. The very gist and point
of the whole claim of the tenants is that their moral right (as they
regard it) is as sacred, and ought to be as much protected by law, as
the landlords' legal right, and that it is a distinct grievance to a
man to be prevented from living in Ireland on that particular piece
of land on which he was born and bred, and which was occupied by his
ancestors before him.'
The whole drift of this history bears on this point. The policy of the
past must be reversed. The tenants must be rooted in the soil instead
of being rooted out. 'Improvement' must include the people as well
as the land, and agents must no longer be permitted to arrogate to
themselves the functions of Divine Providence.
'_Naturam expellas furcâ, tamen usque recurret._'
One of the best pamphlets on the Irish Land Question is by Mr. William
M'Combie, of Aberdeen. A practical farmer himself, his sagacity
has penetrated the vitals of the subject. His observations, while
travelling through the country last year, afford a remarkable
corroboration of the conclusions at which I have arrived. Of the new
method of 'regenerating Ireland,' he says:--
'In it the resources of the soil--to get the most possible out of it
by the most summary process--is the great object; the people are of
little or no account, save as they can be made use of to accomplish
this object. But, indeed, it is not alone by the promoters of the
grand culture that the people have been disregarded, but by Irish
landlords, generally, of both classes. By the improving landlords--who
are generally recent purchasers--they are regarded merely as
labourers; by the leave-alone landlords as rent-producers. The one
class have ejected the occupiers, the other have applied, harder and
harder, the screw, until the "good landlord"--the landlord almost
worshipped in Ireland at this hour--is the landlord who neither evicts
his tenants nor raises their rents. The consequences are inevitable,
and, over a large portion of the island, they are patent to every
eye--they obtrude themselves everywhere. The people are poor; they are
despondent, broken-spirited. In the south of Ireland decay is written
on every town. In the poorer parts you may see every fifth or sixth
house tenantless, roofless, allowed from year to year to moulder
and moulder away, unremoved, unrepaired.... To make room for these
large-scale operations, evictions must go on, and as the process
proceeds the numbers must be augmented of those who are unfit to
work for hire and unable to leave the country. The poor must be
made poorer; many now self-supporting made dependent. Pauperism must
spread, and the burden of poor rates be vastly increased. If the
greatest good of the greatest number be the fundamental principle of
good government, this is not the direction in which the state should
seek to accomplish the regeneration of Ireland. The development of the
resources of the land ought to be made compatible with the improvement
of the condition of the people.'