THE VAMPIRE.
What is the nature of a country-life that it should breed such
a vampire,--such a monster of iniquity,--such a “squanderer of
national wealth” as the landlord whom your Free-trading friends
hold up to public execration? The old classical idea “procul
a negotiis” would indicate that it had a contrary influence.
How is it then that it produces the unmitigated miscreant whom
Bright delights to denounce,--whom Gladstone loves to pursue with
ruinous enactments,--and whom Parnell, with his murderous crew,
takes pleasure in “boycotting,” maiming, and assassinating? The
external appearance of this monster gives no clue to his character.
From personal acquaintance with men of this class in England I
should have said, that, on the average, they were well-meaning,
harmless, good-natured men; not always of the widest of views,
or shrewdest intelligence, but with the best intentions, anxious
in bad times to help their tenants, and in good times to improve
their property. Even your prophet Adam Smith appears to have been
deceived by them.[63] Again, appearances are deceptive; for, to
my inexperienced eye, there seemed to be a large amount of kindly
sympathy between tenant and landlord.
I am unable to speak from personal experience respecting the same
classes in Ireland; but all novels and tales of Irish life, which
should reflect, with some degree of truth, the general aspect of
things, agree in describing scenes, probably founded on facts,
from which one would imagine that, before the present agitation
and enactments, there appeared to exist much kindly feeling and
sympathy between the peasantry and the “Masther,” who, with all his
faults, is represented as a generous, rollicking, devil-may-care
sort of fellow,[64] quite opposed to the grasping, grinding
miscreant whom your friends denounce; of course, there were
exceptions.
Mr. A. M. Sullivan seems also to have been mistaken when he says:--
“The conduct of the Irish landlords throughout the famine period
has been variously described, and has, I believe, been generally
condemned. I consider the censure visited on them too sweeping.
I hold it to be in some respects _cruelly unjust_.... It is
impossible to contest authentic cases of brutal heartlessness
here and there; but granting all that has to be entered on the
dark debtor side, the overwhelming balance is the other way. The
bulk of the resident Irish landlords manfully did their best in
that dread hour. If they did too little compared with what the
landlord class in England would have done in a similar case, it
was because little was in their power.... They were heritors
of estates heavily overweighted with the debts of a bygone
generation.... To these landowners the failure of one year’s
rental receipts meant mortgage, foreclosure, and hopeless ruin.
Yet cases might be named by the score in which men _scorned to
avert_, by pressure on their suffering tenancy, _the fate they
saw impending over them_. They went down with the ship.
“No adequate tribute has ever been paid to the memory of those
Irish landlords, and they were men of every party and creed, who
perished martyrs to duty, in that awful time.”[65]
It is wonderful how, at such an awful time, the Irish landlord
should have continued to mask his true character.
Still I am rather puzzled.
I quite admit that the Irish landlord is wrong in rack-renting his
tenant to the extent of grinding out of him one-third of the amount
that is cheerfully paid by tenants in _protectionist_ countries.
I admit that he should not have tried in a _Free Trade country_ to
have extorted more than one-tenth of the rent paid by protectionist
tenants. Nay, I will go further. I don’t think that a tenant in
Free Trade Ireland would farm to a profit even if he had the land
_rent-free_. I admit also that it was selfish of the landlord to
allow the question of his own pauperism to weigh in the question of
rent.
Still, after making due allowance for all these faults, I cannot
quite understand how his guilt is sufficiently proven to
warrant his continued persecution and gradual extermination, by
enactment after enactment for his ruin, should he chance to escape
assassination. A snake or a rat could not be hunted down with
greater venom. I must say that, in spite of his crimes, he is an
object of pity.
Perhaps an analysis of his villainy may help me to understand the
heinousness of his crime; let us apply, therefore, to the political
economist for the character of the rent, the instrument with which
he commits his crime--what does he say?[66]
“Rent does not affect the price of agricultural produce.”[67]
“Whoever does pay rent gets back its full value in extra
advantage, and the rent which he pays does not place him in
a worse position than, but only in the same position as, his
fellow-producer who pays no rent, but whose instrument is one of
inferior efficiency.”[68]
“Rent is reached by bargaining between the landlord and tenant;
bargaining founded on the practical elements existing in the
business. Profit must satisfy the tenant, or he will not take the
farm; and on the other hand, if he claim an unduly low rent, he
will find a rival competitor stepping into the farm house.... The
position of an in-coming tenant is that of a man who is buying a
business for sale (for whether he purchases the farm outright in
order to cultivate it, or hires it, makes no difference in the
nature of the transaction). He is buying a specific business in
a given locality, as any man might do in a manufacturing town,
and his motive is _profit_. This consideration governs the whole
of the negotiation between the landowner and himself ... upon
the terms of an annual payment of the means of _profit_ which he
seeks to acquire.”[69]
Yes! This appears to me to be just and business-like; the tenant
hires the land for the profit he expects to get out of it, and his
rent is a simple debt. Proceed:--
“To refuse to pay debt violently is to _steal_, and to permit
stealing is not only to dissolve, but to demoralize, society.”[70]
“When a portion of wealth passes out of the hands of him who has
acquired it, without his consent, and without compensation, to
him who has not created it ... plunder is perpetrated.”[71]
“Law is common force organized to prevent injustice.”[71]
“If the law itself performs the action it ought to repress,
plunder is still perpetrated under aggravated circumstances.”[71]
“To place the position itself of a landlord in an invidious
light, as a man who exacts from the labours of others that for
which he has neither toiled nor spun, is a most unwarrantable
process of argumentation.”[70]
“It would be impossible to introduce into society a greater
change and a greater evil than this:--the conversion of law into
an instrument of plunder.”[71]
Yes, yes! All this appears to me to be just and sensible! but
pardon me, I am a little obtuse. I cannot yet see that the
landlord’s guilt is proven. Let us recapitulate:--
Rent does not raise the price of corn! The tenant gets value for
his rent! He enters into a business contract for profit! The rent
is a simple debt. To refuse it, is to steal! To assist legally at
this refusal, is to be an accomplice in the theft! In this case
Government is the accomplice, and the Government is a plunderer
under aggravated circumstances! Moreover, it not only plunders,
but demoralizes society. Mr. Gladstone represents Government.
Messrs. Bright, Parnell, Davitt and Co. assist in this legalized
and illegal plunder; thus demoralizing the society. The property
of the landlord passes to another without his consent and without
compensation! Messrs. Gladstone and Co. use that which Professor
Bonamy Price terms a most “unwarrantable process of argumentation.”
Stop! Stop!! for goodness’ sake!!! My brain is getting confused; in
my innocence, had I not been gravely assured that they were angels
of light, patriots, philanthropists,[72] I should have mistaken
Messrs. Gladstone, Bright, Parnell, Davitt, and Co. for the real
criminals.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] Adam Smith, in speaking of the class of merchants and
manufacturers, says:--“Their superiority over the country gentleman
is not so much in their knowledge of the _public interest_ as in
their having a better knowledge of _their own interest_ than he has
of his. It is by this superior knowledge of their own interest that
they have frequently imposed upon _his generosity_ and persuaded
him to give up his own interest and that of the public from a very
simple but honest conviction that their interest, and not his, was
the interest of the people.” (Wealth of Nations, Bk. I. Chap. XI.)
How true in the case of Free Trade!
[64] The landlordism of the days before Famine (1847) never
“recovered its strength or its primitive ways. For the landlord,
there came of the Famine the Encumbered Estates Court. For the
small farmer and tenant class there floated up the American
Emigrant ships.” (‘History of Our Own Times,’ Justin Macarthy.)
[65] New Ireland, by A. M. Sullivan, p. 133.
[66] Adam Smith contradicts himself about rent--in one set of
passages he says it is the _cause_, and in another the _effect_, of
prices.
[67] Macleod’s Economics, p. 117.
[68] Political Economy, by J. S. Mill, Bk. II. Chap. XVI.
[69] Profr. Bonamy Price.
[70] Profr. Bonamy Price.
[71] Political Economy, Bastiat.
[72] “Legal plunder has two roots. One of them is in human egotism,
the other is in false philanthropy.” (Political Economy, Bastiat.)