THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).
Law-making in 1870--The Queen's Speech--The Irish Land
Problem--Diversities of Opinions--The Agrarian Agitation--Mr.
Gladstone's Land Bill introduced--Its Five Parts--Grievances of
the Irish Tenant--Free Contract--The Ulster Custom--Compensation
for Eviction--The Landlord's Safeguards--The Irish Labourer--Mr.
Gladstone's Peroration--Direct and Indirect Opposition--The
Second Reading carried--Agrarian Outrages--Mr. Fortescue's
Coercion Bill--Mr. Disraeli's Amendment to the Land Bill--A
Clever Speech--Mr. Lowe's Reply--Progress of the Debate--The Bill
through the Commons--Tactics of the Lords--Amendments proposed and
withdrawn--Avoidance of a Collision between the Houses--The Bill
becomes Law.
By the side of the vast Continental events that made the year 1870 one
of the memorable years of the world, domestic politics looked small
and feeble. And yet they were by no means small; few years, in fact,
had so much to show of work actually done and finished by the cumbrous
Parliamentary machine. It was a well-known maxim of English politics,
that a Ministry could never depend upon carrying more than one measure
of first-rate importance in a single Session. Whatever nominal majority
might sit behind a Minister, he knew that in the actual state of society
interests were so complicated, prejudices so many-sided, that it was hard
enough to lead the majority into the lobby once in the year on a great
question, and he seldom attempted to do more. Yet the year 1870 presented
the strange phenomenon of a Session marked by the carrying of two great
measures, each of them met by vigorous opposition, each of them full of
interference with vested interests--the Irish Land Act and the Education
Act. Mr. Bright expressed the general sense of the difficulty of much
legislation when he said at Birmingham, in January, "You cannot easily
drive six omnibuses abreast through Temple Bar." But Mr. Forster happily
took up his metaphor a short time afterwards: "Let the Irish Land omnibus
pass through first, and Lord de Grey and I will drive our Education
omnibus in afterwards."
Parliament met on the 8th of February, and the great measure of the
Session--the Irish Land Bill--was soon afterwards brought forward. Of
the three branches which, according to Mr. Gladstone's figure, had grown
upon the tree of Protestant ascendency in Ireland, one--the Church--had
fallen; there remained the Land and Education. The last, which proved in
the end the most difficult question, was to be left to a future Session;
but with regard to the Land the Queen's Speech was explicit. "It will be
proposed to you," it said, "to amend the laws respecting the occupation
and acquisition of land in Ireland, in a manner adapted to the peculiar
circumstances of that country, and calculated, as her Majesty believes,
to bring about improved relations between the several classes concerned
in Irish agriculture, which collectively constitute the great bulk of the
people. These provisions, when matured by your impartiality and wisdom,
as her Majesty trusts, will tend to inspire, among persons with whom such
sentiments may still be wanting, that steady confidence in the law, and
that desire to render assistance in its effective administration, which
mark her subjects in general; and thus will aid in consolidating the
fabric of the Empire."
This utterance, clothed in the English peculiar to Speeches from the
Throne, showed definitely that Government were committed to a measure
of a comprehensive kind. All through the previous autumn and winter, in
fact, public opinion had been ripening for such a measure. The newspapers
began to be full of articles on the subject; statistics--official,
semi-official, and unofficial--were being collected and published in
all directions. The _Times_ sent a special commissioner to Ireland,
and published his letters in a place of honour. Pamphleteers abounded;
every one, from crotchety landlords or crotchety tenant-right-men or
peasant-proprietor-men, up to such authorities as Mr. (afterwards Sir)
George Campbell, a well-known Indian administrator, wrote down their
views. The class in possession were uneasy; and yet, as the event
proved, there was very little for them to be uneasy about--or rather,
the limitations that were finally imposed on them were not very severe.
In fact, the history of the treatment of the Irish Land Question is
throughout extremely singular. It is perfectly true, as Lord Cairns
said, that "at all times and in all countries there is no kind of
agitation which ever has been so serious or so difficult to deal with
as an agitation on the subject of land." It is also true in a measure,
to continue his words, that "for fourteen months this subject had been
exciting the minds of the people." Agrarian crime was rife in Ireland--the
Fenian spirit was for the moment all the more savage for the attempt at
conciliation made in the passing of the Church Disestablishment Act.
Fifty-nine grave cases--cases of _delicta majora_--were recorded in 1869;
and of these, eighteen were murders, most of them agrarian. On the other
hand, as we have said, the public press, both in England and in Ireland,
was teeming with discussion of land problems, yet in spite of all this
evidence of excitement, it is undoubtedly true that the Land Bill was
passed through both Houses with far less difficulty than had been the
case with the Church Bill; and that the debates upon it, the criticisms
passed on it, and the reception it met with, were, on the whole, quiet,
satisfactory, and dignified. The "agitation" of which Lord Cairns spoke
was, except for the numerous single crimes that accompanied rather than
belonged to it, singularly temperate. The importance of the occasion,
the strong sense in almost every mind of a dangerous existing injustice,
seemed to compel the advocates of both sides into a course of mutual
forbearance. Fenianism had done at least that good: it had shown that
Irish discontent was a reality and that its first element was an agrarian
element.
The debate on the Address showed clearly what the expectations of both
parties in Parliament were: Mr. Disraeli's speech consisted of indications
of what, according to him, the Government Bill ought not to be; and Mr.
Gladstone's answer was an appeal for a patient hearing. On the 15th of
February Mr. Gladstone brought forward his Land Bill--the anti-Fenian
character of which was shown by a motion proposed a short time before
by him, to the effect that O'Donovan Rossa, the Fenian convict, who had
been elected member for Tipperary, "had become, and continued incapable
of being elected or returned as a member of the House," and 293 members
had voted for this motion against 16 on the other side. The formal motion
of the Prime Minister was "to obtain leave to bring in a Bill to amend
the law relating to the occupation and ownership of land in Ireland," and
the Bill which he brought forward was divided into five parts. The first
part (secs. 1--31) deals with the Law of Compensation to Tenants, giving
a legal status to the "customs" known as the Ulster tenant-right custom
and others that prevail in different parts of Ireland, and establishing
the principle of compensation to the tenant for improvements and for
disturbance by the act of the landlord. The second part deals with the
Sale of Lands to Tenants; the third, with Advances by, and Powers of, the
Board of Works; the fourth, with Legal Proceedings and the Court which
was to try cases; the fifth, with miscellaneous questions relating to new
tenancies. In his speech--as lucid and interesting as his great expository
speeches always were--Mr. Gladstone began by a review of the history of
the Parliamentary treatment of the question since the first Reform Act.
That history was to be summed up in one word--procrastination. "What I
hope is," he said, "that having witnessed the disaster and difficulty
which have arisen from this long procrastination, we shall resolve in mind
and heart by a manful effort to close and seal up for ever, if it may be,
this great question which so intimately concerns the welfare and happiness
of the people of Ireland." Government had certainly made, he declared,
and were making, this "manful effort;" they had cleared their mind of
all the anti-Celtic prepossessions so common in England; they had made
themselves masters of all the facts which the recent voluminous literature
of the question had brought to light. Then he passed to the "present
sensitiveness" of Ireland, which he traced to recent interruptions of
Irish prosperity, to evictions, and to the conversion of much land from
tillage to pasture. But the flaws of existing legislation had much to
do with it also; notably the Act which in some respects had done much
good, the Encumbered Estates Act. This Act had sprung from a desire to
introduce capital into Ireland, and it created great facilities in the
sale of land owned by impoverished proprietors. But it contained "one
fatal oversight." Lord Devon's Commission in 1845, endorsed by Sir Robert
Peel's Government, had recognised the right of the tenant to be invested
with a title to improvements--that is, to claim a full allowance for the
value of improvements effected by him in the land he occupied. This claim,
Mr. Gladstone said, was doubtless generally admitted by the landlords;
but when the properties came, as they so often did, into the Encumbered
Estates Court, the tenant found himself legally robbed of his equitable
claim. The Court sold the lands just as they were, and took no notice of
the distinction between the soil itself and the improvements made by the
tenant. "So," he went on to say, "the improvements were sold away from
the tenant to persons who paid a price for them and the price was paid to
the outgoing landlord, who undoubtedly ought not to have been entitled
to claim the property in them, and would not have been so entitled if the
legislation recommended in 1845 had been adopted." In this and similar
ways the Prime Minister showed that Acts which had been passed at various
times with the most benevolent intentions towards Ireland, had defeated
themselves, and helped ruin, instead of strengthening, the peace and
prosperity of the country. The same thing, he added, might be said about
emigration--a process natural and divinely beneficial when voluntary and
free; but when compulsory, as was practically the case with Ireland,
hardly to be distinguished from banishment.
These being some among the practical grievances of the Irish people with
regard to their land, it was proposed to do away with them, or at least
to diminish their force, by law. Free contract, said Mr. Gladstone, is
undoubtedly the best arrangement, ideally speaking, in the relations
between landlord and tenant, as in the other relations of life; but free
contract is often practically impossible, and in some cases is with
general approval overridden by the law. "You will not allow the man who
has a factory to contract with the persons he employs on terms which suit
their inclinations, but which you have forbidden.... These are cases which
justify interference; but much stronger is the case for Ireland, because
in substance these contracts, though nominally free, have not been really
free under the peculiar conditions of life which that country offers."
The Irishman is practically dependent on the soil--he has no choice of
careers as he has in a mining and manufacturing country. "Strict freedom
of contract, then, having been proved to be a great evil, what is the
precise nature of that evil? The Devon Commission has pointed it out. It
is that insecurity of tenure which not only abridges the comforts of the
cultivator of the soil, but which limits and paralyses his industry, and
at the same time vitiates his relations in a number of cases with the
landlord, and in a still greater number with the law under which and the
society in which he lives." To remedy this insecurity, a number of plans
were extant; and already some were crying out for stability, some for
perpetuity, some for fixity of tenure--phrases which all meant the same
thing, the conversion of occupiers into owners. These plans Mr. Gladstone
rejected, and went on to ask if no more moderate arrangement had been
discovered, or could be found in the actual facts of Ireland. Certainly
such arrangement could be found, notably in the "Custom of Ulster," and
in the customs more or less analogous to it prevailing in other parts
of Ireland; and to lands held under these customs Mr. Gladstone first
looked. "It is not necessary at present," he said, "to investigate the
history of the Ulster custom; whether it represents the ancient Irish
ideas derived from the period of tribal possession; whether it represents
the covenants which were inserted by James I. in the Charters granted
to the settlers in the province; whether it has grown out of the happy
political relations subsisting, for the most part, between the landlords
and the occupiers, which have induced landlords to view favourably the
growth of such a usage; or whether, lastly, it represents the payment of
a kind of insurance for the safety of the incoming tenant when he obtains
that possession of land which is so prized and valued in that country."
Whatever were the origin of the custom, Government was content to take the
Ulster custom as matter of fact, to convert it into a law, and to allow
it to be examined into as a simple question of fact, in cases where a
dispute might arise, by the Courts which would be established under this
Bill. As such the Ulster custom would be regarded, where it existed, as
including two elements--compensation for improvements, and the price of
goodwill. The customs which prevailed in other parts of Ireland, being all
of them much more partial, vague, and uncertain, were only to be made law
under certain conditions. First, under such customs, a tenant was only
to be allowed to claim payment of money on leaving his holding if he was
disturbed in his tenancy by the act of his landlord. Secondly, he was not
to be allowed to claim if evicted for non-payment of rent. Thirdly, he was
not to be allowed to claim if he sublet his land (except for cottages)
without his landlord's consent. Fourthly, not only arrears of rent, but
damages done to the farm, might be pleaded by the landlord as a set-off.
Fifthly, a landlord might bar the pleading of any such custom if he gave
the tenant a lease, under certain conditions, of not less than thirty-one
years.
[Illustration: MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUE (AFTERWARDS LORD CARLINGFORD).
(_From a Photograph by Fradelle & Young, Regent Street, W._)]
But what was to be done where no such protecting custom could be pleaded?
Outside Ulster--outside the shelter of similar usages--the tenant, if
not protected by any lease, "felt the full force of that tremendous evil
of insecurity of tenure." To meet the case of such persons, Government
proposed a scale of damages for evictions, with power to those tenants
"having a farm not rented, but valued in the public valuation at £100 and
upwards, to contract themselves out of this section of the Act." This
was the most important clause in the Bill, and, as will appear, the most
memorable divisions afterwards took place upon it and in connection with
it in committee and in the Lords. The compensation was of course to be
decided by the Courts established by the Bill; and in applying the scale,
the judge, said Mr. Gladstone, "is required by the Act to have regard
to two things--first, the improvements which have been executed by the
tenant on his farm; and, secondly, the loss which the occupier is about
to sustain by being ejected from his holding." The "improvements" were to
include ordinary improvements, such as draining and fencing, and also the
greater improvements, such as permanent buildings and reclamation of land.
The scale was to be--if the holding was valued in the public valuation at
over £10, the judge might award to the tenant a sum not exceeding seven
years' rent; if the holding was between £10 and £50, he might award a
sum not exceeding five years' rent; if between £50 and £100, a sum not
exceeding three years' rent; if above £100, a sum not exceeding two years'
rent. "In the ordinary case of eviction for non-payment of rent," Mr.
Gladstone added, "or for subdividing the land, the House will understand
that the scale does not apply at all." Moreover, the word "improvement"
was rigidly defined, and was to be taken to mean "something which would
add to the letting value of the land, and suitable to the nature of the
holding as an agricultural holding"--not any fancy improvements which were
not suitable to the purposes of agriculture. The great change which the
Bill effected was, in fact, a change in the legal presumption. Previously,
as Mr. Gladstone said, the law had presumed all improvements to be
the work of the landlord, and had given them to him. The Bill proposed
to reverse this presumption, and to presume that improvements were the
work of the occupier, giving to the landlord the business of showing the
presumption wrong in any special case.
The importance which Government attached to these enactments about
improvements is shown by the elaborate machinery which they devised to
enable the landlord, if he chose, to bar the claim. This was a machinery
of leasehold tenure, which was to allow the landlord to keep the general
claim for goodwill off his estate. "This cannot be done by one lease,"
said Mr. Gladstone, "for if the landlord, at the end of one of these
statutory leases, does not think fit to continue the system of leases,
goodwill will immediately grow up as a plant grows from the ground." A
series of leases would be required to do it, and, by continuous leases, a
landlord might keep his land perfectly free from any claim to goodwill.
"I may now, perhaps, be asked," added Mr. Gladstone, "what we have done
for the Irish labourer. For him we have done what the case will permit.
We have allowed the tenant to subdivide and sublet for cottages and
gardens.... We have offered advances from the Public Funds.... But the
one great boon--and it is a great boon--which it is in the power of
the Legislature to give to the agricultural labourer in Ireland, is to
increase the demand for his labour, and, by imparting a stimulus to that
part of the country, to insure its requiring more strong arms to carry it
on, and thereby to bring more bidders into the market for those arms, and
raise the natural and legitimate price of their labour.... If we can only
convince every man that, from the time this Act passes, he will be able to
prosecute his industry in security and in the manner most advantageous to
himself, we shall confer upon the agricultural labourer the greatest boon
which it is in our power to bestow."
These were the main features of the Bill which Mr. Gladstone committed
to the House in a peroration singularly dignified and self-restrained.
It was not, he said, to be expected that evils of such long standing as
Irish evils were should be cured in a day, and it was impossible that
they should be cured if the Bill were to be "poisoned by the malignant
agency of angry or bitter passions." The passing of the Bill was to be
looked on, not as the triumph of party over party, but "as a common work
of common love and goodwill to the common good of our common country."
"With such objects and in such a spirit," he concluded, "the House will
address itself to the work and sustain the feeble efforts of Government.
And my hope, at least, is high and ardent that we shall live to see our
work prosper in our hand; and that in that Ireland which we desire to
unite to England and Scotland by the only enduring ties--those of free
will and free affection--peace, order, and a settled and cheerful industry
will diffuse their blessings from year to year and from day to day over a
smiling land."
A Bill of this complicated kind could obviously not be discussed on the
first reading, so no debate took place until the second reading on the
7th of March. From the reception given to Mr. Gladstone's statement on
February 15th, it was clear that the Conservatives did not mean to offer a
point-blank opposition to the principle of the Bill. Mr. Gathorne Hardy,
who acted as leader of the Opposition on that night, owned that his party
"had a keen sense of the evils existing among the landlords, tenants, and
labourers of Ireland at present," and hinted that they would reserve their
principal criticisms till the Bill was in committee. The direct hostility
to the Bill came from another quarter--from the extreme Irish party. Mr.
Bryan, who was one of them, and Captain White, member for Tipperary,
proposed and seconded an amendment to the second reading, to the effect
that the Bill should be read again that day six months. But the views
of members who protested against the principle of a landlord being ever
allowed to raise his rents, and who openly asked not only for "fixity of
tenure," but for fixity at nominal payments, could hardly hope to find
favour in a Parliament of landlords. The principal speakers who criticised
the Government plan were men of quite other views. Dr. Ball, Colonel
Wilson-Patten, Mr. Henley, Mr. Ward Hunt, and Mr. Disraeli protested,
not against the insufficient rights bestowed upon the occupier, but
against the injury done to the landlord. Dr. Ball, the member for Dublin
University, who brought to the Conservative side a remarkable contribution
of eloquence and force, protested very strongly against the principle of
interfering with freedom of contract. "You in England," he said, "have
been working for centuries to make landlord and tenant not ascertain their
rights by litigation, but have them established on the solid basis of
contract.... I say you have got the best system; and I believe it to be
the best because I believe that Englishmen, having set their hearts on
the best system, would be content with nothing less. What do I ask for
my country? I ask the right to rise to the same standard as yourselves.
I demand that you will not lay down a rule of this kind and say, 'This
is good enough for Ireland. There is a positive incapacity in the Irish
landlord to deal with his tenants by contract, and in the Irish tenant to
take care of himself by contract. The Scotch and English are able to do
it. Therefore the true system shall be reserved as a _privilegium_ for
them; but the Irish shall not be able to attempt it, because we shall
put a clause in an Act of Parliament to prevent it.'" And Mr. Disraeli,
in a similar strain, protested both against legalising the custom of
Ulster ("because it does not exist," he said) and against interference
with the freedom of contract. And yet, as we said, it was plain that the
Conservative party were too well convinced of the strength of Government
to attempt a wholesale rejection of the Bill. In the division that closed
the debate on the second reading, Mr. Gladstone carried them into the
lobby with him, and the principle of the Bill was affirmed by 442 against
11.
This majority was a clear enough intimation that the principles of the
Government Bill were accepted by the House. Among the eleven "Noes"
were found only three Tories--among them the veteran Mr. Henley, whose
staunch adherence to landlord-right was not to be shaken by any amount of
"political necessity," such as Mr. Disraeli talked of. But Mr. Henley, Sir
W. Bagge, and Mr. Lowther--who for once found themselves in the strange
company of the Extreme Left of Home Rulers and Roman Catholics--could only
offer an ineffectual protest against the "tenants' Bill." The principle,
that of legalising customs of compensation where found, and of making a
statutory scale of compensation for loss of occupancy in the absence of
any custom, had been once for all affirmed. It was evident, however, that
the Bill would be severely handled in committee; and the prospect became
all the clearer from certain fresh signs of agrarian terrorism which
began to appear just after the second reading. County Mayo began to be
disturbed by the visits of masked and armed men to the farmhouses, with
the object of making the farmers swear to "break up their pasture lands."
These outrages--more like the proceedings of Australian bushrangers
or American Ku-klux men than of inhabitants of these islands--did not
dispose Parliament to leniency in regard to Irish disaffection. Mr.
Chichester Fortescue proposed, on the 17th of March, a Bill which would
effectually meet these agrarian cases; and in a fortnight it became law.
Its effect was to place certain districts of Ireland practically in a
state of siege; it forbade the possession of firearms by unlicensed
persons; it gave rights of search to constables; it took more stringent
measures against threatening letters; it allowed discretionary arrests of
suspected persons; it allowed the grand jury to give damages, chargeable
on the county, to the families of murdered men; and it increased almost
indefinitely the right of Government to seize newspapers. This Bill, which
nothing but extreme necessity could have justified, passed Commons and
Lords almost without a struggle; the Lords especially agreeing with Lord
Salisbury, who said, "You must teach the Irish people to fear the law
before you can induce them to like it."
Never has a Bill been visited with a more imposing show of amendments
than the Land Bill in committee. Three hundred alterations, like the
three hundred conspirators against King Porsenna, were banded together
to work its fall, or at least to hamper its activity. The Ulster custom
was debated for many hours, and met with all kinds of observations--from
those alike who said with Mr. Disraeli, "You cannot legalise the custom
of Ulster, because it does not exist," and those who regarded the Bill
as a poor instalment of reform, to be accepted under protest. When the
third clause came before the House, Mr. Disraeli brought forward an
important amendment, directed against the principle of compensation for
eviction as distinguished from compensation for improvements. He wished to
insert the words, limiting the compensation, "in respect of unexhausted
improvements made by him, or any predecessor in title, and of interruption
in the completion of any course of husbandry suited to the holding." Mr.
Disraeli charged Government with changing their original Bill in one
most important point--namely, with intending to bring in a new clause
practically extending the Ulster custom to the other parts of Ireland. The
third clause, as originally drawn, proposed to give the outgoing tenant
compensation for the improvements--"a subject on which both sides were
unanimous; the marrow of all Land Bills; the result on which investigation
and discussion have enabled the country to arrive at a mature conclusion,
and which, if secured," said Mr. Disraeli "would, in my opinion, do all
that in justice is required." But there were words at the end of the
original clause which were ambiguous; "that compensation should be given
for the loss sustained by the tenant on quitting his holding." These
words Mr. Disraeli declared that he and his friends had understood to
mean what his amendment now stated--namely, that over and above receiving
compensation for his improvements, "the tenant would, on quitting his
holding, be secured the fair usufruct of any husbandry or skill in the
tillage of the land which he had not yet received." So that Mr. Disraeli
had originally intended his amendment to be a mere declaratory amendment,
for the removal of a verbal ambiguity. But to his great surprise, he found
that at the last moment Government had themselves amended the clause;
that they had thrown the proposal for compensation for improvements into
the background, and brought out as a chief part of the clause "that
compensation is to be given to any tenant at the termination of his lease,
on the assumption that the termination of his occupancy is a grievance
for which the tenant ought to be compensated. This clause, then, in its
later form, is a clause which does not conceal that, in the opinion of the
framers of the Bill, occupation involves a right of property."
[Illustration: A VISIT FROM CAPTAIN MOONLIGHT. (_See p._ 523.)]
Here was ground on which the question of the Bill might very well have
been fought on the second reading; and it is not unlikely that, if the
clause had originally been drawn as it afterwards was, Government would
not have been allowed to wait so long without a struggle. That "occupation
should be held to involve a right of property"--that a tenant should
have a right to claim part-ownership in the land he occupied--was a
notion which the English landlord shuddered to contemplate. Mr. Disraeli
played very skilfully upon that landlord sentiment. He dwelt upon the
fact that the principle was "opposed to all the fundamental principles
of our legislation for the country generally;" and protested against
applying principles to Ireland without considering their effect upon
England and Scotland. And even in Ireland, he maintained, this admission
of tenant-right in so extreme a form would have disastrous results. The
landlord, finding that the new law gave his tenant a right to a third
of his freehold--seven years' rent; twenty-one years' rent being the
average value of a freehold in Ireland--and seeing an escape from this
claim in the clause which barred the right in the case of non-payment of
rent, would take advantage of this, "the only position of strength left
him." He would wait till the tenant did not pay his rent--a very frequent
occurrence in Ireland--and then he would evict mercilessly. To escape
a repetition of the danger he would consolidate his farms, and the old
tenants would have to wander away to new homes. They, to avoid this last
extremity, would appeal to "those rural ethics with the consequences of
which we are all familiar." The rural logic of the Irish tenant would run
thus: "I have lost my holding because I did not pay my rent. Can anything
be more flagrantly unjust than that a man should be deprived of his
contingent right to a third of the freehold because he does not pay his
rent?" Or in other words, "Am I to lose seven years' rent because I have
failed to pay half a year's?" As a consequence the Irish tenant would act
upon his rural ethics, and either have his landlord's land or his life.
"So far from the improvement of the country, so far from terminating all
these misunderstandings and heartburnings which we seem now so anxious
upon both sides of the House to bring to a close, you will have the same
controversies still raging, only with increased acerbity, and under
circumstances and conditions which inevitably must lead to increased
bitterness and increased perils to society."
[Illustration: AN EVICTION IN IRELAND.]
Mr. Disraeli's speech, which, clever as it was, struck rather at the
exclusion of tenants evicted for non-payment of rent from the benefits of
the Bill than at the compensation given for eviction on other grounds, was
answered both by Mr. Lowe and Mr. Chichester Fortescue. Mr. Lowe called
his language a "declaration of war;" and indeed an amendment moved by the
leader of the Opposition upon a Government Bill is seldom anything else.
Mr. Lowe dwelt upon the "terrible state of Ireland" springing from the
habit of wholesale eviction; upon the need of sometimes transgressing the
strict laws of political economy; upon the happy mean of the Government
Bill, which verged neither towards the Scylla of Mr. Disraeli nor towards
the Charybdis of the advocates of fixity of tenure. "There is no doubt,"
he said, "that harsh conduct by the landlord, and evictions in times long
past, have popularised murder in Ireland, and have made people look upon
a murderer as a man not entirely in the wrong. When this feeling has once
been created, observe the progress it makes. It has now passed from the
landlord and tenant to the people themselves; outrages which used to be
mainly directed against the landlord and persons in his employ are now
directed against others: no injury is too slight--the discarding of a
servant, the dismissal of a porter by a railway official, underselling
by a tradesman--anything is a sufficient excuse for shedding blood. What
is the fountain of bitterness from which these waters first flowed? Has
not this demoralising practice sprung up mainly because the law did not
give the tenant relief, and the tenant grew to think he was entitled to
take the law into his own hands?" Again, what better established rule
of political economy was there than that every man should be free to
exercise any calling he liked? Yet we had a system of trade licences--a
plain violation of this rule; and other rules might be found similarly
violated for purposes of State necessity--the Government monopoly of the
Post Office, for instance. And as to the "middle course" of Government,
"we have gone," said Mr. Lowe, "to neither extreme. We have endeavoured,
without shaking the foundations of property, to give adequate relief to
the tenants; we have entirely repudiated the notion of fixity of tenure;
and I think the Irish landlords are very wise in acquiescing. What
would be the only result suppose the Bill failed? Why, they would be in
this most miserable position: they would find themselves in the claws
of the right honourable gentleman who would then be at the head of the
Government, with a fine working minority in the House. When that time
came," said the speaker, in allusion to Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill, and
his power of "educating his party"--"when that time came they might indeed
tremble. I think I already hear the speech which the right honourable
gentleman would make to the House. He would say it was a mockery and a
delusion to give compensation to the tenant in case of eviction; such a
remedy would fail because it did not go deep enough; and the only panacea
for Ireland was fixity of tenure, with a periodical re-valuation of rents."
This gloomy prospect, however, was not to be realised. It was not
reserved for Mr. Disraeli to repeat the tactics of 1866 and 1867, and
first to turn out a Government on Conservative grounds, and then out-Herod
their Liberalism by a Bill of his own. The debate flowed on. Mr. Gathorne
Hardy was furious with Mr. Lowe, and then went on to denounce the clause:
"I say that by doing this you are creating a property that did not exist
before. You are giving a man something which he never had before; and you
cannot give it him without taking it from somebody else." Sir Roundell
Palmer, who, on questions of property as on ecclesiastical questions,
was always rather Conservative than Liberal, took the opportunity of
criticising the whole Bill from the point of view of "caution," and
suggested many difficulties in the way of the treatment of prospective
tenancies. But Mr. Chichester Fortescue, and Mr. Gladstone after him,
maintained both the moderate character of the Bill generally, and the
fact that "this clause was the central and essential part, without which
it would not be worth the while of Parliament to pass the Bill." Mr.
Gladstone's speech was at once temperate and firm. He dwelt upon the fact
which Mr. Disraeli had slighted--the fact that the Bill was "wholly and
absolutely exceptional." He did not attempt an abstract justification of
its principles; on the contrary, he admitted fully that such interference
with the laws of political economy was only to be justified by stern
necessity. In fact, Government hoped that this measure might soon work
such a cure in the Irish temper as to cut away the ground of necessity
from under its own feet, in which case it would naturally fall into
abeyance. "Twenty years, and thereafter until Parliament shall otherwise
determine"--that was to be the limit of the operation of the Bill: a limit
clearly showing both the conviction of Government as to its exceptional
character, and their hope that it would one day cease to be necessary.
But at present no such alteration could be made in it as that which Mr.
Disraeli proposed, aimed, as it was, against "one of the main pillars of
the Bill." "One of the grand provisions of the Bill was the confirmation
of Irish customs. Another grand principle was that improvements made by
the tenant were the property of the tenant. And a third principle of the
Bill, which was by far the most prominent in the lengthened statement it
was my duty to inflict upon the House, was that damages for eviction were
to be paid to the tenant."
The division which followed upon this debate was perhaps the most
important of the Session, and it was a great triumph for the Government.
The Ayes were 220; the Noes, 296; so that by a majority of 76 the new
principle, which did most undoubtedly confer a new property upon the Irish
tenant, was affirmed by the House of Commons. With this great victory
the success of the Government Bill became assured; and the frequent
divisions upon the later clauses, and upon amendments moved from both
sides of the House, were one and all Government successes. The next
night to that on which Mr. Disraeli's amendment was lost, Mr. Gladstone
carried his own amendment, inserting after the word "compensation," the
words, "for the loss which the Court shall find to have been sustained
by him in quitting his holding," by a majority of 111. The further
alteration which the clause underwent, was that all tenants of holdings
at £50 a year and upwards were placed in the class of those with whose
freedom of contract the Bill did not interfere--a different thing from
excluding them altogether from the right to claim damages for eviction
in the absence of contract. The former amendment was consented to by Mr.
Gladstone, although unwillingly; the latter, proposed by Mr. W. Fowler,
was lost by a majority of 32. But there is no necessity for us to follow
the Bill through every little stage of its progress through committee. On
the 30th of May it appeared in its amended shape, waiting for the third
reading; and it passed without a division, amid murmurs of protest from
the Conservative benches, and articulate protest from Mr. Hardy, who
confessed that he looked to the Lords to assert themselves in the interest
of landed property, and remedy the injustice of "damages for eviction."
Mr. Gladstone knew his strength, and said little on that point. He only
appealed to the consciences of the Irish landlords. "If," he said, "we
were to put to the Irish landlords, categorically, the question, 'Will you
take the Bill as it is, or will you have it lost?' I may be wrong, but my
firm conviction is that the cry of those landlords would be, 'Let the Bill
pass into law!'" And, so far as the House of Commons was concerned, it
did pass into law that night.
There remained the House of Lords. The second reading was moved by Lord
Granville, who had, of course, a much less difficult task to perform
than Mr. Gladstone had had on the first introduction of the Bill in the
House of Commons. The subject had been so long before the public, the
discussion of it had been so full, that not only did the Lords know the
details of the Bill already, but their own opinions of it were pretty
well known to one another. Lord Granville did not expect much opposition
to the main outlines of the Bill, nor did he meet with much. The Duke of
Richmond, the Conservative leader, fixed mainly upon the duration of the
leases specified by the Bill, and wanted to shorten the length of those
leases which would exempt parties from its operation from thirty-one to
twenty-one years. When this was the chief objection made by the leader
of the Opposition, it was evident that the Bill would not be seriously
imperilled, though Lord Salisbury might "condemn with his whole heart"
the principle of compensation for eviction; though Lord Leitrim might
object to "every part of it, from the title downwards;" and though Lord
Clancarty might cry out that "it was a Bill of pains and penalties against
the Irish landlord." The second reading passed without a division, though
the Opposition declared their intention of making serious alterations
in committee. Committee, indeed, is the proper battle-ground--the only
possible battle-ground--for a Bill of this nature. A Bill may be rejected
on the second reading when it is a Bill of one principle, definite and
unmistakable; but the Irish Land Bill had three principles at least,
according to Mr. Gladstone's enumeration; and according to the Lord
Chancellor's, it had six. To reject it on the second reading, therefore,
would have been to reject not one principle, but three, or even six,
which, as the House of Commons was not composed entirely of Mr. Henleys,
nor the House of Lords of Lord Leitrims, was hardly possible.
In committee the Duke of Richmond appeared much more hostile than he
had appeared on the second reading. He carried, by 92 to 71--not large
numbers, considering the importance of the question and the number of the
Peers who actually compose the House--a most important amendment, reducing
the scale of compensation for eviction. He demanded that the full scale of
seven years' rent should only be awarded in the case of holdings under £4
a year--not under £10, as the Government figure stood; and the rest of the
compensation clause was altered by him in a similar spirit. Of the other
amendments carried by him, the most notable were--one which forbade a
tenant to claim compensation if he had "assigned," _i.e._ let, his farm to
another, without the landlord's approval; another, which aroused a feeling
of indignation in many hearts, forbade a tenant to let gardens to his
labourers under penalty of losing the protection of the Act; another was
the same as that which he had given notice of at the time of the second
reading. Two other amendments of great importance were also carried--one,
by Lord Salisbury, fixing £50, instead of £100, as the maximum rental
under which a tenant might claim compensation for eviction; and one,
by Lord Clanricarde, removing the legal presumption which the Bill had
declared was to be in favour of the tenant, and providing that all claims
for compensation for improvements should be proved by actual evidence. But
before the Bill was finally sent down to the Commons, the chances of a
collision between the two Houses, which seemed threatening, were very much
lessened by the spontaneous reversal by the Lords of many of their own
amendments. In particular, that of Lord Salisbury--which he had carried
in defiance of the nominal chief of his party; and which, if persisted
in, would have robbed the measure of half its force--was withdrawn. In
the end, the only one of the Lords' amendments that was allowed to remain
in the Bill was that which assured to the landlord a modified veto on
his tenant's right to assign; and with this alteration the Bill was read
for the third time. It received the Royal Assent on the 1st of August--a
memorable day in the history of emancipation; and thus this measure, so
novel in principle, so bold and yet so temperate in design, took its place
among the laws of the United Kingdom. To say that it had much immediate
effect in quieting the temper of the Irish people would be untrue; but it
must be remembered that the bitterness of centuries is not cured in a year.
[Illustration: THE DUKE OF RICHMOND AND GORDON.
(_From a Photograph by Elliot & Fry, Baker Street, W._)]
[Illustration: OFFICE OF THE LONDON SCHOOL BOARD, THAMES EMBANKMENT
(1892).]