eminent of modern genealogists, the originator and author of "Burke's
Peerage," which is authority on all questions affecting the nobility.
His successor was Sir Arthur Vicar, son of the late Colonel Vicar, who
commanded the Sixty-first Irish Fusiliers, and is a cousin of half the
nobility of Ireland. Sir Arthur is a bachelor, a member of the principal
clubs of London and Dublin, president of the Kildare Archæological
Society and of the "Ex-Libris Society," whose members follow the fad of
collecting book plates. He is the highest authority on questions
affecting the Irish nobility since the death of Sir Bernard Burke, and
is the editor of "Lodge's Peerage," a volume which relates exclusively
to them. Sir Arthur has been a great favorite with everybody. He is an
amiable, gentle, witty man, with winning manner, a charming
conversationalist, has a keen sense of humor, and has been the confidant
of half the peers of Ireland in their sorrows and their difficulties.
In October, 1907, when preparations were being made to invest Lord
Castledown as a knight of St. Patrick, it was discovered that the
regalia of that order was missing, and no trace has ever been found of
it, nor have the detectives obtained a single clew to the mystery. The
jewels have an intrinsic value of quarter of a million dollars, but the
historical and sentimental value of the articles stolen cannot be
estimated. They were kept in a safe in the office of Sir Arthur Vicar as
master at arms at the right of the entrance to his private quarters, and
the room was usually occupied in the daytime by two clerks and carefully
locked at night. This valuable property had been kept in that place for
more than two hundred years, and nobody ever dreamed that it might be
stolen. The discovery, which was kept secret for several months at the
request of the police, caused a postponement of the ceremony, and the
chief secretary for Ireland called for the resignation of Sir Arthur as
master at arms on the ground that he failed to take proper precautions
for the safety of the valuables in question. He was not accused or even
suspected of having participated in the robbery, or having any
knowledge of it, but there cannot be the slightest doubt that the theft
was committed by some person familiar with affairs in the castle, and
hence all the employees, everybody, from Lord Aberdeen down, has shared
in the humiliation. Sir Arthur Vicar refused to resign, demanded a court
of inquiry, and selected Timothy Healy, a member of parliament of the
nationalist party from Dublin, as his counsel, and has ever since been
appealing for vindication.
V.
THE REDEMPTION OF IRELAND
While the circumstances of the agricultural class in Ireland are by no
means ideal, a great deal has been done to improve them. At the present
rate of progress, however, it will take from twenty to twenty-five
years, if not much longer, to accomplish the results intended by the
Wyndham Land Act of 1903, which was expected to bring about the Irish
millennium. That act provides that an owner of a large estate may sell
to his tenants the holdings they occupy, and his untenanted land to any
one who desires to buy it, in such tracts and at such prices as may be
agreed upon, corresponding to the income now derived from that
particular property. No landlord can sell a few acres here and there of
good land under this act, although, of course, he is at liberty to
dispose of any part of his estate at any time at any price that he may
consider proper. But the terms and privileges of the Wyndham Act can
only be enjoyed by a community of tenants in the purchase of the whole
or a considerable portion of an estate. A board of commissioners which
sits in the old-fashioned mansion in which the Duke of Wellington was
born, on Merrion Street, Dublin, is authorized to use its discretion in
the application of the law and in granting its privileges to those for
whose benefit it is intended. Nothing can be done without their
approval. The landlord and the tenants may arrange their own bargains to
their own satisfaction, but they must be submitted to the board before
they are carried out.
When such agreements are reached and approved by the commission,
--including the area sold, the price, and other terms,--the government
is expected to furnish the purchase money from the public treasury. The
landlord is entitled to receive the cash in full, and the tenant, who
pays nothing, gives a mortgage, as we would call it, upon the property
to the government for sixty-eight years or less, and agrees to pay an
annual installment of 3-1/4; per cent of the purchase price, of which
2-3/4; per cent is interest and 1/2; per cent goes into a sinking fund
to cover the purchase money at the end of sixty-eight years. A purchaser
may pay off the mortgage at any time he pleases, and receive a clear
title to the land; or he may sell it whenever he chooses, subject to the
mortgage, which follows the land and not the person. If he is unable to
pay his annuities, the government can turn him out and dispose of the
land, subject to the same terms and conditions, to another person. It
can make no allowance for crop failures or cattle diseases. It cannot
extend or modify its credits.
Nearly all of the landlords are willing to sell their estates; many are
glad to get rid of them, because the average tenantry in Ireland are a
very determined class, and are always making trouble. There have been
almost continuous disturbances over land questions of one form or
another in Ireland since the beginning of time. The rents are low
compared with the American standard, but have been difficult to collect,
and when there is a failure of crops they cannot be collected at all.
The landlords complain that all the laws that have been enacted of late
years are entirely in the interest of the tenants; that the landlord has
no show at all. And perhaps that is true, because public sympathy is
invariably with the tenants, and they cast many votes, while the
landlord has only one, even if he tries to vote at all.
Since 1881 the land courts have adjusted the rents of 360,135 farmer
tenants, involving 10,731,804 acres of land. The total rents paid for
these lands annually before adjustment was £7,206,079. They were reduced
by judicial order to a total of £5,715,158, a difference of about
$7,500,000 a year in American money, in favor of the tenants.
Therefore it is perfectly natural that landowners--and especially those
who have had a good deal of trouble with their tenants--are anxious to
dispose of their estates for cash, which they can invest to much better
advantage. The Duke of Leinster, for example, who is a minor, has
realized more than £800,000 in cash, which his trustees have invested in
brewery stocks, railway bonds, and other securities which pay regular
dividends and give him no anxiety.
Mr. Bailey, one of the commissioners, told me that the good estates have
been disposed of without difficulty. The disposition of the poor land
has been more difficult, because the tenants are not as eager to get it,
the owner is not always satisfied with the price, and the commission is
not willing to make advances upon small bits of land among the bogs and
rocks and other tracts of unfertile soil that would not be considered
good security by anybody. The commissioners have treated these
transactions very much as they would have done if they were mortgage
bankers. They have refused to make advances on land that a banker would
not have considered good security. They have not been willing to make
advances on farms that cannot be made to pay. There have been
complications in certain cases that have perplexed them, but, as a rule,
the law has been working out in a most satisfactory and gratifying
manner. The chief object of the commission and the purpose of the law
has been to break up the great estates of Ireland so far as possible in
farms of not more than one hundred acres, and sell them to the
occupants, so as to create a nation of peasant proprietors, and that, he
says, is being accomplished more rapidly than any one had reason to
expect. Of course Mr. Bailey does not pretend that everybody is
satisfied. That would be impossible. The millennium has not yet come,
and the Wyndham Act has not brought it, although it has undoubtedly done
more than any previous legislation to promote peace in this distracted
country, and offers promises of future prosperity and contentment.
Naturally some of the landowners have not been willing to sell their
property, and their tenants have been trying to force them to do so.
That accounts for the "cattle driving" and similar disturbances that you
read about in the newspaper cablegrams from Ireland. It is to be
regretted that the tendency of the newspapers is to publish sensational
occurrences and unfortunate events. If a man commits a great crime it is
advertised from one end of the world to the other. If he does a good
deed very little is said about it, and a false impression concerning
conditions in Ireland has been created by the widespread publication of
every little outrage or disturbance that occurs over there, while the
enormous usefulness and the satisfactory application of the Wyndham Land
Act has been almost entirely neglected by newspaper writers.
There have, however, been a good many little disturbances occasioned by
the efforts of the tenants of certain estates, particularly those that
are now devoted to cattle-breeding, to force their landlords to divide
up the pastures and sell them. At present there is more money in the
cattle and sheep business than in any other kind of farming in Ireland,
and, as you drive out into the interior, you can see the loveliest
pastures in the world filled with fat, sleek animals feeding upon the
luscious grass. I do not believe there are richer or more beautiful
pastures in any land, and Irish beef and mutton command a premium
because of their flavor and tenderness. Hence prosperous cattle-breeders
cannot be blamed for refusing to sell their pastures and go out of
business, and there is no law to compel them to do so. But the rough and
reckless elements in the villages, and in many cases among their own
tenantry, often try to persecute them by cattle and sheep "driving," as
it is called, until they are willing to cry quits. The popular method is
to break down the gates or the hedges,--they do not have fences in
Ireland,--turn the cattle and sheep into the road, and run them as far
as possible away from their proper pastures, scattering them over the
country. This is done in the night, and the next morning the owner is
compelled to take such measures to recover as many of the strays as he
can. Various means are adopted to prevent such outrages. Armed guards
are employed who defend their cattle, sometimes at the cost of life and
bloodshed, which, of course, provokes bad feeling and greater trouble.
Hundreds of men have been arrested and punished by long terms of
imprisonment, but "cattle-driving" still goes on in various parts of
the country with some serious results. But it is comparatively
insignificant when compared with the great good that is being
accomplished by the breaking up of the big estates whose owners are
willing to dispose of them.
Thus far the Wyndham Act has been carried out without much friction; the
chief difficulty having arisen from the eagerness of the landlords to
dispose of their estates, which is so much greater than anticipated,
that the funds provided have not been sufficient, and the landlords who
have sold their property have been compelled to wait for their pay. In
November, 1908, Mr. Augustine Birrell, chief secretary for Ireland in
the British cabinet, introduced into the House of Commons a bill for the
appropriation of more than $760,000,000, to be raised by an issue of
bonds to pay for the estates that have already been sold and for those
that may be sold in the future. That amount of money he asserted would
be necessary to carry out the plans of the government under the Land Act
of 1903.
This proposition of Mr. Birrell is without doubt the most stupendous
munificence ever offered by any government to its subjects. The money
thus appropriated does not pay for any service performed. It is a direct
appropriation from the public treasury to the people of Ireland for the
simple purpose of relieving their poverty and placing them in
circumstances which will permit them to enjoy life without the hardships
and sufferings and fruitless labor which they and their forefathers have
for generations endured.
The advances of the British government to the Irish peasants, if this
bill becomes a law, will reach nearly $1,000,000,000, but it is to be
repaid by them in small installments. Mr. Birrell, in his explanation of
the purpose of the bill to the House of Commons, stated that up to the
31st of October £25,000,000 in round numbers (which amounts to about
$125,000,000 in our money) had already been expended by the estates
commissioners in purchasing farms from the large landholders in Ireland
for the benefit of the tenants who occupy them, and that £52,000,000
(which is the equivalent of about $260,000,000) is due to other
landowners who have sold their estates under the Act of 1903. These
transactions have been completed with the exception of payment of the
price.
The transactions concluded under the Land Act of 1903 up to Oct. 31,
1908, provide farms for about 126,000 Irish families, at a cost of
$385,000,000 to the British treasury, which is to be refunded by the
owners of the farms in sixty-eight years, with interest at 3-1/4; per
cent. Three-fourths of 1 per cent of this annual interest, to be paid by
the man who owns the farm, goes into a sinking fund to meet the
principal of bonds which have been issued to provide the purchase money.
The remaining 2-1/2; per cent is paid by the farmer in lieu of rent, and
is used to meet the annual interest upon the bonds. Thus the farmer gets
his land in perpetuity by the payment of sixty-eight annual installments
of an amount equal to 3-1/4; per cent of its present value. The average
cost of the 126,000 farms thus far purchased is $1,790.
The British government advances the money and becomes responsible for
the payment of the interest and principal. The annual interest is only a
trifle. In some cases it is only a shilling a week, and it runs up to as
high as a pound or two a week in special cases, the average being
estimated at $59 a year for the 126,000 farms, or $5 a month for the
purchase of a farm, and whatever improvements may happen to be upon the
land. If these improvements are not adequate, if the house is not
comfortable, and if barns, stables, fences, and other permanent
improvements are needed, the government advances the money to provide
for them upon the same terms,--sixty-eight annual payments of 3-1/4; per
cent of the cost.
Mr. Birrell in his explanation estimated on Oct. 31, 1908, that the
additional sum of $760,000,000 will be necessary to complete the work,
to provide every family in the rural districts of Ireland with a farm of
their own, and with the intention of doing that he asks an appropriation
of that amount, which will bring the cost of the Irish land policy of
the British government up to nearly $900,000,000.
This does not include the expenditures of the Congested Districts Board,
which have been $440,000 annually for several years, and in the future
are to be $1,250,000 a year.
Nor does it include several millions of dollars which have been expended
under previous land acts, to purchase farms for the tenant occupiers.
Nor does it include the $25,000,000 appropriated several years ago upon
the motion of James Bryce, now British ambassador at Washington, to
build cottages for the agricultural laborers,--the farm hands of
Ireland.
Mr. Wyndham, the author of the Land Act of 1903, stated in the House of
Commons that 159,000 farmers had applied for the assistance of the
government to purchase their holdings, and that 176,000 more would
probably apply, out of a total of 490,000 farmers in Ireland. His
estimates are not so high as those of Mr. Birrell; he believed that
$600,000,000, or $800,000,000 at the outside, would be sufficient,
instead of $900,000,000, as estimated by Mr. Birrell. He is convinced
that 20 per cent of the 490,000 farmers in Ireland would not apply for
farms, and that the average price of the farms purchased would not
exceed $1,500.
Of the farms already purchased, the average price in Leinster province
was £528 ($2,640); in Munster, £452 ($2,260); in Ulster, £242 ($1,210);
and in Connaught, £211 ($1,055).
Connaught is the poorest of the poor provinces, and in 1908, out of a
total of 29,000 farmers who applied, only 2,000 came from Connaught.
Taking the most liberal estimate that he could imagine, Mr. Wyndham
stated that $800,000,000 would be the maximum required.
The Wyndham Land Act is not the first experiment of the kind. It is not
the first attempt of the government to break up the big estates of
Ireland into small farms and homes for the people who are now working
them under the present system. W.F. Bailey, one of the commissioners who
are carrying out the provisions of that act, gave me an interesting
sketch of the history of the movement from the date of the passage of
what is known as "the Irish Church Act" in 1869, which was the original
endeavor to create a peasant-proprietor system by the aid of state
loans.
"Under the Irish Church Act," said Mr. Bailey, "commissioners were
appointed to sell to the tenants of lands belonging to the church their
holdings at prices fixed by the commissioners themselves. If the tenant
refused to buy on the terms offered, the commissioners were authorized
to sell to the public for at least one-fourth and as much more as they
could get in cash, and the balance secured by a mortgage to be paid off
in thirty-two years in half-yearly installments. They sold farms to
6,057 tenants, and the government loaned the purchasers a total of
£1,674,841 which was issued by the commissioners of public works.
"In 1870, the following year, what is known as the Landlord and Tenant
Act was passed by Parliament, under which the commissioners were
authorized to advance two-thirds of the purchase money agreed upon
instead of one-fourth, to be repaid in thirty-five years with 5 per cent
interest, and all agricultural and pastural lands in Ireland were
included in its provisions. Under this act 877 tenants purchased their
holdings for a total of £859,000, of which the government advanced
£514,526.
"This act was amended in 1881 to provide that three-quarters instead of
two-thirds of the purchase money might be advanced by the government on
the same terms, and 731 tenants took advantage of it. The advances
amounted to £240,801.
"What was known as the Ashbourne Act was passed in 1885, appropriating
the sum of £5,000,000 to enable the commissioners to purchase estates
for the purpose of reselling them to the tenants and others, and they
were authorized to furnish the entire purchase money, to be repaid in
annual installments extending over a period of forty-nine years, with
interest at 5 per cent. In 1888 an additional sum of £5,000,000 was
advanced for the same purpose, and 25,368 tenants on 1,355 estates
purchased their holdings with £9,992,640 advanced by the government.
"These funds having been exhausted, Mr. Balfour in 1891 introduced a new
system under which the landlord, instead of cash, was paid in guaranteed
stock exchangeable for consols equal in amount to the purchase money,
and running for thirty years with interest at 2-3/4; per cent. This stock
was guaranteed by the Irish probate duty, the customs, and excise taxes,
and certain local grants. The amount of stock that could be issued for
any county was limited, however, and when that limit was reached the
sales had to stop. The advances under this act were £39,145,348.
"The Act of 1891 was amended in 1896 in various respects. The annual
installments were fixed at 4 per cent, 2-3/4; per cent being for interest
and 1-1/4; per cent to create a sinking fund for the repayment of the
capital. The number of purchases arranged under this act was 36,994, and
the total amount advanced was £10,809,190.
"The following table will give the number of tenants who have purchased
their holdings from their landlords with the assistance of the
government under these various acts and under the Wyndham Act of 1903
from 1869 to the 31st of May, 1908:
No. Amt.
purchasers. advanced.
Irish Church Act of 1869 6,057 £1,674,841
Act of 1870 877 514,536
Act of 1881 731 240,801
Act of 1885 26,367 9,992,536
Act of 1891 46,806 13,633,190
Act of 1903 46,576 17,657,279
------- -----------
Total to date named 127,414 £43,713,183"
The following table shows the number of tenant purchasers under the
three land purchase acts of 1885-88, 1891-96, and 1903; the amount due
from them annually, the number who were in arrears, and the amount of
money unpaid on July 1, 1908:
Number Install- Number Amount
purchasers. ments. unpaid. unpaid.
Act of
1885-88 25,382 £369,130 354 £2,900
1891-96 46,837 517,943 374 3,920
1903 44,773 561,858 305 3,312
------ ---------- ----- -------
Total 116,992 £1,448,931 1,033 £10,132
This is an extraordinary statement. It shows that 116,992 Irish farmers
have had farms purchased for them by the government, which they are
under obligations to pay for by installments amounting annually to
$7,240,000. Only 1,033, or less than 1 per cent, of them are in arrears
in their payments, and the amount unpaid is only about $50,000. The
statement shows that only 120 are in arrears for more than one
installment. This is conclusive evidence that the peasant farmers of
Ireland are carrying out in good faith the generous arrangement that has
been made for them by the British Parliament.
In addition to the actual tenants, the estates commissioners have
provided farms for 2,647 persons who are not tenants, but are the sons
of farmers or laborers upon the farms. These are called "landless"
persons, and they are the ones who are making the trouble for the
government in several of the counties by driving off the cattle and
otherwise annoying the landlords and lessees of ranches that are being
used for pasturage while they are without farms. To such persons 70,326
acres, an average of 35 acres each, have been allotted and paid for by
the government.
"The fortunes of the Irish peasantry will soon be in their own hands,"
said Mr. Bailey. "Ireland is soon to be like Denmark, a peasant state;
and the wealth-producing capacity of the country will be in the hands of
small farmers who own their homes and will have the entire benefit of
the results of their labor.
"It is often complained," continued Mr. Bailey, "that the farmers of
Ireland are not good cultivators, and perhaps that is true in a measure,
except down in Wexford and other parts of the east coast south of Dublin
and in the north of Ireland. But there are very good reasons for it.
The Irish farmers never had any instruction until lately. Before the
famine they merely raised enough to supply their own wants and, having
no interest in the land, did nothing to improve it. Since the famine,
however, and within the last few years there has been a very great
advance in agricultural conditions, and as the older generation dies off
and the younger generation comes on there will be better farming,
because they will know how to apply their labor. One reason for the lack
of good farming and the carelessness and neglect was that there was no
fixed tenure for the tenants, and as they naturally hated their
landlords, they were not willing to do anything to improve the value of
the property. Another reason is that they have been raising cattle so
long that they have forgotten how to cultivate the land. The area of
pasturage in Ireland has been gradually increasing and the acreage
plowed has been gradually decreasing, until now, of the 20,000,000 acres
of land of Irish territory only 2,357,530 are devoted to crops, and no
less than 14,712,849 are devoted to meadows and pastures. The area under
cultivation has been growing smaller every year. In 1875 it was
5,332,813 acres, in 1895 it was 4,931,000, in 1905 it was 2,999,082,
while in 1907 it was 2,357,530 acres.