THE LAND QUESTION
"I can imagine no fault attaching to any land system which
does not attach to the Irish system. It has all the faults of
a peasant proprietary, it has all the faults of feudal
landlordism, it has all the faults incident to a system under
which the landlords spend no money on their property, and
under which a large part of the land is managed by a Court; it
has all the faults incident to the fact that it is to the
tenant's interest to let his farm run out of cultivation as
the term for revising the judicial rent approaches."
--A.J. BALFOUR, on the Second Reading of the Land Bill, May
4th, 1903.
The reason for the importance of the system of land tenure in the social
conditions of Ireland is to be found in the manner in which the
restrictions on Irish commerce in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries drove the population to secure a livelihood in the only
direction left open to them--namely, agriculture. The results of this
are to be seen to-day in the fact that there are 590,000 holdings in the
island, and that out of a total population of four and a half million
people it is well within the mark to say that three and a half million
are dependent, directly or indirectly, on the land for their means of
existence.
The system of tenure in Ireland was as different as possible from that
existing in Great Britain. The gist of the difference lay in this, that
in England and Scotland landlords let farms, while in Ireland they let
land. "In Ireland," wrote an English observer more than a hundred years
ago, "landlords never erect buildings on their property, nor expend
anything in repairs." This feature, which was the result of historical
reasons, was due to the fact that Irish land-owners were the descendants
of settlers intruded on Irish land, who brought with them English
notions of tenure, but had not the capital to render economic the
numerous small holdings situated on their estates. Hence it came about
that the provision of capital by an English landlord for the equipment
of farms with cottages, outhouses, fencing, and a drainage system, which
results in a sort of partnership between landlord and tenant, was, to a
large extent, a thing unknown in Ireland, where, as was aptly said,
tenants' improvements were landlords' perquisites, and where point was
lent to the differences by the fact that the few properties on which the
equipment of the holdings was provided by the landlord were known as
"English-managed estates," and the number of these, Lord Cowper told the
House of Lords in 1887, could be counted on one's fingers.
Irish landlords have been compared, not to English squires, but to the
ground landlords of London, bound to the occupiers only in so far as
they received from their tenants a rent-charge liable to increase as the
tenant improved the holding, or as competition arose with the growth of
population.
The reasons for this state of things are to be found in the number and
the small size of the Irish holdings, but more than this in the fact
that from the first landlords came there in a business capacity.
"Les uns comme les autres," says a French writer, M. Paul-Dubois, "ils
n'ont vu dans la terre Irlandaise qu'une affaire, et non une patrie. Ils
sont restés conquérants en pays de conquête. De là cette conséquence
que, conscients d'être des étrangers, des intrus, ils se sont crus
libres et quittes de toute dette envers le pays, de tous les devoirs de
la propriété."[3]
Planted on land which was confiscated, and, as a result, insecurely
held, to risk the expenditure of money would have been unnatural, the
more so since the expenditure which, in the circumstances, fell upon the
tenant in the matter of improvements, provided the best possible
security to the landlord by making the tenant all the more anxious to
remain on the holding on which he had sunk what little capital he
possessed, and in consequence virtually obliged, at risk of ejection, to
submit unwillingly to periodical enhancements of rent.
In addition to the few English-managed estates it was only in Ulster
that matters were otherwise, owing to the existence of the custom--an
embryo copyhold, Lord Devon called it--known as tenant-right. On the
various confiscations of land, grants of which had been made to the
"undertakers," many of the latter were either public bodies, such as the
great City Companies, others were landlords who, even if not resident at
a distance, had neither the means nor the inclination to spend the
necessary money on their estates. This was provided by the tenant, who,
without aid from the landlord, made improvements on his holding by his
own labour; and in Ulster, where the tenants were settlers from England
and Scotland, there arose an equitable proprietorship vested in the
occupier, by which, on quitting the farm, he was entitled to claim from
the new tenant a sum of money partly in compensation for the money and
labour he had invested in the holding and partly as a price paid for the
goodwill or possession, which the new tenant would have no other means
of acquiring. The nature of this "Ulster Custom," which, until 1870, had
no sanction or protection from the law, was clearly defined by the
Master of the Rolls, in the case of M'Elroy _v._ Brooke, in the
following words:--"The essentials of the custom are the right to sell, to
have the incoming tenant, if there be no reasonable objection to him,
recognised by the landlord, and to have a sum of money paid for the
interest in the tenancy transferred." The English system we see then,
with its competitive rent fixed by contract, and subject to the laws of
supply and demand, did not exist; the social and prescriptive ties which
in England bound the owner and the occupier to each other never arose
under this state of things, and in their absence did not arise one of
the strongest inducements to a landed gentry to live on their estates
and to concern themselves in the welfare of their tenants, a social
system which, by the interchange of kindly offices wherever in England
the proprietors live on their property, does much to make the
countryside attractive to the poorer classes and to check migration.
There is no more erroneous idea than to suppose, as do some people, that
there was a large body of resident landed proprietors in Ireland until
the land war drove them to seek safety across the Channel. As a matter
of fact, long before this had begun there existed an absentee
aristocracy dependent on middlemen or agents--"the vermin of the
country," Arthur Young called them--who constituted a mere mechanical
medium for the collection of rent, and as such were the worst exponents
of the amenities which, in happier circumstances, are supposed to
subsist between owners and occupiers of agrarian land. At the beginning
of the nineteenth century the increase of population in the island and
the high prices resulting from the war led to a very great sub-division
of holdings, while the exercise of the franchise by the forty shillings
freeholder until the year 1829 provided an additional inducement to the
landlord to multiply the number of tenants on his land, since by doing
so he increased the number of votes under his control, and, _pari
passu_, his political influence.
After the famine, when it was found that one-third of the Irish
landlords were bankrupt, the Encumbered Estates Court Act was passed to
cope with the situation which had arisen of a country full of numerous
landlords saddled with land which, owing to mortgages, debts, and
incumbrances, was inalienable. Under the Act the Court was empowered, on
the petition of any person sufficiently interested, to sell the
encumbered estate and give an indefeasible title, so that persons who
before had a claim on the estate should now have a claim only on the
purchase-money. It was a piece of strong legislation in its disregard of
vested rights and in the manner in which it set aside express contracts
under which creditors had a claim on the land which could only be
disturbed by paying off that claim.
In the event the rush of creditors to this Court--created to afford
relief from the delays of Chancery in effecting alienation--was so great
that, as a result of the consequent fall in prices, land became a drug
in the market, and properties in many instances did not realise enough
to meet the mortgages. To the landlords ruined in this manner succeeded
a new class, who bought up bankrupt estates, often with borrowed money,
as a commercial speculation, and caring nothing for the tenant or his
welfare, looking only on the business side of the transaction, raised
rents arbitrarily to such a pitch that the tenantry were unable to meet
their liabilities. Wholesale evictions ensued, and in this wise arose
the condition of things in which the _Times_--never an unfriendly critic
of the landed interest--was constrained to admit in 1852 that "the name
of an Irish landlord stinks in the nostrils of Christendom."
By an Act of 1858 the Encumbered Estates Court was replaced by the
Landed Estates Court, which had power to carry out the sale of, and give
an indefeasible title to, any interests in land, whether hypothecated or
not, and after the passing of the Judicature Act of 1877 the name of the
Court became the Land Judges' Court.
The disfranchising clauses of the Emancipation Act, and the consequent
disappearance of the advantages accruing to the landlords from a
multiplication of holdings on their estates, the miserable poverty
resulting from the famine, the anxiety of the proprietors to escape the
burdens of the remodeled Poor Law, and the demand by the new class of
land speculators for large grazing or tillage farms, to form which the
consolidation of existing holdings was demanded, were the factors which
resulted in the clearances of 1849 and the subsequent years. "Notices to
quit," in a historic phrase, "fell like snowflakes," at a time when it
was truly said that an eviction was equal to a sentence of death. In a
few months whole counties, such as those of Meath and Tipperary, were
converted into prairies; cabins were thrown down, fences removed, and
peasants swept off, and in ten years nearly 300,000 families were
evicted from their homes, and a million and a half of the population
fled across the Atlantic. "I do not think," said Sir Robert Peel--and
his verdict has been endorsed by the judgment of history--"I do not
think that any country, civilised or uncivilised, can offer similar
scenes of horror."
The Devon Commission, the Report of which was issued in 1845,
recommended that in future compensation should be given to Irish tenants
for permanent improvements effected by them. Bills to carry out the
recommendation of the Commission were introduced in 1845 by Lord
Stanley, in 1846 by Lord Lincoln, and in 1852 by Mr. Napier, the
Attorney-General for Ireland. But it was not until the Act of 1870 was
passed--a quarter of a century after the Report of the Commissioners had
been issued--that its recommendations were embodied in an Act of
Parliament. So far was this from being the case with the next statute
dealing with Irish land--Deasy's Act, passed in 1860--that it aimed at
the substitution of the commercial principles of contract for the
equitable principles of custom in the relations between landlord and
tenant, in this respect that it refused to allow compensation to the
tenant for improvements other than those made with the landlord's
consent. The object of this Act--the last word of the Manchester School
on the Irish Land Question--was, therefore, to destroy any claim by a
tenant in respect of future improvements, unless under the terms of
some contract, express or implied. In point of fact, the Act proved
almost a dead letter, and the one result which ensued from its passing
into law was to make the position of the tenant less secure, in so far
as it made the process of ejectment less costly and more simple, and
enabled the landlord in many instances to confiscate improvements.
Twenty-three Bills in favour of the tenants were thrown out in the forty
years which followed Emancipation. The struggle between landlord and
tenant was occupied with the attempts of the latter to enforce the
custom of tenant-right in Ulster, and secure its application in the
other provinces. The Land Act of 1870, for the first time, gave legal
sanction to this principle by giving the tenant a claim to compensation
for disturbance. It gave its imprimatur to the doctrine that an Irish
tenant does not contract for the occupation of a farm, that Irish land
is not the subject of an undivided ownership, but of a simple
partnership. The pecuniary damages to which a landlord was liable under
its provisions was a blow aimed at wanton evictions, and with the
curtailment of the power arbitrarily to effect these, the threats by
which landlords had been able unjustly to raise rents were robbed of
much of their force.
The tenant under the Act secured a recognition of his property in the
land and of his right to occupy it, provided he complied with certain
conditions, and, in addition, he obtained compensation, albeit
inadequate, for disturbance for non-payment of rent, in cases in which
the Court considered the rent exorbitant, and in which failure to pay
was due to bad seasons. Thus tenant-right, which Lord Palmerston had
dismissed with epigrammatic flippancy as landlord wrong only a few years
before, received the sanction of law from his own party.
In actual practice under the Act the landlords recouped themselves for
the compensation which they had to pay to an evicted tenant by raising
the rent on his successor in the tenancy in the comparatively few cases
in which the evicted tenant could afford the legal costs which the
filing of a claim for compensation entailed, but this much at least had
been secured, that the virtual confiscation of the tenants' improvements
had been stopped. The Act of 1870 had been passed to prevent arbitrary
evictions and to secure to the tenant compensation for improvements, and
in certain cases for disturbance. It succeeded only in making arbitrary
evictions more costly for the landlord, it gave the tenant no fixity of
tenure since the compensation for disturbance was inadequate. To remedy
this Isaac Butt in 1876 introduced a Bill based on the "three F.s"--fair
rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure--but it was rejected by 290 votes
to 56, and several other amending Bills were thrown out by the House of
Commons between 1876 and 1879. In 1880 the Government were at last
stirred to action in the introduction of the Compensation for
Disturbance Bill, which caused the retirement of Lord Lansdowne from the
Cabinet, and was followed by threats of resignation on the part of the
Duke of Argyll. Under the Act of 1870 only those occupiers were entitled
to claim compensation for disturbance whose rents were not in arrear. By
this Bill it was proposed to extend the right to that claim to all those
who were unable to pay as a result of bad harvests, and who were willing
to hold their farms on just and reasonable terms, which the landlord
refused.
After passing through the House of Commons, in spite of Lord Randolph
Churchill's denunciation of it as the first step in a social war, the
Bill, although there had been a large majority in its favour in the
lower House, was thrown out by the House of Lords at a time when the
need for remedial legislation was illustrated by the presence in Ireland
of 30,000 soldiers and 12,000 policemen for the protection of life and
property.
The Royal Commission, under the chairmanship of Lord Bessborough, which
was then appointed, reported in the following year that the Land Act of
1870 afforded no protection to the tenant who remained in his holding,
since compensation for improvements could only be claimed on giving up a
tenancy. The Commissioners, by a majority of four to one, declared
themselves in favour of the "three F.s," which the leader of the
Opposition denounced as "Force, Fraud, and Folly," and the Commissioners
justified their attitude by this statement, which was echoed by the
Richmond Commission, which reported soon after,--"freedom of contract,
in the case of the majority of Irish tenants, large and small, does not
really exist," the reason being that tenants in occupation were ready to
pay any rent rather than sacrifice the capital and labour they had sunk
in their holdings. The good seasons after 1870 had made this rise in
rent possible, but with the bad winter of 1880 the results became
disastrous.
In this manner the "three F.s," which the Land League demanded, and
which were secured by the Act of 1881, were conceded against the will of
the Government by sheer force of circumstances. A rumour which gained
currency early in 1880, that the Bessborough Commission would report in
their favour, was stigmatised by Mr. Gladstone as incredible, and the
adoption of the principle enunciated by the Commissioners resulted in
the resignation from the Cabinet of the Duke of Argyll. The demands
which had been made in 1850 by the Tenant League, the first concerted
action of North and South since the Union, were repeated. They included
a fair valuation of rent, the right of a tenant to sell his interest at
the highest market value, and security from eviction so long as he paid
his rent. Their claims were scouted in 1870, and it was not till eleven
years had passed that in 1881 these "three F.s"--fair rent, free sale,
and fixity of tenure, the notion of which had so recently been
repudiated by Mr. Gladstone--were secured by the Land Act of that year,
which recognised to the full the dual ownership of Irish land by
occupier and landlord. Under this Act also was created a Court to fix
fair rents for judicial periods of fifteen years.
Mr. Gladstone himself had admitted that the Land Act of 1870, which a
Conservative member, destined to be a future Chief Secretary--Mr. James
Lowther--described as "pure Communism," together with the Church Act of
1869, was the outcome of the Fenian agitation of the sixties, which drew
the attention of English statesmen to the Irish question. In the same
way the passing of the Act of 1881, which made a far more active assault
upon their prerogatives, secured from a house of landlords through fear
that which they denied on grounds of equity. "In view of the prevailing
agitation in Ireland," said Lord Salisbury of this measure which
assailed every Tory principle as to the sacredness of property, "I
cannot recommend my followers to vote against the second reading of the
Bill." What Fenianism had effected in 1870 the Land League secured in
1881. "I must record my firm opinion," said Mr. Gladstone ten years
later, "that the Land Act of 1881 would not have become the law of the
land if it had not been for the agitation with which Irish society was
convulsed."
The Bill was denounced by the Tories as one of the most unquestionable
and, indeed, extreme violations of the rights of property in the whole
history of English legislation.[4] Lord Salisbury declared that it would
not bring peace, and that henceforth the Irish landowner would look upon
Parliament and the Imperial Government as their worst enemies. The Earl
of Lytton declared that it was revolutionary, dangerous, and unjust;
that it would organise pauperism and paralyse capital; yet for all that
he warned their lordships that its rejection might be the signal for an
insurrection, of which the whole responsibility would be thrown on the
House of Lords. But perhaps Lord Elcho expressed the feeling which
predominated in the Gilded Chamber when he expressed the opinion that
the Bill was the product of "Brummagem girondists." In the event, as we
have seen, Lord Lytton's warning bore fruit, and the Bill was passed.
"There is scarcely a less dignified entity," as Disraeli had said in
Coningsby thirty years before, "than a patrician in a panic."
Under the Act, let me repeat, for the first time was frankly recognised
the legal partnership between the tenant who provided the working gear
and the landlord who provided the bare soil. The latter could only evict
the tenant on default, the tenant was at liberty to sell his occupancy
interest at will without the leave of the landlord, and the rent payable
by the tenant to the landlord was to be fixed by a judicial
tribunal--the Land Commission--the establishment of which was but the
carrying out of a suggestion made three years before by Parnell. The
results of the agitation which had brought about the passing of the Act
were seen when the Court decreed an average reduction of Irish rents by
20 per cent., knocking off no less than £1,500,000 at one stroke from
the rack-rentals of the country.
The Act was not applicable to tenants whose rent was in arrear--those,
that is to say, who were in the poorest circumstances--and a Bill
introduced by Parnell in 1882 to wipe out these arrears by a grant of
public money, was thrown out, being denounced by Lord Salisbury as a
dangerous precedent of public plunder to mislead future generations.
As ballast to lighten the Act of 1881 the leaseholders were thrown
overboard. For this exclusion from the benefits of the Act there was, on
principle, no excuse. A Bill of Parnell's to remedy it was thrown out in
1883 by a majority of four to one, and the 35,000 tenants who suffered
from it were not entirely accorded the privileges of the other tenants
until the passing of the Rent Redemption Act of 1890. The average
reduction in rent effected for this class of tenant has amounted to 35
per cent.
One further fact in connection with the Act of 1881 deserves mention as
showing that though Parliament may propose a remedy for an admitted
grievance, the Courts of law are able to dispose its application by
their interpretation in direct contravention of the intentions of the
legislature.
Section 8, sub-section 9, of the Act of 1881 provided:--"No rent shall
be allowed or made payable in any proceedings under this Act in respect
of improvements made by the tenant or his predecessors in title, and for
which, in the opinion of the Court, the tenant or his predecessors in
title shall not have been paid or otherwise compensated by the landlord
or his predecessors in title." In the case of Adams _v_. Dunseath, in
February, 1882, it was held by the Court of Appeal, in the teeth of the
obvious intention of Parliament, that the fact that a tenant had for a
longer or shorter period of time enjoyed the benefit of his improvements
might be taken into consideration by the judge as being an equivalent
for compensation and as serving to limit the reductions in rent effected
by the Commission on land which had been subjected to these
improvements. By this interpretation many thousands of pounds were put
into the landlords' pockets during the years which intervened before
1896, when it was superseded by a provision in the Act of that year
which re-affirmed and established the principle, the enactment of which
had been intended in 1881.
We must now turn to the introduction of land purchase. In 1847 Lord John
Russell, in a project which was subsequently dropped, advocated, as did
J.S. Mill in later years, the solution of the land question by the
establishment of a peasant proprietary. The nidus, however, out of which
this policy germinated was the right of pre-emption which John Bright
secured for the tenants of ecclesiastical land under the Church Act of
1869. A further step in the same direction was taken in the Land Act of
1870--not more than two-thirds of the purchase-money being advanced to
the tenant under its provisions. Under the Church Act 6,000, and under
the Act of 1870 1,000, tenants purchased their farms.
In 1878 Parnell urged the establishment of peasant proprietorship, and
under the Act of 1881 three-quarters of the purchase-money was to be
advanced on such terms as to be repayable by instalments of five per
cent, per annum for thirty-five years, but only 1,000 tenants took
advantage of the facilities thereby offered.
Four years later was passed the Ashbourne Act, so called from the Irish
Lord Chancellor responsible for its introduction, and in it we have the
first Act--purely for land purchase--which has been applied to Ireland.
By it the Treasury found the whole of the purchase-money up to a total
of five millions sterling out of the Irish Church Surplus Fund, and
forty-nine years were allowed for repayment of the purchase-money to the
State at 4 per cent., of which £2 15s. was interest on the advance and
£1 5s. went to a sinking fund for the liquidation of the loan.
Only 2,000 tenants took advantage of the terms of this Act, but it is
nevertheless of importance as marking the point at which the principle
of peasant proprietorship was recognised as the solution by both English
parties. In this way was realised, not much more than twenty years ago,
the importance of that change of ownership which, in Arthur Young's
well-known phrase, turns sand into gold, and which has progressed ever
since. A shrewd French observer--Gustave de Beaumont--saw in 1837 that
this was the way out of the _impasse_ of the Irish land system, and half
a century ago a great opportunity presented itself at the time of the
Encumbered Estates Act of establishing a peasant proprietary, when more
than two million acres--one-sixth of the whole soil of Ireland--were
sold in ten years, and were bought in lots of 200 to 250 acres by some
8,000 to 10,000 land-jobbers.
The Land Bill which Mr. Gladstone introduced as a pendant to the Home
Rule Bill of 1886 offered to every Irish landlord the option of selling
his estate to his tenants, who would thereby become occupying owners at
once, paying an interest of 4 per cent. for forty-nine years on the
price, which would be twenty years' purchase of the judicial rents, paid
by the State issue of fifty million pounds of Consols with the revenues
of Ireland as security. After the Unionist victory of 1886 Mr. Parnell
brought in a Bill which also was destined never to receive the Royal
Assent, but which again is of importance in view of subsequent
legislation.
He based his demand upon the fall in prices which prevented tenants from
paying judicial rents. By this Bill it was proposed that the Land Court
should have power to abate rents fixed prior to 1885 if it were proved
that the tenants could not pay the whole amount, and would pay one half
and arrears, and further, if these amounts were paid evictions and
proceedings for the recovery of rent should be suspended, and, lastly,
the Bill aimed at the inclusion of leaseholders under the Act of 1881.
It was roundly denounced by the landlords.[5] Lord Hartington declared
that were it to pass it would have the effect of stopping the payment of
rent all over Ireland, and Sir Michael Hicks Beach spoke of it as "one
which, though purporting to be a mere instalment of justice to the poor
Irish tenant, is an act of gross injustice and confiscation to the
landlords of Ireland." The Bill was thrown out by a majority of
ninety-five, and the Plan of Campaign on the part of tenants against the
payment of impossible rents was the result.
A Royal Commission, under the chairmanship of Lord Cowper, was appointed
to inquire into the administration of the Land Laws. The Commission
reported in January, 1887, and bore out the grounds on which Parnell
had based his Bill of the previous year. It felt "constrained to
recommend an earlier revision of judicial rents on account of the
straitened circumstances of Irish farmers." It recommended that the term
of judicial rents should be lowered from fifteen years to five, that
those rents already fixed should be revised, and that leaseholders
should be brought under the Act of 1881. In reference to the Bill of the
year before Lord Salisbury had said that the revision of judicial rents
would not be honest and would be exceedingly inexpedient.[6] The Bill,
which is known as Lord Cadogan's, which was introduced on the last day
of March, 1887, and which purported to carry out the recommendations of
the Cowper Commission, opened the Land Court to leaseholders, setting
aside in this way the more solemn forms of agrarian contract. As regards
authorising the reduction of judicial rents on the ground of the fall in
prices, it did nothing, and the Prime Minister repeated his opinion that
"to do so would be to lay your axe at the root of the fabric of
civilised society."[7]
Mr. Balfour, who, in the month of March, had become Chief Secretary,
proclaimed with equal force that it would be folly and madness to break
these solemn contracts.[8] In the Bill, as at first brought in, the
Court had, in fact, power to vary contracts by fixing a composition for
outstanding debts and determining the period over which payment should
extend. In May the Government accepted the principle that the Court
should not only do this (settle the sum due by an applicant for relief
for outstanding debt), but also should fix a reasonable rent for the
rest of the term. The Ulster tenants insisted on this, but, at the
bidding of the landlords, it was subsequently withdrawn, and, finally,
in July the Premier summoned his party and, telling them that if the
Bill were not altered Ulster would be lost to the Unionist cause, passed
into law a Bill sanctioning a general revision of judicial rents for
three years, and in this way did the Tories lower rents in breach of a
clause in the Act of 1881 that guaranteed rents fixed under its
provisions for a term of fifteen years.
As a speaker of the day put it--"You have the Prime Minister rejecting
in April the policy which in May he accepts, rejecting in June the
policy which he had accepted in May, and then in July accepting the
policy which he had rejected in June, and which had been within a few
weeks declared by himself and his colleagues to be inexpedient and
dishonest, to be madness and folly, and to be laying an axe to the very
root of the fabric of civilised society."
When the advance of five millions for land purchase under the Act of
1885 was nearly exhausted, a further sum of equal amount was earmarked
for the same purpose in 1888. Lord Randolph Churchill in 1889 expressed
the opinion that something like £100,000,000 of credit should be pledged
to effect purchase. In 1891 Mr. Balfour authorised the devotion of a
further sum of £33,000,000 for this purpose. The whole of the
purchase-money was to be advanced by the State by the issue of
guaranteed land stock, limited to the amount stated, and giving a
dividend at two and three-quarters per cent., repayment being effected
in forty-nine years by the purchaser by the payment of an annuity on his
holding of four per cent. The Act was too complicated to work well, but
under its provisions 30,000 sales occurred, in comparison with 25,000
which had been effected under the Acts of 1885 and 1888. The passing of
this Act marks the close of the experimental stage in land purchase.
Under the Land Act of 1896 was asserted the principle of compulsory sale
in the case of estates in the Landed Estates Court, whose duty it was to
sell bankrupt property, if they came under certain specified conditions,
and if a receiver had been appointed to them.
This roused the fury of the landlords to the highest pitch. "You would
suppose," said Sir Edward Carson, "the Government were revolutionists
verging on socialism.... I ask myself whether they are mad or I am mad?
I am quite sure one of us must be mad." In spite of denunciations of
this order the clause respecting compulsory sale of the estates
mentioned was passed, occupying tenants having in those cases the right
of pre-emption. Under its provisions the period for the repayment of the
money advanced was extended to sixty-eight years. The annuity payable by
the tenant during the first decade was to be calculated and made payable
upon the total purchase-money advanced, but at the end of each of the
first three decennial periods, as the debt was reduced by the
accumulation of sinking fund, the annuity was to be re-calculated and
made payable on the portions of the advance remaining unpaid. Under the
Act every purchaser was to start with a reduction of not less than 25
per cent. on the rent which he had hitherto paid, and this amount was to
be still further reduced by not less than 10 per cent. at the end of
each of the first three periods of ten years. This Act effected the sale
of 37,000 holdings. The applications for sale under it numbered 8,000 in
1898, and in the succeeding years the number steadily diminished, so
that they amounted in 1899 to 6,000, in 1900 to 5,000, and in 1901 to
only 3,000. The reasons for this are not difficult to find. The payment
in Consols was profitable so long as securities stood at a high figure,
but the expenses arising from the South African war resulted in a fall
of Stocks from 112 to 85, and as a result new terms for land purchase
became imperatively needed. In consequence Mr. Wyndham brought in a Bill
in 1902, which was, however, stillborn, but its withdrawal was
accompanied with a promise of legislation in the following session. The
situation in the winter of 1902 was critical. An Irish Land Trust had
been formed by the landlords to oppose the United Irish League, and on
the 1st of September there was issued a Viceregal proclamation, putting
the Coercion Act in force in Dublin and Limerick. By a curious
coincidence, the papers published the same day a letter from Captain
Shaw Taylor, an Irish landlord, inviting representatives of tenants and
landlords to meet in conference in Dublin and discuss a way out of the
agrarian _impasse_. The proposal was scouted by the _Times_, the _Daily
Express_, and the Dublin _Daily Express_, but was favourably received by
the Press in other quarters. A motion by Lord Mayo at the Landowners'
Convention, in favour of the conference, was rejected by 77 votes to 14.
A poll on the question being demanded, 4,000 landlords, each with an
estate of more than 500 acres, received voting papers, and of these
1,706 replied, 1,128 in favour and 578 against a conference, while the
small landlords were almost unanimously in its favour. A second appeal
was then made to the Landowners' Convention through its president, Lord
Abercorn, but an answer in the negative was received, for it went on to
say--"It would be merely to give long-discredited politicians a
certificate of good sense and of just views, we might almost say of
legislative capacity to sit in an Irish Parliament in Dublin, were we to
accept Captain Shaw Taylor's invitation to join them."
The criticism of an unbiassed foreign observer on this attitude of rigid
cast-iron _non possumus_ is instructive. "Rappelons nous," writes M.
Bechaux, "que le parti irlandais au Parlement, si grossièrement insulté
represente 4/5 du peuple irlandais, nous avons un specimen de l'esprit
réactionnaire et irréconciliable du landlordisme irlandais." In spite of
this the Conference met at the end of the year. The landlords'
representatives were:--Lord Dunraven, Lord Mayo, Col. Hutcheson Pöe, and
Col. Nugent Everard; and those of the tenants were:--Mr. John Redmond,
Mr. W. O'Brien, Mr. T.W. Russell, and Mr. T.C. Harrington. On the 3rd
January, 1903, a joint report to serve as the basis of the new Bill was
issued.
The Report was in favour of purchase as the only possible policy to be
carried out on such terms that the yearly payments of the tenants
should be 15 to 25 per cent. lower than second term rents, while the sum
received by the landlords was to be such as at 3 or 3-1/4 per cent.
interest would yield them the same income as second term rents, less 10
per cent. deduction, as an equivalent for the cost of collection under
the old system. The difference between these two sums was to be bridged
by a bonus from the Treasury to the landlords in the interests of
agrarian peace. The Report was further in favour of enlarging small
holdings by dividing up grazing lands, and under it evicted tenants who,
as such, were not entitled to have judicial rents fixed were to be given
the option to purchase.
Second term rents are those fixed for the second judicial period of
fifteen years under the Act of 1881, and they were on an average 37 per
cent. less than those before the passing of that Act.
Under the Act which Mr. Wyndham introduced on March 25th, 1903, the
Treasury may advance a sum up to one hundred millions at 2-3/4 per cent.
interest, with another 1/2 per cent. sinking fund. The advances to the
tenants, which are limited to £5,000 or, in exceptional circumstances,
£7,000, are made in cash by the Land Commissioners, of whom three,
serving as the Estates Commissioners, are expressly responsible for the
working of the Act. A Treasury loan at 2-3/4 per cent. provides the
necessary funds. Under the Act the issue of this Stock was limited to
five million pounds a year for the first three years, but in January,
1905, this was changed to a sum of six million. By adding to the 2-3/4
per cent. interest which the tenants pay on the loan the further sum of
1/2 per cent. which they contribute to sinking fund for repayment, we
arrive at 3-1/4 per cent. which they have to pay for sixty-eight and a
half years to obtain the fee-simple of their land. The security which
Mr. Wyndham produced for the repayment of interest was the credit of the
Irish peasantry, of whom, out of more than seventy thousand purchasers
owing an eighth of a million to the State under previous Purchase Acts,
only two had incurred bad debts, which, as being irrecoverable, had
fallen on the taxpayer. As a further safeguard the payment is secured by
the annual grants-in-aid paid by the Treasury to the County Councils,
which can be withheld on default to pay interest on purchase advances.
In order to facilitate sales the system of "zones," which has been so
much canvassed, was devised. Under it the Estates Commissioners are
bound to make advances of purchase-money in all cases in which the total
annuity paid by the tenant ranges from 10 to 40 per cent. less than the
rent which he has hitherto paid. If it be a first term rent the
reduction must be at least 20 and not more than 40 per cent. less, and
if it be a second term rent there must be a reduction of not less than
10 and not more than 30 per cent. It will be, perhaps, clearer if put in
this way. If a first term rent amounts to £100, then the
tenant-purchaser has to pay at least £60, and at most £80, as annuity,
while if the £100 represent second term rent the yearly payment varies
from a minimum of £70 to a maximum of £90.
If purchases are proposed outside the zones, in which, that is to say,
the annuity proposed is under 10 or over 40 per cent. of the judicial
rent, the estate must, before sales are effected, be surveyed by the
Estates Commissioners in order that they may see whether the security is
sound, and whether the equitable rights of all parties concerned seem to
be safeguarded, and without this sanction advances will not be made in
the case of sales in these circumstances. The amount received by the
landlord, of course, does not, if invested in Trust Securities at 3-1/4
per cent., provide the same income as did his rent roll, even when one
takes into account the 10 per cent. for collection to which we have
referred. On the other hand, he is secured from the possibility of
further reductions in rent in the future, and there is a likelihood that
the securities in which he invests may rise, but, in addition to this,
a sum of twelve millions of bonus is to be devoted to bridge the gap
between his former rent from the tenant and his present income from his
investments.
Under this provision every landlord gets 12 per cent. bonus on his sale,
and this sum is part of his life estate, and need not, therefore, be
invested in trust securities, but may be invested in stock yielding a
higher rate of interest. This point was not clear in the Act of 1903,
but was explicitly enacted in an amending Act of 1904.
In order further to accelerate sale an investigation of title deeds,
documents which a great English lawyer--Lord Westbury--once described as
"difficult to decipher, disgusting to touch, and impossible to
understand," is not necessary prior to sale; for an enjoyment for six
years of the rents of an estate brings with it the right to sell, and
proof of title is needed only after purchase has been completed in order
that the vendor may establish his right of disposal of the proceeds, and
as further inducement he gets a sum not exceeding one full year's
arrears of rent, or at most 5 per cent. of the purchase price.
The good results which have accrued where a peasant proprietary has
arisen are admitted on all sides. Mr. Long himself, in words which form
an illuminating commentary on landlordism, confessed that the blessings
and advantages of a change of ownership are obvious. Everyone is agreed
that the happiness, bred of security on the part of the occupying owner,
brings in its train sobriety and industry. The business of the gombeen
man is going, and one may well hope to see arise before long that thrift
and energy characteristic of the peasant proprietor, whether in France,
Belgium, or Lombardy.
It must not be forgotten, however, that land purchase to bring peace
must be universal. In 1901 the De Freyne tenants rebelled against the
payment to their landlord of a rent which was 25 to 30 per cent. higher
than the purchase annuities paid by the neighbouring tenants on the
Dillon estate, which had been bought up by the Congested Districts
Board. Under the Wyndham Act there are in progress reductions of annual
charges, ranging from 10 to 40 per cent., on holdings adjacent to those
where either the landlord is recalcitrant and refuses to sell or where
the slowness of administration has delayed progress and secured no sale,
and, as a result, dissatisfaction reigns among the less fortunate
tenants.
According to the last report of the Estates Commissioners nearly 90,000
holdings had been sold in the period of the application of the Act, from
November 1st, 1903, to March 31st, 1906. The total price of all the
sales agreed upon was nearly forty millions, but the amount advanced by
the Commission was less than ten millions. There is little doubt that
the number of agreements for sale would have been half as many again but
for the lack of money and administrative powers. One of the Estates
Commissioners, in his evidence before the Arterial Drainage Commission,
stated that under the Land Purchase Acts passed before that of 1903 in
twenty-five years 75,000 tenants had purchased at a price of twenty-five
millions, and if to these are added the ninety thousand purchasers under
the Act of Mr. Wyndham the result is seen that nearly a third of the
tenants have in the last quarter of a century become occupying owners.
The immense acceleration in the rate of sale which these figures
indicate, leads one to ask how far the sales under the Wyndham Act have
been as advantageous to the tenants as those concluded under former
statutes. In the first place, it must be noted that more than
four-fifths of the direct sales which have occurred have taken place
under the zones. When the price proposed is above the zones the reason
why inspection is demanded is obviously that the solvency of the
purchaser, with which the State, as creditor, is concerned, is in
question. The minimum limit of the zones was said to be necessary to
protect those with rights superior to those of the landlord, but, as was
observed, the value of land does not depend on the mortgages with which
it is charged. In view of the modern methods by which, on purchase,
there is a Treasury guarantee, inspection before sale tends to reduce
the price, and the absence of inspection under the zones has tended to
enhance prices. It must be further noticed that the minimum price fixed
by the zones is higher than the mean price of sales effected under
Purchase Acts from 1885 to 1903, and by this method in the case of every
sale brought about without the delay of inspection, the provisions of
the Act have secured an artificial inflation of price for the benefit of
the landlord, amounting to a minimum of one year's rent. The reduction
of the annuity payable by the tenants from 4 per cent. to 3-1/4 per
cent, of the capital has served to obscure the amount of purchase price
paid by tenants who are apt to fail to appreciate the fact that the
annuity is payable over a more extended period of years, and the
provisions as to the sale and re-purchase of demesnes have at the same
time secured for the landlords themselves facilities for obtaining
advances of ready money on reasonable terms. These are the factors in
the Wyndham Act which have made M. Paul-Dubois declare of it
that--"Emaneé d'un gouvernment, ami des landlords, elle cache mal, sous
un apparence d'impartialité d'adroits efforts pour faire aux landlords
de la part belle pour hausser en leur faveur le prix de la terre."
The average price per acre for the five years before 1903 was £8 9s.;
since the Act it has been £13 4s., or taking into account the bonus £15.
The prices before the Wyndham Act rarely exceeded eighteen years'
purchase, and were, moreover, paid in Land Stock and without a bonus.
Under this Act the reasons which I have tried to outline have brought it
to pass that twenty-five years of second term rents are being paid in
cash, which, with the bonus, makes the total purchase price amount to
twenty-eight years. Hence it is that there is widespread anxiety in
Ireland lest land is being sold under the zones at prices which the Land
Commission, had it been entitled to inspect, would have been unable to
sanction as offering a safe security, seeing that the purchaser must pay
his annuity for sixty-eight years without hope of reduction--a danger,
in the event of bad seasons, which might have been diminished if the
sinking fund had been fixed at a higher rate and the decadal reductions
of earlier Acts retained, so as to reduce the incidence of the burden in
its later stages. This, be it noted, is one of the points in which the
provisions of the Act differ from the recommendations of the Land
Conference.
I have referred already to the block in sales under the Act owing to the
scarcity of money which is forthcoming to meet sales already effected.
By the financial provisions of the statute, so as not to demoralise the
market, a definite check was put upon the issue of the land stock, and
just before the late Government resigned Mr. Long, as Chief Secretary,
made a proposal, which was not received with enthusiasm by the parties
concerned, that the landlords should in future be paid partly in stock
at a nominal value and partly in cash. Nothing has since been done, and
the only step taken so far has been the appointment of a judge in
addition to those formerly so engaged, to accelerate the judicial
inquiries necessitated by the process of transfer. The whole cost of the
finance of the Act falls on the Irish taxpayer, and before the
introduction of Mr. Wyndham's proposal the idea was mooted--only to be
abandoned--of reviving a proposal made by Sir Robert Giffen in the
_Economist_ twenty years ago, which would have made the annuities paid
on purchase the basis of the funds from which the local bodies in
Ireland would draw their revenue, while the Imperial Exchequer would be
relieved to an equivalent amount by deductions from its grants to local
services.
The cost of the flotation of the Land Stock is borne by the Irish
Development Fund of £185,000 per annum, which is the share of Ireland,
equivalent to the grant for the increased cost of education in England
under the Act of 1902. More than one-half of this fund has already been
hypothecated for the costs of flotation of the twenty millions of Land
Stock which have already been issued, and under the present system of
finance, after a further issue of another twenty millions of stock, the
whole loss will be thrown on the County Councils, and through them on
the ratepayers, who have already been called upon to pay £70,000 to meet
certain of the losses in this connection, which amount to twelve per
cent. of the value of the stock floated.
The breaking up of the grazing lands, which in many instances the
landlords are keeping back from the market, has not met with much
success under the Act, and it is difficult to see how compulsion is to
be avoided if the country is to be saved from the economically
disastrous position of having established in it a number of occupying
owners on tenancies which are not large enough to secure to them a
living wage.
Under the Land Act of 1891 was created the Congested Districts Board,
with an annual income of £55,000, for the purpose of promoting the
permanent improvement of the backward districts of the West. The
districts which come under its control are those which answer the
following test, that more than twenty per cent. of the population of a
county live in electoral divisions, of which the total rateable value
gives a sum of less than 30s. per head of population. Such electoral
divisions occur in the nine counties of Kerry, Cork, Galway, Mayo,
Clare, Roscommon, Leitrim, Sligo, Donegal. In these counties there are
1,264 electoral divisions, of which 429 are congested. The setting up of
particular districts as "congested" is, of course, quite arbitrary.
There may be places outside the congested areas the condition of which
is much worse than that of some of the congested districts, but if the
population of these districts does not form one-fifth of that of the
whole county they are ruled out of the scope of the Board's activities.
The conditions which subsist in them have been ably described by M.
Bechaux from personal observation, and he declares that the standard of
living is lower than in any other country of Western Europe. Their
inhabitants number more than half a million--that is to say, 10 per
cent. of the total population of the island. Most of them have farms of
two to four acres, and they pay from a few shillings to several pounds
for rent. In many instances the rent which they pay is rather for a roof
than for the soil. They eke out a precarious livelihood by migration to
England, for there is but little demand for agricultural labour owing to
the prevalence of pasture in the West. Fishing has served as a secondary
source of income, and kelp burning was a profitable addition to their
means until the discovery of iodine in Peru sent down the price to a
marked extent.
The right of turbary, which nearly every tenancy possesses, is the one
thing which has kept this population from starvation, and in the case of
seaside tenancies a further gain accrues from the use made of seaweed as
manure, which, owing to the absence of stall-feeding, is only to be
obtained in this way. Home industries, such as weaving, form another
source of profit, and last, but not least, must be reckoned the money
sent home by relatives who have emigrated to America. Calves, pigs, and
poultry are maintained in these circumstances, and, owing to the sale of
the best of the stock, the breed has steadily deteriorated. In the
winter months potatoes, milk, and tea are the main articles of diet, and
after the potato harvest is used up American meal, ground from maize,
and American bacon of the worst possible kind take their place. The
bacon of their own pigs is far too expensive for them to eat. The maize
flour serves also as fodder for the live stock, and the oats which are
grown are-eaten as gruel by the people as well as by the animals which
they rear. The Congested Districts Board was established to remedy, as
far as possible, this state of things--primarily by reorganising
tenancies and amalgamating them into economic holdings, and at the same
time enlarging them by the purchase of untenanted land, followed by its
addition to existing tenancies. The slowness of its operations is seen
from the fact that after fourteen years it had purchased less than
240,000 acres, of which three-quarters were untenanted land, while the
whole extent of the congested districts is more than three and a half
million acres. In justice to the Board, however, one must add that it
has concerned itself with many other branches of rural economy--notably
the improvement of the breed of horses, cattle, and pigs, the sale at
cost price of chemical manures and seed, the making of harbours and
roads, and the sale on instalment terms of fishing boats.
It is impossible to exaggerate the work done by the Board on the Dillon
estate in Counties Mayo and Roscommon and in Clare Island. But when one
reads in the Report for 1906--the fifteenth annual report of the
Board--that since its establishment the Board has enlarged 1,220
tenures, re-arranged 537, and created 220, and realises, further, that
there are in Ireland 200,000 uneconomic holdings, one may well ask what
are these among so many?
Under the Act of 1903 the Board's purchases are financed by the Land
Commission, and the results are to be seen in an acceleration of
purchases, for while in the twelve years 1891 to 1903 the Board had
bought about 200,000 acres, of which less than 45,000 were unlet land,
in the three years from November, 1903, to the end of March, 1905, the
acreage bought was over 160,000 acres, of which 48,000 were unlet, and
negotiations were in progress for the transfer of another 100,000 acres,
of which 20,500 were unlet.
Under the Act, however, in the case of "Congested Estates," which are
defined as those in which one-half at least of the holdings are of
valuation of £5 or under, or which consist of mountain or bog, the Land
Commission is empowered to purchase and re-sell to the tenants, even at
a loss, so long as the total loss on the purchase and improvements of
these holdings does not exceed 10 per cent. of the cost of the total
sales effected in the course of the same year. The amendments of the
House of Lords, however, made the part of the Act dealing with this
question a dead letter, and the Land Commissioners have given up the
attempt to put it in force. The landlords, having a choice between sale
direct to their tenants and to the Land Commission, have refused to give
their consent to the declaration of their estate as a congested estate,
which is necessary for the application of this section, unless they
receive a guarantee that the holdings shall not be sold to the tenants
at a lower price than they themselves could have obtained. The result is
that if the Commissioners were to pay these maximum prices there would
be nothing left for them out of which to make the necessary
improvements, and, in consequence, this provision of the Act has been a
failure.
As regards the evicted tenants, the first condition in the settlement
arrived at by the Land Conference, and embodied in the Wyndham Act, was
that they--the wounded soldiers in the land war, as they have been
called--to whose sacrifices in the common cause is due the ameliorative
legislation enacted by Parliament, should be restored to their holdings.
In actual practice, by means of restrictive instructions issued by the
late Government to the Commissioners, two of whom protested against this
action in their report for 1906, the provisions of the Act which
promised this reinstatement were made a dead letter--the Executive once
again, in a historic phrase, driving a coach and four through the
statute.
With the advent to power of the Liberal Government these instructions
were withdrawn, but a further serious obstacle was to be found in the
refusal of some landlords--and those, too, the worst--to allow their
estates to be inspected with a view to find holdings for evicted
tenants. This was the condition of affairs to which Mr. Bryce--at that
time Chief Secretary--referred, when he said--"If the remedy for this
state of things is compulsion, then to compulsion for that remedy we
must go."
It is to be observed that the three Estates Commissioners were unanimous
in thinking compulsion necessary, and that which was demanded was that
the occupants, or planters, who in some cases have been _bona fide_
farmers, but whom the Land Commission inspectors reported had in many
cases allowed the land to get into a bad and dirty state, should, on
dispossession, be generously compensated or given their choice of other
lands. It was originally thought that one thousand would be the limit of
the number of applications which would be made for reinstatement, but,
in the event, out of ten thousand tenants evicted in the last quarter of
a century, such applications were made in 6,700 cases, and some notion
of the poverty of these peasants who were turned out upon the roadside
may be inferred from the fact that nearly one-half paid a rental of less
than £10 a year.
At the beginning of the session of 1907, out of the total number of
applicants 1,300 had been rejected as not coming within the scope of the
provisions relating to them, and 650, or less than 10 per cent. of the
whole number who applied, had been reinstated. In the case of more than
half the total number of applicants no report had been made, and in more
than 450 cases, including, of course, those on the Clanricarde and Lewis
estates, inspection of the property had been, as it is still, refused by
the landlords. At this juncture Mr. Birrell declared that further
legislation was imperatively needed, and to this announcement Mr. Walter
Long replied that he accepted the view of his predecessor, Mr. Wyndham,
as to the bargain which had been come to in regard to this question, and
he went on to say:--[9]
"There can be no doubt whatever that in the interest not merely of these
unfortunate people, whatever their past history may have been, but in
the interest of the successful working of the Land Purchase Act, their
reinstatement is looked upon as an essential element and a thing
promised by Parliament."
The voluntary system, to which a tentative agreement was given under the
Act of 1903, having broken down, the Evicted Tenants Bill was designed
as a tardy act of justice to remove the cause for disaffection on the
part of a tenantry to which Mr. T.W. Russell paid a notable tribute the
other day as being not naturally lawless, but in point of fact the most
God-fearing, purest-minded, and simplest peasantry on the face of the
earth. That his diagnosis, that unrest is merely the product of
suffering under cruel circumstances, is valid, is illustrated by the
complete restoration of peace on the Massereene estate, when, on the
death of the late peer, the planters were replaced by the tenants who
had been evicted.
The land which it was proposed to affect by the Bill was a mere matter
of some 80,000 acres, a bagatelle to the landed interest of Ireland, but
involving vital consequences to the poverty-stricken peasants of the
West. It was a Bill, as the Lord Chancellor declared, to deal with the
tail of an agrarian revolution, and to effect this with the minimum of
suffering, compulsory powers and a simple and expeditious procedure were
demanded, but in spite of the lip service which Unionists paid to the
principles involved, in spite of their admissions that it proposed only
to carry out their part of the agreement, arrived at no less than four
years ago; by their amendments in the House of Lords, introducing
limitations and appeals involving delays and costs, they succeeded in
large measure in destroying the value of the measure. One can understand
the attitude of Lord Clanricarde, who roundly denounced the whole
proposal as "tainted with the callous levity of despotism," but it is
difficult to speak charitably of the members of the Opposition, who,
while repeatedly protesting their anxiety to see the evicted tenants
restored, took care, through the agency of the House of Lords, to place
every possible obstacle in the way of their speedy re-instatement.
Many of the amendments designed by the House of Lords were proposed by
two of the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, who sit in that House primarily
as judges, and who are supposed to keep free from political
entanglements. They aimed at an enhancement of the prices at which
compulsory purchase should take effect, with a view, it was admitted by
their organs in the Press, to afford a precedent for further schemes of
land purchase at large. Of this nature was the compensation which they
demanded--fortunately without success--in accordance with the provisions
of the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act, which, if accepted by
Government, would have given to the landlords on sale a douceur of 10
per cent. in addition to the 12 per cent. bonus which they already enjoy
over and above the market value of the land, and the fixation of such a
price would have prevented any reinstatement, for this reason, that the
instalments of the tenants in those circumstances would have been too
high to have been within the means of the tenants whom it was proposed
to reinstate.
There was a curious irony in the spectacle of the House of Lords
standing out for the principle of fixity of tenure, and defending tooth
and nail the tenant-right of a few hundred planters, when little more
than thirty years ago this same body offered the most relentless
opposition to any recognition of the right of compensation for
disturbance on the part of four millions of Irish tenants. In this
matter the Lords gained their point, and compulsory powers are not to be
applied under the Act to the holdings on which the landlords have placed
planters, who are held to be _bona fide_ farmers. An amendment to this
effect was thrown out by the House of Commons, by a majority of more
than four to one, on a division in which only 66 voted for the
amendment, but although the Bill in its original form offered sitting
tenants the fullest compensation ever offered to such persons, and
although most of the planters would be only too glad to accept such
terms, the Upper House insisted on over-riding the will of the great
majority in the Commons.
Lord Lansdowne, on the second reading, gave three reasons why the Bill
should not be incontinently rejected by the Peers. In the first place,
it came to them, he said, supported by an enormous majority in the other
House, "and their Lordships always desired to treat attentively and
respectfully Bills which came to them with such a recommendation."
Secondly, the late Government, as well as the present, had pledged
themselves to a measure of reinstatement of some kind, and if they threw
out the Bill on a second reading "it would be said that they had receded
from a kind of understanding arrived at in 1903," and lastly, "the
summary rejection of the Bill might greatly increase the difficulties of
the Executive Government in Ireland." One would have thought that the
fact that the Bill was given a second reading did little to exonerate
the Upper House from similar consequences as a result of their
mutilation of the Bill in Committee.
In its final form the Act allows an appeal on questions of value from
the inspector, to two Estates Commissioners, and from them to Mr.
Justice Wylie, sitting as Judicial Commissioner with a valuer. On
questions of price there is no appeal from him. Other appeals, on
questions of law and fact, are, by Section 6, to be heard by a Judge of
the King's Bench, with whom rests the final decision whether a
particular planter is or is not to be evicted. Demesne lands and other
lands, purchase of which would interfere with the value of adjoining
property, are omitted from the scope of the statute, and its operation
is limited to the case of 2,000 tenants, whose claims must be disposed
of within four years. The power vested in the Estates Commissioners
compulsorily to acquire untenanted land, not necessarily their former
holdings, for the reinstatement of the evicted tenants, is of no
practical value in the case of the Clanricarde estate, since all the
land on it is occupied, and the fact that on that plague-spot--the
nucleus of the whole disturbance--no settlement will be possible under
the Act, shows to what an extent was justified Mr. Birrell's declaration
that the final form of the statute was a triumph for Lord Clanricarde,
and affords a curious commentary on the repeated declarations of the
Unionist leaders, that nothing was further from their desire than to
effect the wrecking of the Bill.[10]
Rejection of similar measures of relief--notably the Tenants'
Compensation Bill of 1880--has led in the past to a recrudescence of
strife in Ireland, and Mr. Balfour's unworthy retort to Mr. Redmond's
deduction from every precedent in the history of the struggle for the
land, that it was an incitement to lawlessness, was a mere partisan
retort to an avowal of a danger which every unbiassed observer must see
arises from the betrayal by the House of Lords of a confidence in a
final settlement which was formerly encouraged by a Conservative Govern
merit.
One of the weapons used by the Orangemen in their attack on this Bill
was to be found in their repeated insinuations as to the unfitness of
the Estates Commissioners to exercise dispassionately the functions
which would be demanded of them. In this the Unionists were hoist with
their own petard, for the necessity recognised by the Government for
placing the Estates Commissioners in a position other than that of mere
Executive officers, by giving them a judicial tenure independent of
ministerial pressure or party influences, was strongly shown by the
incident of the Moore-Bailey correspondence of last session, which
should provide food for reflection on the part of those who imagine that
intimidation is to be found in Ireland in use only on the National side.
Mr. Moore, the most active of the Orangemen, asked in a supplementary
question whether it was not a fact that the delay in the Estates
Commissioners' Office was due to Mr. Commissioner Bailey's continued
presence in London. These visits, it should be noted, were paid to
London by Mr. Bailey in the discharge of his official duties for the
purpose of consultations with the Government in connection with the
Evicted Tenants Bill. On reading in the papers Mr. Moore's question
implying negligence to his duties on his part, Mr. Bailey wrote to Mr.
Moore the following letter, marked private:--
"UNIVERSITY CLUB,
"DUBLIN, March, 1907.
"DEAR MOORE,--I see that as a supplemental question you asked
the other day whether the delay in land purchase was due to the
continued absence of Mr. Bailey. I do not know, of course, what
was your object, but it may interest you to know that for the
last year I attended more days in the office than either of my
colleagues, and that, as a matter of fact, I did not take much
more than half the vacation to which I was entitled. You will
thus see that you have been strangely misinformed, and I can
only surmise that another of my colleagues was meant.
"Faithfully yours,
"W.F. BAILEY."
To this Mr. Moore replied:--
"ULSTER CLUB,
"BELFAST, March 19th.
"DEAR BAILEY,--You were appointed by a Unionist Government to
see fair play between Wrench and Finucane, and you have sold
the pass on every occasion. The first thing my colleagues and I
will do when we come back, which will not be very far off, will
be to press for an inquiry into the working of your department.
You can destroy your evidence now, and show this to whom you
please.
"Yours truly,
"W. MOORE."
In reply the Estates Commissioner wrote:--
"Mr. Bailey desires to acknowledge receipt of Mr. Moore's
letter of the 19th inst., and inasmuch as it contains grave
statements of a threatening and unfounded character he will
take an early opportunity of bringing the matter under notice
in the proper quarter."
The final letter was Mr. Moore's reply:--
"ULSTER CLUB,
"BELFAST, March 25th.
"Mr. Moore hopes that when Mr. Bailey publishes the
correspondence he will make it clear that Mr. Moore's reply was
directed to a disloyal attack by Mr. Bailey on one of his
colleagues in his letter to Mr. Moore. This is all that was
omitted from Mr. Moore's reply."
The next step in this discreditable incident occurred on July 23rd, on
which day Mr. Moore denounced Mr. Bailey in the House of Commons for his
partisanship towards the Nationalists, and gave a graphic picture of the
private letter which Mr. Bailey had written to him to protest against
his personal attacks. Mr. Redmond rose and asked that Mr. Russell should
read to the House Mr. Moore's reply, and Mr. Russell thereupon read the
second of the letters given above, upon which Mr. Balfour, regardless of
his own share in the partial suppression of the Wyndham-MacDonnell
_dossier_ a few years before, demanded the production of the whole
correspondence. This was done on July 26th, when Mr. Moore read the
letters in the order given above. In his personal explanation he
represented it as an extremely suspicious circumstance that Mr. Bailey
had been seen in the Lobby in conversation with the Nationalists. "That
may be legitimate," he said, "but I think it very undesirable," and in
the very next breath he confessed that another of the Commissioners was
a particular and personal friend of his own, to whom he would have shown
the first letter from Mr. Bailey if it had not been marked private.
The comment of the _Times_--in which Mr. Moore as a rule finds an active
admirer of his political methods--is interesting:--
"Mr. Bailey is a public servant entrusted with certain quasi-judicial
functions. That a member of Parliament, whatever may be his opinions of
the conduct of such an official, should inform him that he had been
appointed 'to see fair play' between his colleagues, and that he had not
seen it, and should couple this charge with a promise to press for an
inquiry into the working of the department whenever there should be a
change of Government, is indefensible."
The whole incident is worthy of attention as showing the atmosphere of
suspicious hostility with which the Orange faction in Ireland surrounds
every act even of Civil Servants and Executive Officers who are not as
active supporters of the ascendancy as they would wish.
Of further legislation dealing with the laws of tenure, the Town Tenants
Act of 1906, which Mr. Balfour denounced as highway robbery, gives
tenants in towns compensation for disturbance so as to prevent a
landlord making a vexatious use of his rights. An attempt was made by
the House of Lords to limit the compensation so paid to one year's rent,
but the rejection of the amendment by the House of Commons was
acquiesced in, and no such limitation exists in the Act.
With regard to the question of the agricultural labourers, the fact that
the last Census Report discloses that there are in Ireland nearly 10,000
"houses" with one room and one window apiece, wretched cabins inhabited
by about 40,000 people, the peat smoke from the fire in which escapes
through a hole in the thatch, gives some idea of the miserable
conditions existing in parts of the West of Ireland. Of the quarter of a
million of cottages in the second class of the Census--those, that is,
with from one to four doors and windows--a large number also no doubt
are quite unfit for habitation, and do much in the way of leading to the
asylum or to emigration. It is to secure the replacement of these by
cheap sanitary and comfortable cottages that the Labourers' Acts, ever
since the first of the series introduced by the Irish Party in 1883,
have been passed. By them Boards of Guardians, and by the Local
Government Act, Rural District Councils, may build such cottages. In
1905, 18,000 cottages had been built under existing Acts, and they are
let to tenants at rents of from 10d. to 1s. a week, but the difficulty
had always been to effect the improvements sufficiently rapidly owing to
the costly and elaborate procedure which involved an appeal to the Privy
Council and a heavy burden on the rates of a poverty-stricken community.
The Act of 1906 has simplified procedure by replacing the appeal to the
Privy Council by an appeal to the Local Government Board, and that it
was needful is seen from the fact that under Wyndham's Act only 25
cottages were built. It is hoped thereby to circumvent the apathy of
District Councils, and their parsimony is to be appeased by the fact
that the funds, which are largely derived from economics in the Irish
Executive are advanced at a rate of interest, not as heretofore of 4-7/8
per cent., but, as in the case of land purchase advances, of 3-1/4 per
cent., repayable in a period of 68-1/2 years. The urgency of the problem
is obvious. The bearing of this state of affairs in rural housing on the
fact that in 1904 two out of every thirteen deaths were due to
tuberculosis shows that it is impossible to overestimate its importance,
and I think that this condition of things, put side by side with the
other economic facts with which I have dealt, are a sufficient reply to
those who declare that conditions in Ireland would appear _couleur de
rose_ were they not seen through the jaundiced eyes of a discontented
people.
If the catalogue of Acts of Parliament which have been found necessary
to effect the transformation of the system of tenure in Ireland from the
state in which it was forty years ago to that in which it is to-day is
evidence of the pressing grievance under which the country has suffered;
it is also proof that there cannot be legislation other than by shreds
and patches on the part of a legislature which lacks sympathy for and
knowledge of the country for which it is making laws.
The need for exceptional and separate legislation in Ireland has been
admitted, and the system which existed in fact, obtained legal sanction
only in 1881, to be in its turn swept away by further legislation which
will have a deeper economic bearing on the future of the country than
any other change since the relaxation of the Penal Laws. For the rest I
cannot do better than quote, in this connection, the opinion of the most
dispassionate critic of Ireland of recent years--Herr Moritz Bonn.
Speaking of the landlord who has sold his estate he says--"He has no
further cause of friction with his former tenants, who now pay him no
rent. He no longer regards himself as part of an English garrison. He
will again become an Irish patriot. He no longer talks of the unity of
the Empire, for Home Rule has few terrors for him now. He talks of
'Devolution,' of the concession of a kind of self-government for
Ireland. He will struggle for a while against the designation Home Rule,
because not so long ago he was declaring that he would die in the last
ditch for the union of the three kingdoms, but he will soon be
reconciled to it. It will not be very long till the former landlords,
whose chief interests lie in Ireland, have become enthusiastic
Nationalists."