mission to you. I thank you from my heart for the kindness with which
you have received me, which I shall never forget. And if I have in past
times felt an unquenchable sympathy with the sufferings of your people,
you may rely upon it that if there be an Irish Member to speak for
Ireland, he will find me heartily by his side.
* * * * *
IRELAND.
VIII.
HOUSE OF COMMONS, MARCH 14, 1868.
_From Hansard_.
[This speech was spoken on the occasion of a proposition by Mr.
Maguire, M.P. for Cork, for 'a Committee of the whole House to consider
the state of Ireland.']
When this debate began it was not my intention to take any part in it;
for I had very lately, in another place and to a larger audience, added
my contribution to the great national deliberation upon Irish affairs
which is now in progress. But the speech of the noble Lord the Chief
Secretary for Ireland, and some misunderstanding that has arisen of what
I said elsewhere, have changed my intention, and therefore I have to ask
for the indulgence of the House, in the hope that I may make on this
question a more practical speech than that to which we have just
listened.
It is said by eminent censors of the press that this debate will yield
about thirty hours of talk, and will end in no result. I have observed
that all great questions in this country require thirty hours of talk
many times repeated before they are settled. There is much shower and
much sunshine between the sowing of the seed and the reaping of the
harvest, but the harvest is generally reaped after all.
I was very much struck with what happened on the first night of the
debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Cork, in the opening portion of
his address, described the state of Ireland from his point of view, and
the facts he stated are not and cannot be disputed. He said that the
Habeas Corpus Act had been suspended for three years in his country--
that within the island there was a large military force, amounting, as
we have heard to-night--besides 12,000 or more of armed police--to an
army of 20,000 men--that in the harbours of Ireland there were ships of
war, and in her rivers there were gunboats; and that throughout that
country--as throughout this--there has been and is yet considerable
alarm with regard to the discontent prevalent in Ireland.
All that is quite true; but when the noble Lord the Chief Secretary
opened his speech, the first portion of it was of a very different
complexion. I am willing to admit that to a large extent it was equally
true. He told us that the condition of the people of Ireland was
considerably better now than it was at the time of the Devon Commission.
At the time of the Devon Commission the condition of that country had no
parallel in any civilised and Christian nation. By the force of famine,
pestilence, and emigration, the population was greatly diminished, and
it would be a very extraordinary thing indeed if with such a diminution
of the population there was no improvement in the condition of those who
remained behind. He showed that wages are higher, and he pointed to the
fact that in the trade in and out of the Irish ports they had a
considerable increase, and though I will not say that some of those
comparisons were quite accurate or fair, I am on the whole ready to
admit the truth of the statement the noble Lord made. But now it seems
to me that, admitting the truth of what my hon. Friend the Member for
Cork said, and admitting equally the truth of what the noble Lord said,
there remains before us a question even more grave than any we have had
to discuss in past years with regard to the condition of Ireland.
If--and this has been already referred to by more than one speaker--if
it be true that with a considerable improvement in the physical
condition of the people--if it be true that with a universality of
education much beyond that which exists in this island--if it be true
that after the measures that have been passed, and have been useful,
there still remains in Ireland, first of all, what is called Fenianism,
which is a reckless and daring exhibition of feeling--beyond that a very
wide discontent and disloyalty--and beyond that, amongst the whole of
the Roman Catholic population, universal dissatisfaction--and if that be
so, surely my hon. Friend the Member for Cork--one of the most useful
and eminent of the representatives of Ireland--is right in bringing this
question before the House. And there is no question at this moment that
we could possibly discuss connected with the interest or honour of the
people that approaches in gravity and magnitude to that now before us.
And if this state of things be true--and remember I have said nothing
but what the hon. Member for Cork has said, and I have given my approval
to nothing he has said that was not confirmed by the speech of the noble
Lord--if this be true, surely all this great effect must have some
cause.
We are unworthy of our position as Members of this House, and
representatives of our countrymen, if we do not endeavour at least to
discover the cause, and if we can discover it, speedily to apply a
remedy. The cause is perfectly well known to both sides of the House.
The noble Lord, it is clear, knows it even from the tenor of his own
speech--he spoke of the question of the land, and of the Church. The
noble Lord the Member for King's Lynn--whose observations in this
debate, if he had offered them, we should have been glad to listen to--
understands it, for he referred to the two questions in his speech at
the Bristol banquet. The right hon. Gentleman at the head of the
Government understands it not only as well as I do, but he understands
it precisely in the same sense--and more than twenty years ago, when I
stated in this House the things, or nearly the things, I stated recently
and shall state to-night, he, from your own benches, was making speeches
exactly of the same import. And though there is many a thing he seems at
times not to recollect, yet I am bound to say he recollects these words,
and the impressions, of which these words were the expressions to the
House. He referred to an absentee aristocracy and an alien Church. I
would not say a syllable about the aristocracy in this matter; if I had
to choose a phrase, I would rather say an absentee proprietary and an
alien Church.
What is the obvious remedy which for this state of things has been found
to be sufficient in every other country? If I could do so by any means
that did not violate the rights of property, I should be happy to give
to a considerable portion of the farmers of Ireland some proprietary
rights, and to remove from that country the sense of injustice, and the
sense--the strongest of all--of the injustice caused by the existence of
an alien Church. Just for a moment look at the proposition the noble
Lord is about to submit to the House. It is very like the Bill of last
year. I will not enter into the details, except to say that he proposes,
as he proposed then, that the Government should lend the tenant-farmers
of Ireland sums of money, by which they would make improvements, which
sums of money were to be repaid by some gradual process to the
Government authorities. He proposes that the repayment should be spread
over a considerable number of years--I do not know the exact number, and
it is not of importance for my argument. These tenant-farmers are very
numerous--perhaps too numerous, it may be, for the good of the country--
but there they are, and we must deal with them as we find them. The
number of them holding under 15 acres is 250,000; holding between 15
acres and 30 acres, 136,000; holding over 30 acres, 158,000--altogether
there are more than 540,000 holders of land. It is to these 540,000
land-holders or occupiers that the noble Lord proposes to lend money, on
the condition that they make certain improvements, and repay after a
certain number of years the sums advanced to them. I think I am right in
saying that there is no limitation in the Bill as to the smallness of
the holding to which the advance of money will be refused; and therefore
the whole 540,000 tenants will be in a position to come to the
Government, or to some Commission, or to the Board of Works, or to some
authority in Ireland, and ask for money to enable them to improve their
farms.
The House will see that if this plan is to produce any considerable
result, it will be the source of a number of transactions such as the
Government have not had to deal with in any other matter; and I expect
that the difficulties will be very great, and that the working out of
the plan with any beneficial results will be altogether impossible. What
I ask the House is this--if it be right of the noble Lord, to enable him
to carry out his plan, to ask the House to pass a measure like this--to
lend all these tenants the money for improvements to be repaid after a
series of years, would it not be possible for us by a somewhat similar
process, and by some step farther in the same direction, to establish to
some extent--I am not speaking of extending it all through Ireland--a
farmer proprietary throughout the country? If it be right and proper to
lend money to improve, it surely may be proper, if it be on other
grounds judicious, to lend money to buy. I do not know if the right hon.
Member for Calne is here; but very likely he would spare me from the
severe criticisms he expended upon my hon. Friend the Member for
Westminster.
Now, I am as careful as any man can be, I believe, of doing anything by
law that shall infringe what you think and what I think are the rights
of property. I do not pretend to believe, if you examine the terms
strictly, in what is called the absolute property in land. You may toss
a sixpence into the sea if you like, but there are things with respect
to land which you cannot, and ought not, and dare not do. But I do not
want to argue the question of legislation upon that ground I am myself
of opinion that there is no class in the community more interested in a
strict adherence to the principles of political economy, worked out in a
benevolent and just manner, than the humblest and poorest class in the
country. I think they have as much interest in it as the rich, and the
House has never known me, and so long as I stand here will never know
me, I believe, to propose or advocate anything which shall interfere
with what I believe to be, and what if a landowner I would maintain to
be, the just right of property in the land.
But, then, I do not think, as some persons seem to think, that the land
is really only intended to be in the hands of the rich. I think that is
a great mistake. I am not speaking of the poor--for the poor man, in the
ordinary meaning of the term, cannot be the possessor of land; but what
I wish is, that farmers and men of moderate means should become
possessors of land and of their farms. About two centuries ago, two very
celebrated men endeavoured to form a constitution for Carolina, which
was then one of the colonies of this country in America. Lord
Shaftesbury, the statesman, and Mr. Locke, the philosopher, framed a
constitution with the notion of having great proprietors all over the
country, and men under them to cultivate it. I recollect that Mr.
Bancroft, the historian of the United States, describing the issue of
that attempt and its utter failure, says: 'The instinct of aristocracy
dreads the moral power of a proprietary yeomanry, and therefore the
perpetual degradation of the cultivators of the soil was enacted.' There
is no country in the world, in which there are only great landowners and
tenants, with no large manufacturing interest to absorb the population,
in which the degradation of the cultivating tenant is not completely
assured.
I hope that hon. Members opposite, and hon. Gentlemen on this side who
may be disposed in some degree to sympathise with them, will not for a
moment imagine that I am discussing this question in any spirit of
hostility to the landowners of Ireland. I have always argued that the
landowners of Ireland, in their treatment of this question, have
grievously mistaken not only the interests of the population, but their
own. I was told the other day by a Member of this House, who comes from
Ireland, and is eminently capable of giving a sound opinion upon the
point, that he believed the whole of Ireland might be bought at about
twenty years' purchase; but you know that the land of England is worth
thirty years' purchase, and I believe a great deal of it much more,--and
it is owing to circumstances which legislation may in a great degree
remove that the land of Ireland is worth at this moment so much less
than the land of England. Coming back to the question of buying farms, I
put it to the House whether, if it be right to lend to landlords for
improvements, and to tenants for improving the farms of their landlords,
to those who propose to carry on public works, and to repair the ravages
of the cattle plague, I ask whether it is not also right for them to
lend money in cases where it may be advantageous to landlords, and where
they may be very willing to consent to it, to establish a portion of the
tenant-farmers of Ireland as proprietors of their farms.
Now, bear in mind that I have never spoken about peasant proprietors. I
do not care what name you give them; I am in favour of more proprietors,
and some, of course, will be small and some will be large; but it would
be quite possible for Parliament, if it thought fit to attempt anything
of this kind, to fix a limit below which it would not allow the owner to
sell or the purchaser to buy. I believe that you can establish a class
of moderate proprietors, who will form a body intermediate between the
great owners of land and those who are absolutely landless, which will
be of immense service in giving steadiness, loyalty, and peace to the
whole population of the island. The noble Lord, the Chief Secretary,
knows perfectly well at what price he could lend that money, and I will
just state to the House one fact which will show how the plan would
work. If you were to lend money at 3-1/2 per cent., in thirty-five years
the tenant, paying 5 per cent., would have paid the whole money back and
all the interest due on it, and would become the owner of his farm; and
if you were to take the rate at which you have lent to the Harbour
Commissioners, and to repair the ravages of the cattle plague, which is
3-1/2 per cent., of course the whole sum would be paid back in a shorter
period. Therefore, in a term which in former times was not unusual in
the length of leases in Ireland, namely, thirty-one years, the tenant
purchasing his farm, without his present rent being raised, would repay
to the Government the principal and interest of the sum borrowed for
that purpose, would become the owner of his farm, and during the whole
of that time would have absolute fixity of tenure, because every year he
would be saving more and more, adding field to field, and at the end of
the time he would be the proprietor of the soil.
Let not the House imagine that I am proposing to buy up the whole of the
land. I am proposing only to buy it in cases where men are willing to
sell, and to transfer it only in cases where men are able and willing to
buy, and you must know as well as I that there will be many thousands of
such cases in a few years. Every Irish proprietor opposite--the noble
Lord the Member for Tyrone (Lord C. Hamilton) himself, who made so
animated a speech, and appeared so angry with me a short time ago--must
know perfectly well that amongst the tenantry of Ireland there is a
considerable sum of saved money not invested in farms. Well, that saved
money would all come out to carry into effect transactions of this
nature; and you would find the most extraordinary efforts made by
thousands of tenants to become possessors of their farms by investing
their savings in them, by obtaining it may be the assistance of their
friends, and by such an industrious and energetic cultivation of the
soil as has scarcely ever been seen in Ireland. I said there were
landlords willing to sell, and there are cases in which, probably,
Parliament might insist upon a sale--for instance, the lands of the
London Companies. I never heard of much good that was done by all the
money of the London Companies. I was once invited to a dinner by one of
these Companies, and certainly it was of a very sumptuous and
substantial character, but I believe that, if the tenants of these
Companies were proprietors of the lands they cultivate, it would be a
great advantage to the counties in which they are situated. I come then
to this: I would negotiate with landowners who were willing to sell and
tenants who were willing to buy, and I would make the land the great
savings-bank for the future tenantry of Ireland. If you like, I would
limit the point to which we might go down in the transference of farms,
but I would do nothing in the whole transaction which was not perfectly
acquiesced in by both landlord and tenant, and I would pay the landlord
every shilling he could fairly demand in the market for the estate he
proposed to sell.
Well, I hope every Gentleman present will acquit me of intending
confiscation, and that we shall have no further misunderstanding upon
that point. I venture to say to the noble Lord that this is a plan which
would be within compass and management, as compared with that laid down
in his Bill, if it worked at all, and I believe that it would do a
hundred times as much good, in putting the farmer upon the footing of a
holder of land in Ireland. What do hon. Gentlemen think would become of
an American Fenian if he came over to Ireland and happened to spend an
evening with a number of men who had got possession of their farms? I
remember my old friend Mr. Stafford, in the county of Wexford, whom I
called upon in 1849, who had bought his farm and had built upon it the
best farm-house which I saw in the whole South of Ireland, and who told
me that if all the tenantry of Ireland had security for their holdings--
he was an old man, and could not easily rise from his chair, though he
made an effort to do so--'If they had the security that I have,' said
he, 'we'd _bate_ the hunger out of Ireland.' If the Fenian spent
his evening with such men as these, and proposed his reckless schemes to
them, not a single farmer would listen to him for a moment. Their first
impression would be that he was mad; their second, perhaps, that the
whisky had been too strong for him; and it would end, no doubt, if he
persisted in his efforts to seduce them from their allegiance to the
Imperial Government, by their turning him off the premises, though
perhaps, knowing that he could do no harm, they might not hand him over
to the police.
The other day I passed through the county of Somerset, and through
villages that must be well known to many Gentlemen here--Rodney-Stoke
and Drayford, I think they were called--and I noticed a great appearance
of life and activity about the neighbourhood. I asked the driver of the
carriage which had brought me from Wells what was the cause of it.
'Why,' he said, 'don't you know that is the place where the great sale
took place?' 'What sale?' I asked. 'Oh! the sale of the Duke's
property.' 'What Duke?' 'The Duke of Buckingham. Did you never hear of
it? About fifteen years ago his property was sold in lots, and the
people bought all the farms. You never saw such a stir in the world.' He
pointed out the houses on the hill-side which had been built to replace
old tumble-down tenements, the red soil appearing under the plough, and
cultivation going on with such general activity as had not been
witnessed till within these last few years. The appearance of these
villages was such as must strike every traveller from another part of
the country, and it was produced by simple means. The great estate of an
embarrassed Duke had been divided and sold off; he had not been robbed;
the old miserable hovels of the former tenants had been pulled down, and
new life and activity had been given to the whole district. If you could
have such a change as this in Ireland, you would see such a progress and
prosperity that gentlemen would hardly know the district from which they
came.
I think it only fair to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster to
say, that I do not believe the time is come in Ireland, and I do not
believe it ever will come, when it will be necessary to have recourse to
so vast and extraordinary a scheme as that which he has proposed to the
House. It appears to me that it is not necessary for Ireland. There is
the land--there is the owner--there is the tenant. If the landowners had
been a little wiser we might not have had before us to-night the
difficulty that now perplexes us. Suppose, for example, they had not
been tempted to coerce or to make use of the votes of their tenants;
suppose they had not been tempted to withhold leases--undoubtedly the
condition of Ireland would have been far superior to what it now is. My
hon. Friend the Member for Westminster has some scruples, I believe, on
the question of the ballot, but I believe even he would not object to
see that admirable machinery of election tried in that country. Do hon.
Gentlemen think it not necessary? I was talking, only two days ago, to a
Member of this House who sat on one of the Irish election committees--
the Waterford committee, I think--and he said: 'We could not unseat the
Members, though the evidence went to show a frightful state of things;
it was one of the most orderly elections they have in that country--only
three men killed and twenty-eight seriously wounded.' After all, we may
smile, and some of you may laugh at this, but it is not a thing to be
laughed at. It is a very serious matter, but it exists in no country in
the world where the ballot is in operation.
If you were to try that mode of election in Ireland it would have two
results: it would make your elections perfectly tranquil, and at the
same time it would withdraw from the landowner--and a most blessed thing
for the landowner himself this would be--it would withdraw from him the
great temptation to make use of his tenant's vote for the support of his
own political party; and if that temptation were withdrawn, you would
have much more inducement to grant leases to many of your tenants, and
you would take a step highly favourable, not to the prosperity of your
tenants only, but to your own prosperity and your own honour. Now, Sir,
I shall say no more upon that question except this, that I feel myself
at a disadvantage in making a proposition of this nature to a House
where landowners are so numerous and so powerful, but I have disarmed
them in so far that they will see that I mean them no harm, and that
what I propose is not contrary to the principles of political economy;
and that if Government is at liberty to lend money for all the purposes
to which I have referred, Government must be equally at liberty to lend
money for this greater purpose; and, farther, I venture to express my
opinion, without the smallest hesitation or doubt, that if this were
done to the extent of creating some few scores of thousands of farmer
proprietors in Ireland, you would find that their influence would be
altogether loyal; that it would extend around throughout the whole
country that whilst you were adding to the security of Government you
would awaken industry in Ireland from its slumber, and you would have
the wealth which you have not had before, and, with wealth, contentment
and tranquillity in its train.