LAND PURCHASE AND A DETERMINED CAMPAIGN
TO KILL IT
I can only rapidly sketch the events that followed the publication of
the Land Conference Report. Mr Sexton made it his business in _The
Freeman's Journal_ to decry its findings on the sinister ground
that they offered too much to the landlords and were not sufficiently
favourable to the tenants, sneering at the proposal for a bonus,
hinting that no Government would find money for this purpose. Mr
Davitt, who was an earnest disciple of Henry George's ideal of Land
Nationalisation, naturally enough found nothing to like in the
proposals for land purchase, which would set up a race of
peasant-proprietors who would never consent to surrender their
ownership to the State and would consequently make the application of
the principles of Land Nationalisation for ever impossible in Ireland.
Besides, Michael Davitt had cause for personal hatred of landlordism,
which exiled his parents after eviction, and incidentally meant the
loss of an arm to himself, and a violence of language which would be
excusable in him would not be justifiable or allowable in the cases of
men who had not suffered similarly, such as Messrs Dillon and Sexton.
Yet the fault was not theirs if the Land Conference did not end in
wreckage and such a glorious chance of national reconciliation and
appeasement was not lost to Ireland.
In the meantime Sir Antony MacDonnell, greatly daring and, I would
likewise say, greatly patriotic, accepted the offer of the Irish
Under-Secretaryship in a spirit of self-abnegation beyond praise. Mr
Redmond and Mr O'Brien had, at his request, met him, early in
February, 1903, to discuss the provisions of the contemplated Purchase
Bill. It may be remarked that Messrs Dillon and Davitt were invited to
meet Sir Antony on the same occasion, but they declined. They
apparently desired the position of greater freedom and less
responsibility, from which they could deliver their attacks upon their
friends. They received little support from the country in their
guerrilla warfare on the Land Conference findings. The Standing
Committee of the Catholic Hierarchy left no room for doubt as to their
views. They declared the holding of the Land Conference "to be an
event of the best augury for the future welfare of both classes"
(landlords and tenants), and they expressed the hope that its
unanimity would result in legislation which would settle the Land
Question once for all "and give the Irish people of every class a fair
opportunity to live and serve their native land." The Irish Party and
the National Directory of the United Irish League, the two bodies
invested with sovereign authority to declare the national policy,
unanimously, at specially convened meetings, approved the findings of
the Land Conference and accepted them as the basis of a satisfactory
settlement of the Land Question. Neither Mr Dillon nor Mr Davitt
attended either of these meetings. Indeed, Mr Dillon ostentatiously
took his departure from Dublin on the morning the meetings were held,
but strangely enough he attended an adjourned meeting of the Party at
Westminster the following day and opposed a proposal to raise the
question of the Land Conference Report on the Address. Mr Redmond
entered a dignified protest against Mr Dillon's conduct, pointing out
that the previous day was Mr Dillon's proper opportunity for
submitting any objections of his to his colleagues of the Party and of
the National Directory. Mr Dillon did not find a single supporter for
his attitude, and he was obliged to disclaim, with some heat, that he
had any grievance in reference to the Conference. Next day he went
abroad for the benefit of his health.
The debate on the Amendment to the Address had the most gratifying
results. Mr Wyndham accepted, in principle, the Land Conference
Agreement and announced that the Government would smooth the
operations of Land Purchase by a bonus of twelve millions sterling as
a free grant to Ireland. The debate accomplished another striking
success, that it elicited from all the men of light and leading in the
Liberal Party--from Mr Morley, Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, Sir E. Grey,
Mr Haldane and Mr John Burns--expressions of cordial adhesion to the
policy of pacification outlined by the Chief Secretary, thus effecting
the obliteration of all English Party distinctions for the first time
where one of Ireland's supreme interests was concerned. It required
only the continuance of this spirit to give certain assurance of
Ireland's early deliverance from all her woes and troubles. But an
adverse fate, in the form of certain perverse politicians, ordained it
otherwise.
On 25th March 1903 Mr Wyndham introduced his Bill. It adopted fully
the fundamental principles of the Land Conference and undertook to
find Imperial funds for the complete extinction of landlordism in
Ireland within a period which Mr Wyndham estimated at fifteen years.
Furthermore the tenants were to obtain the loans on cheaper terms than
had ever been known before--viz. an interest of 2-3/4 per cent. and a
sinking fund of 1/2 per cent., being a reduction in the tenants'
annuity from £4 to £3, 5s. as compared with the best of the previous
Acts. In addition a State grant-in-aid to the extent of
£12,000,000--roughly equivalent to three years' purchase--was produced
to bridge the gap between what the tenants could afford to pay and the
landlords to accept. The Bill fell short of the requirements of the
Land Conference in certain respects, notably in that it proposed to
withhold one-eighth of the freehold from the tenants as an assertion
of State right in the land, and that the clauses dealing with the
Evicted Tenants and Congested questions were vague and inadequate.
Other minor defects there also were, but nothing that might not be
remedied in Committee by conciliatory adjustments. A National
Convention was summoned for 16th April to consider whether the Bill
should be accepted or otherwise. Previously there was much
subterranean communication between Messrs Dillon, Davitt, Sexton and
T.P. O'Connor, all with calculated intent to damage or destroy the
Bill. And it is also clear that certain members of the Irish Party
(Messrs Dillon and T.P. O'Connor), who were pledge-bound to support
majority rule "in or out of Parliament," were carrying on official
negotiations of their own with the Minister in charge of the Bill and
were using the organ of the Party to discredit principles and
proposals to which the Party had given its unanimous assent. It would
not, in the circumstances, be unjust to stigmatise this conduct as
disloyalty, if not exactly treachery, to the recorded decisions of the
Party. At any rate it was the source and origin of incredible mischief
and the most deplorable consequences to Ireland. The opponents of the
Bill made a concerted effort to stampede the National Convention from
arriving at any decision regarding the Bill. They wanted it to
postpone judgment. But the Convention, in every sense magnificently
representative of all that was sound and sincere in the constitutional
movement, was too much alive to all the glorious possibilities of the
policy of national reconciliation which was taking shape and form
before their eyes to brook any of the ill-advised counsels of those
who had determined insidiously on the wreck of this policy.
In all the great Convention there were only two voices raised in
support of the rejection of the Bill. And when Mr Davitt moved the
motion, concerted between Mr T.P. O'Connor, Mr Sexton and himself,
that the Convention should suspend judgment until it was brought in
its amended Third Reading Form before an adjourned sitting of the
Convention, he was so impressed by the enthusiastic unanimity of the
delegates that he offered, after some parley, to withdraw his motion,
and thus this great and authoritative assembly pledged the faith of
the Irish nation to the policy of national reconciliation and gave its
loyal adhesion to the authors of that policy.
But this decision of the people, constitutionally and legitimately
expressed, was not long to remain unchallenged. Immediately after the
Convention Mr Davitt waited upon Mr Redmond, at the Gresham Hotel,
Dublin, and blandly told him: "I have had a wire from Dillon to-day
from the Piraeus, to say he is starting by the first boat for home and
from this day forth O'Brien and yourself will have Dillon, T.P. and
myself on your track." Thus was set on foot what, with engaging
candour, Mr Davitt himself later described in an article he
contributed to _The Independent Review_ as "a determined
campaign" against the national policy which had been authoritatively
endorsed and approved by every organisation in the country entitled to
speak on the subject. The country has had to pay much in misery, in
the postponement of its most cherished hopes and in the holding up of
land purchase over great areas owing to the folly, the madness and the
treachery of this "determined campaign." Mr Dillon, at a later stage,
with a certain Machiavellian cunning, raised the cry of "Unity" from
every platform in the country against those who had never acted a
disloyal part in all their lives, whilst his own political conscience
never seemed to trouble him when he was flagrantly and foully defying
that very principle of unity which he had pledged himself to maintain
and uphold "in or out of Parliament."
The National Convention was followed by an event which might easily
have been made a turning point in Ireland's good fortune had it been
properly availed of. Lord Dunraven and his landlord Conciliation
Committee met the day after the Land Convention and resolved to
support sixteen out of the seventeen Nationalist amendments. They
furthermore sent a message to Mr Redmond offering to co-operate
actively with the members of the Irish Party throughout the Committee
stage of the Wyndham Bill. Every consideration of national policy and
prudence would seem to urge the acceptance of this generous offer. It
would, if accepted, be the outward and visible sign of that new spirit
of grace that had entered into Irish relations with the foregathering
of the Land Conference. But fear of what Mr Dillon and the
_Freeman_ might do if this open association with a landlord--even
if a friendly landlord--interest took place apparently operated on Mr
Redmond's judgment. Although urged by Mr O'Brien, who made the utmost
allowance for the leader's difficulties, to accept the offer of Lord
Dunraven and his friends for continued co-operation, Mr Redmond
temporised, and the opportunity passed into the limbo of golden
possibilities gone wrong.
When Mr Dillon, in pursuance of his wire to Mr Davitt, returned from
his holiday, he proceeded to make good the threat to be "on the track
of Redmond and O'Brien." He made himself as troublesome as he could
during the Committee stage of the Bill and did his utmost to force its
rejection. He sought to commit the Party to a policy which must have
meant the defeat or withdrawal of the measure. He made vicious
personal attacks upon Lord Dunraven. He did everything in his power to
delay and frustrate the passage of the Bill in Committee. And the most
generous construction that can be placed upon his actions is that he
did all this in support of the theory, which he is known to have
consistently held, that Home Rule should precede the settlement of the
Land Question, or any other Irish question. Notwithstanding Mr
Dillon's criticisms, not then well understood either in the Party or
the country, the Bill at length emerged triumphantly from its ordeal,
with the good will of all parties in Parliament. It should have
created--and it would, if it had only been given a fair chance--a new
heaven and a new earth in Ireland. As far as could be prognosticated
all the omens were favourable. Even the atmosphere of administration,
so important a matter where any Irish Act is concerned, was of the
most auspicious kind. The Lord-Lieutenant was Lord Dudley, who was
immensely popular in Ireland, and who had made public proclamation of
his desire that "Ireland should be governed in accordance with Irish
ideas." Two out of the three Estates Commissioners, in whose hands the
actual administration of the Act lay, were men of whose absolute
impartiality the Nationalist opinion of the country was assured. Sir
Antony MacDonnell was the power in Dublin Castle, and not much likely
to be intimidated by the permanent gang there. All that was required
was that the Irish Party and the United Irish League should agree upon
a broad-based policy for combining the various classes affected to
extract the best possible advantage from the provisions of the Act. A
meeting of the National Directory was summoned to formulate such a
policy, but shortly before it was held Mr Dillon went down to Swinford
and, from the board-room of the workhouse there, definitely raised the
standard of revolt against the new Land Act. Nothing could be said
against his action if he had come out from the Party and fulminated
against its authority, but to remain a member of the Party and then to
indict its conduct of the nation's business was, to put it mildly,
indefensible. He denounced the new spirit of conciliation that had
been so fast gaining ground, attacked the landlords, who had proved
themselves friendly to a settlement, in rather ferocious language, and
spoke in violent terms of those who would "in a moment of weakness
mortgage the future of Ireland to an intolerable extent." Clearly Mr
Dillon intended carrying out his threat of "taking the field" against
Mr Redmond and Mr O'Brien and of damning the consequences. But the
country was not yet "rattled" into disaffection by Mr Dillon's
melancholy vaticinations and rather vulgar appeals to the baser
passions of greed and covetousness which are perhaps more firmly
rooted in the peasant than in any other class.
The National Directory, unintimidated by Mr Dillon's pronouncement, met
and calmly proceeded to formulate plans for the better working of the
Purchase Act. A clear and definite plan of campaign was outlined for the
testing of the Act. Mr O'Brien was also in favour of handling the
disaffection of Mr Dillon and the _Freeman_ in straightforward manner
and of pointing out to them their duty of loyally supporting the
decisions of the Party and of the League. Mr Redmond shrank from
decisive action. It was part of the weakness of his estimable character
that he always favoured "the easier way." He thought that when the
Directory spoke out the recalcitrant elements would subside. Little did
he understand the malignant temper of the powerful group who, with the
aid of the supposedly national organ, were determined to kill the
operations of the Purchase Act and to destroy the policy of Conciliation
which had promised such splendid fruit in other directions. Mr Dillon
went to Swinford again and he and his associates did everything in their
power to stir up a national panic and to spread the impression that the
Purchase Act was a public calamity, "a landlord swindle," and that it
would lead straight to national bankruptcy.
Even yet those who sought the wreck and ruin of land purchase might be
met with and fought outright if the announcement had not appeared in
the _Freeman_ that Mr Redmond had sold his Wexford estate at
"24-1/2 years' purchase," or over two years' purchase higher in the
case of second-term rents and four and a half years' purchase in the
case of first-term rents than the prices which the National Directory
had a few weeks previously resolved to fight for, with all the force
of the tenants' organisation as a fair standard. True enough Mr
Redmond was able to plead later that these were not the terms finally
agreed upon between his tenants and himself, and beyond all question
he made no profit out of the transaction. Where the mischief lay was
in the original publication, which gave a headline to the landlords
all over the country and, what was far more regrettable from the
purely national standpoint, irretrievably tied the hands of Mr Redmond
so far as making any heroic stand against Mr Dillon and his
fellow-conspirators was concerned. Thus the country drifted along,
bereft of firm leadership or strong guidance. Mr O'Brien had to hold
his hand whilst "the determined campaigners" were more boldly and
defiantly inveighing against the declared and adopted national policy
and trampling upon every principle of Party discipline and loyalty.
The situation might have been saved if Mr Redmond had taken his
courage in both his hands, summoned the Party together and received
from it an authoritative declaration defining anew the National policy
and the danger that attended it from those who had set out recklessly
to destroy it; or if he sought an opportunity for publicly recalling
the country to its duty and its allegiance to himself and to the Party
whose chosen leader he was. Mr Redmond was fully alive to the danger,
but he hesitated about taking that bold action which could alone bring
the recalcitrants to heel. He was afraid of doing anything which might
provoke a fresh "split." Later he delivered himself of the
unstatesmanlike and unworthy apophthegm: "Better be united in support
of a short-sighted and foolish policy than divided in support of a
far-sighted and wise one." This was the fatuous attitude which led him
down the steep declivity that ended so tragically for him and his
reputation. In those fateful days, when so much was in the balance for
the future of Ireland, Mr O'Brien pressed his views earnestly upon Mr
Redmond that unless he exercised his authority, and that of the Party
and the Directory, it would be impossible for them to persevere in
their existing programme, and that the only alternative left for him
would be to retire and leave those who had opposed the policy of
Conciliation a free stage for any more heroic projects they might
contemplate. Mr Redmond still remained indecisive and Mr
O'Brien--whether wisely or unwisely will always remain a debatable
point with his friends--quietly quitted the stage, resigning his seat
in Parliament, withdrawing from the Directory of the United Irish
League, and ceasing publication of his weekly newspaper on the ground,
as he says himself, that "the authorised national policy having been
made unworkable, nothing remained, in order to save the country from
dissension, except to leave its wreckers an absolutely free field for
any alternative policy of their own."
It is no exaggeration to say that the country was thrown into a state
of stupefaction by Mr O'Brien's retirement. It did not know the reason
of it. Very few members of the Party did. I was then a member of
it--perhaps a little on the outer fringe, but still an ordinarily
intelligent member--and I was not aware of the underground factors and
forces which had caused this thunderbolt out of the blue, as it were.
Needless to say, the country was in a state of more abysmal ignorance
still, and it is questionable whether outside of Munster, owing to a
scandalous Press boycott of Mr O'Brien's speeches for many years
afterwards, the masses of the people ever had an understanding of the
motives which impelled him "to stand down and out" when he was
undoubtedly supreme in the Party and in the United Irish League and
when he might easily have overborne "the determined campaigners" if he
had only knit the issue with them in a fair and square fight. This,
however, was the thing of all others he wished to avoid. Perhaps if he
could have foreseen how barren in any alternative policy his sapient
critics were to be he might have acted otherwise, but the credit is
due to him of making dissension impossible by leaving no second party
to the quarrel.
Speaking at Limerick a few days after his retirement, Mr Redmond
avowed that Mr O'Brien's principles were his own, and added these
memorable words: "But for Mr William O'Brien there would have been no
Land Conference and no Land Act." Every effort was made to induce Mr
O'Brien to withdraw his resignation. A delegation of the leading
citizens of Cork travelled all the way to Mayo to entreat him to
reconsider his decision. To them he said: "There is not the smallest
danger of any split either in the Party, or in the League, or in the
country. There will be a perfectly free field for the development of
any alternative policy; and I will not use my retirement in any way
whatever to criticise or obstruct; neither, I am certain, will anybody
in the country who has any regard for my wishes."
But having got all they wanted, "the determined campaigners"
mysteriously abandoned their determined campaign. Mr Dillon's health
again required that he should bask 'neath the sunny southern skies of
Italy, whilst Mr Davitt betook himself to the United States, without
either of them making a single speech or publishing a single
suggestion to the tenants how they were to guard themselves against
the "inflated prices" and the national insolvency they had been
threatening them with. Having destroyed the plans of the National
Directory for testing the Purchase Act they had no guidance of their
own to offer. The tenants were left leaderless, to make their own
bargains as best they could, with the inevitable result that the
landlords, thanks to "the determined campaigners," were able to force
up prices two years above the standard which the Directory of the
League had decided to stand out and fight for.
It used to be said of Daniel O'Connell that whenever _The Times_
praised him he subjected himself to an examination of conscience to
find out wherein he had offended as against Ireland. Likewise one
would have supposed that when Mr Dillon found himself patted on the
back by the extreme Orange gang he might have asked himself: "Wherein
am I wrong to have earned the plaudits of these people?" For if Mr
Dillon was rabid in his opposition to the policy of Conciliation the
Ulster Orangemen were ferocious in their denunciation of it, Mr Moore,
K.C., referred to it as "the cowardly, rotten, and sickening policy of
Conciliation." Small wonder that the Orange extremists should have
dreaded this policy, since it had already been the means of creating
in the North an Independent Orange Order, who unhesitatingly declared
as the first article of their creed that they were "Irishmen first of
all," and who had an honest and enthusiastic spokesman in the House of
Commons in the person of Mr Thomas Sloane, and an able and, indeed, a
brilliant leader in Ireland in Mr Lindsay Crawford. But so it
was--every advance towards national reconciliation and mutual
understanding was opposed by those two divergent forces as if they had
a common interest in defeating it.
Mr O'Brien having retired from Cork, the vacancy should, in the
ordinary course, have been filled in the course of a few weeks. But
the Nationalists of "the City by the Lee" made it clear that they
wanted no other representative than Mr O'Brien, and they forbade the
issue of a writ for a new election. And so there was the extraordinary
spectacle of a people who voluntarily disfranchised themselves rather
than give up the last hope of a policy of National Conciliation in
which they descried a Home Rule settlement by Consent as surely as the
abolition of landlordism already decreed. As an example of loyalty and
personal devotion, as well as of patriotic foresight, it would be
difficult to parallel it. Towards the close of the session of 1904 Mr
Jasper Tully, a more or less free lance member of the Party, took it
upon himself to play them the trick of moving the writ for a new
election. And the Nationalists of Cork knew their own business so well
that, without a line of communication with Mr O'Brien, they had him
nominated and re-elected without anybody dreaming that anything else
was humanly possible. There were no conditions attaching to Mr
O'Brien's re-election. He was free to rejoin the Irish Party if it
should resume its position of twelve months ago or to remain out of it
if a policy of mere destruction were persisted in. He was re-elected
because the people of Cork had the most absolute confidence in his
integrity, good faith and political judgment, and because they were
convinced that his return to public life represented the only hope of
the resumption of the great policy in which their confidence never for
a moment wavered.
Within a week of Mr O'Brien's re-election an event took place which once
again made it possible for him to take up the threads of his policy
where he had surrendered them. The landlords' Conference Committee, to
the number of three hundred of the leading Irish nobles and country
gentlemen, met in Dublin and resolved themselves into a new Association,
under Lord Dunraven's leadership, which was named the Irish Reform
Association. It immediately issued a manifesto proclaiming "a policy of
conciliation, of good will and of reform," by means of "a union of all
moderate and progressive opinion irrespective of creed or class
animosities," with the object of "the devolution to Ireland of a large
measure of self-government" without disturbing the Parliamentary Union
between Great Britain and Ireland.
Within three days of the publication of the manifesto Mr Redmond, who
was on a mission to the States pleading for Irish-American support,
cabled: "The announcement [of the Irish Reform Association] is of the
utmost importance. It is simply a declaration for Home Rule and is quite
a wonderful thing. With these men with us Home Rule may come at any
moment." It is known that the idea of the Irish Reform Association had
been talked over between Mr Wyndham, Lord Dunraven and Sir Antony
MacDonnell, but it is probable that it would never have emerged into the
concrete if the Cork election had not opened up the prospect of a fair
and sympathetic national hearing for a project of self-government, now
advocated for the first time by a body of Unionist Irishmen. Mr
Redmond's fervid message from America also was as plain a welcome to the
new movement for genuine national unity as words could express. But "the
fly was in the ointment nevertheless."