became such a scene of disorder, thievery, and murder that the
authorities were compelled to abolish the annual festivities. It
attracted all the toughs and roughs and the desperate characters in
Ireland, and the old rhyme says:
"Such crowding and jumbling,
And leaping and tumbling,
And kissing and grumbling,
And drinking and swearing,
And stabbing and tearing,
And coaxing and snaring,
And scrambling and winning,
And fighting and flinging,
And fiddling and singing."
More misery and madness, more crime and unhappiness, more devilment and
debauchery, vice, and treachery was crowded into that little space for a
fortnight annually than might have occurred during an entire year in any
country of Europe. In those days fighting was a common pastime. But the
"broth of a boy" with his "shillelah" of black bog thorn wood, is no
longer seen dragging his coat over the ground at Donnybrook and inviting
any gentleman present to step on the tail of that garment. Those days,
as I say, are over, and Dublin is one of the most orderly cities on
earth, except for the drunkenness.
IX
THE LANDLORDS AND THE LANDLESS
The population of Ireland by the census of 1901 was 4,450,456, a falling
off of 248,204 in ten years since the previous census. In 1848, before
the great famine, the population was 8,295,000, which shows that it has
decreased nearly one-half since that time, during the last sixty years.
The area of Ireland is 20,157,557 acres, including bog and mountain. Of
this area only 2,357,530 acres are under the plow, 14,712,849 acres are
devoted to hay and pasture, of which it is estimated that 12,000,000
acres could be cultivated to crops. But it is a question whether such a
thing would be desirable, considering the great demand and the high
price for hay and cattle, beef and mutton. It would give employment to a
large number of people if 12,000,000 acres more were plowed and planted,
no doubt, but the experts assert that the profits on hay and cattle are
larger than on grain and potatoes.
Next to hay, the largest area, something more than 1,000,000 acres, is
planted to oats and only 590,000 acres to potatoes, which is surprising
when you consider that potatoes are the principal food of the Irish
peasant, and, as some one has remarked, "are his food and drink and
clothing."
William F. Bailey, one of the gentlemen intrusted with the work of
settling the land question and distributing the population of the island
more evenly than at present, estimates that thirty acres of average land
in Ireland is necessary to support a family, but the tax returns show
that the 20,000,000 acres are divided among 68,716 owners; that is, one
person in sixty-four is a landowner, with an average of 300 acres each,
counting men, women, and children, although that is not a fair basis of
calculation in Ireland, because so many of the young and middle-aged
people emigrate and leave more than a natural proportion of old men and
young children on the island.
The tax returns show that the land in 1907 was actually divided among
the 68,716 owners as follows:
Owning 100,000 acres or more 3
Between 50,000 and 100,000 16
Between 20,000 and 50,000 90
Between 10,000 and 20,000 185
Between 5,000 and 10,000 452
Between 2,000 and 5,000 1,198
Between 1,000 and 2,000 1,803
Between 500 and 1,000 2,716
Between 100 and 500 7,989
Between 50 and 100 3,479
Between 10 and 50 7,746
Between 1 and 10 acres 6,892
The changes in the size of Irish farms has been remarkable. In 1841, 81
per cent of the holdings were less than ten acres. To-day, as you will
see by the table, out of 68,000 farms, only 6,892 are of ten acres and
less.
The following is a list of Irish landlords who owned more than 30,000
acres each, and the average annual rentals collected from their tenants
prior to the passage of the Wyndham Land Act of 1903, which authorizes
the purchase with government funds of their estates, and the division
into small farms for the tenants who occupied them:
Annual
Acres Revenue
Law Life Assurance Company 165,804 £6,384
Marquess of Lansdowne 123,634 32,412
Marquess of Sligo 122,902 16,018
Marquess of Downshire 107,828 86,269
Earl of Kenmore 105,359 26,951
Lord Ventry 91,505 15,282
Earl Fitzwilliam 89,468 45,568
Viscount Dillon 78,898 16,933
Sir Roger W.H. Palmer 74,857 12,829
Earl of Bantry 73,360 11,628
Duke of Leinster 71,581 48,841
Marquess of Waterford 71,056 33,412
Lord O'Neil 65,857 45,308
Marquess of Hertford 63,265 75,699
Earl of Lucan 59,478 12,194
Earl of Kingston 54,165 32,565
Duke of Abercorn 51,919 26,689
Marquess of Clanricarde 51,006 18,472
Sir Charles H. Bart Coote 48,739 18,691
Viscount Powerscourt 47,551 13,563
Marquess of Ely 47,076 22,126
Earl of Bandon 46,129 20,438
Trustees of Kilmorrey Estate 46,054 20,663
Earl of Annesley 45,263 22,297
Capt. Henry A. Herbert 42,939 9,695
Thomas S. Carter 41,406 2,138
Earl of Leitrim 39,382 9,890
Lord Laconfield 39,048 16,558
W.H. and John T. Massey 37,241 9,001
Viscount Lismore 37,137 14,113
Lord Stuart DeDecies 36,788 15,473
Earl of Bessborough 36,372 22,649
Viscount Clifden 36,166 19,705
George Clive 35,513 836
Marquess of Londonderry 34,949 30,617
Lord of Antrim 34,493 12,600
H.L. Barry 34,376 26,464
Marquess of Conyngham 33,693 18,373
Lord DeFreyne 33,120 12,719
Earl of Devon 33,100 12,764
Duke of Devonshire 32,776 19,441
T.C. Bland 32,540 2,638
Hon. H.L. King-Harman 32,531 17,090
Sir George V. Colthurst 31,993 11,042
Lord Annaly 31,826 13,740
Marquess of Ormonde 31,794 17,457
Earl of Erne 31,069 16,758
Earl of Granard 30,725 15,816
Lord Digby 30,627 13,409
Earl of Caledon 30,502 15,725
Earl of Arran 30,346 7,111
Lord Farnham 30,191 19,347
Earl of Enniskellen 30,146 13,883
The owners of other large tracts and the persons who own between 10,000
and 30,000 acres are also nearly all noblemen. It would seem that
titles of nobility and large estates go together over here. That is the
rule in other countries, and is perfectly natural, because a poor man
has no use for a title of nobility and a rich man is usually anxious to
get one.
A peer has just as much right to own land as anybody, and the complaints
heard in Ireland are not on account of the rank or the station of the
landlords, but because of their neglect of their interests and their
tenants, especially because most of them do not spend the incomes from
their estates in making improvements or for the benefit of their own
people; they do not spend it in Ireland, but reside in London most of
the time and spend the money there, where the people who earn it receive
no benefit from it directly or indirectly. It is unnecessary to discuss
the evils of large estates. They are too numerous to mention, especially
when they are owned by people who live outside of the country. That is
the great obstacle to the development of Mexico, where millions of acres
in large tracts, granted to Spanish grandees before independence, still
remain in the ownership of their descendants, who live in Spain or
Paris, and spend the revenues there. It is true, also, of Russia,
Poland, Austria, and of many other countries, and to a certain extent of
Cuba, where a number of the valuable and productive plantations belong
to families who are living in Spain, Paris, or New York, and never even
visit them.
A few years ago, by order of Parliament, an investigation was made to
ascertain the habits of the large Irish landowners in connection with
their estates, and the following table shows the result:
Acres Rents
Landlords owned collected
Resident on or near the property 5,589 8,880,549 £4,718,497
Residing elsewhere in Ireland,
occasionally on property 377 852,818 371,123
Residing elsewhere in Ireland 4,465 4,362,446 2,128,220
Residing out of Ireland but
occasionally on property 180 1,368,347 601,072
Never resident in Ireland 1,443 3,145,514 1,538,071
Owned by charitable institutions or
corporations, 161 584,327 234,678
Not ascertained 1,350 615,308 331,633
No country ever suffered so much from absentee landlordism as Ireland,
and many great estates here have been entirely neglected, or practically
abandoned and allowed to go to ruin by the owners who intrusted them to
dishonest or incompetent managers and took no interest in their own
property. No one can blame the tenants upon such estates for their
enmity and resentment toward the proprietors, or condemn them for their
refusal to pay rent when they received very little or nothing in return.
But the system in Ireland has been very much improved of late years by
various acts of parliament, and many people think that the tenants now
have the advantage in every respect. Fifty years ago the landlord was
the owner and autocrat of the soil and everything that stood upon it.
The tenant had no legal rights beyond what was written down in his
lease, and when that expired the landlord could raise or lower his rent
or drive him off the land at pleasure.
Nearly every one of the peers who has sold his estates in Ireland under
the land act has taken the cash and has gone to London to live, and if
home rule is ever granted to the Irish people there will be little room
left for those who remain. Most of the Irish peers spend the greater
part of their time in London. Some of them never come to Ireland at all
except for the shooting season or horse show. Several prominent English
peers have estates in Ireland inherited from ancestors who have
intermarried with the Irish nobility. The Duke of Devonshire, for
example, owns one of the largest and finest estates in the kingdom at
Lismore, a few miles north of Cork. The late duke, who died in 1907,
took a great interest in the property and spent a great deal of time
there.
Forcible evictions are things of the past. Several years ago the demands
for "The Three Fs"--free sale, fair rent, and fixed tenure--were
complied with, and to-day the farms in Ireland are subject to what is
called "a dual ownership," peculiar to this country. No landlord can rob
a tenant any longer. Disputes concerning rent are now settled by a
tribunal which takes all the circumstances into consideration and
decides upon the equities rather than the technicalities of the case.
This has revolutionized the land system of Ireland, and by a succession
of acts of parliament during the past few years the government has gone
a great way toward equalizing ownership and creating a nation of peasant
proprietors, which, according to their ideas over here, is the ideal
condition.
During the last quarter of a century from six thousand to eight thousand
farmers have been evicted from farms in Ireland because they refused or
were unable or neglected to pay their rent. Some of them have remained
in the neighborhood and have squatted where they could, and waited their
chance to recover their holdings; others have emigrated to America;
others have gone into different parts of Ireland; others have engaged in
business of various sorts. Between five thousand and six thousand have
already applied for restoration under the Act of 1907, most of them
through the agency of the United Irish League. Of these, 1,595 families
had been restored up to July, 1908, most of them to the actual farms
from which they were expelled, not as tenants, however, for they will
never be asked to pay any more rent, but as the owners of the property
and improvements, purchased for them by the government, with money to be
repaid, not by them unless they choose to do so, but by their posterity
in the year 1975, or thereabouts. The only financial obligation imposed
upon them is to pay an interest of 3-1/2; per cent upon the purchase
money, which has been borrowed by the government upon bonds running for
sixty-eight years, at 3 per cent interest. The additional one-half per
cent goes into a sinking fund to pay the bonds at maturity.
About 75 per cent of the claims that have been filed under the Evicted
Tenants Act have been genuine; the remainder are apparently fraudulent
or in doubt, and some of those that have been already allowed are
questionable. I heard of a case in which a tenant who was evicted in
1889 for refusal to pay his rent was restored to his old home under
rather peculiar circumstances. His misfortunes were voluntary, and due
to political reasons rather than from the lack of means, and when he was
thrown off his farm he went into business as a cattle broker and became
rich. But, in common with his former neighbors, he filed his claims
under the act, was restored to his old home, and the generous agents of
the estates commission bought a couple of cows, a few sheep, and hogs
from his own pastures, paid him for them, and then gave them to him. He
is now occupying the place and cultivating it by hired labor, and will
be asked to refund the money the government has advanced for him in the
year 1975.
In the application of the provisions of the act no distinction is made
between those who were evicted because of their poverty and those for
political reasons. About one thousand evictions were the result of what
is known as the "Plan of Campaign" adopted in 1887, when the National
League determined to force the issue and organized a general strike
among the farmers against the payment of rent upon certain estates
selected because their landlords were habitual absentees, who spent the
revenues they derived from their estates outside of Ireland and were
oppressive to their tenants and generally offensive. As a rule, the
tenants paid half a year's rent to the agents of the league for a war
fund, so far as they were able. Most of them were able to pay, although
there was a great deal of suffering and privation among about a thousand
families who were thrown out of their homes during one land war which
lasted for two or three years. Practically all of them have already been
restored to their former farms.
In 1901 another land war was inaugurated, under the direction of Dennis
Johnston and John Fitzgibbons of the United Irish League, in Roscommon
and neighboring counties, and a large number of tenants who had
voluntarily agreed not to pay their rents were thrown off their farms as
voluntary martyrs in a campaign which finally resulted in the enactment
of the act of 1907, which was prepared and introduced into parliament by
George Wyndham, chief secretary for Ireland under the late conservative
government. This act authorizes the estates commission having in charge
the administration of the Land Act of 1903 to acquire by force if
necessary eighty thousand acres of land wherever they consider it
expedient, to be sold under mortgages of sixty-eight years at 3-1/2; per
cent interest to families who have been evicted from their former
homes. The commissioners are required to investigate the claims of those
who have been evicted, through their staff of inspectors, and if found
genuine to serve notice upon the owner to vacate the farms from which
they were evicted within a certain time. The landlord has the right of
appeal, but every one of the owners of lands from which tenants were
evicted has voluntarily consented to their restoration except the
Marquess of Clanricarde, and a Mrs. Lewis who has a large estate in
County Galway and has been one of the most vindictive and oppressive of
all the landlords. She is a woman of very determined character, and will
not even answer letters addressed to her by the officials of the
government.
The Marquess of Clanricarde is nearly eighty years old, very eccentric,
a miser, dresses very shabbily, lives like a recluse and pays no bills.
He has visited his Irish estates but once since he inherited them in
1874, He was in the diplomatic service as a young man during the
'fifties, and at one time was a member of parliament. His name is Hubert
George de Burg Canning, Marquess of Clanricarde, Viscount Burke and
Baron Dunkellin, and he has several other titles, but has no family--a
childless widower.
The Clanricarde estates lie directly west from Dublin in Galway County
and were obtained by his ancestor, William FitzAnselm de Burg, the
founder of the Burke family, under a grant from Henry I., and he founded
the town of Galway. To this day the whole province of Connaught is
dotted with the ruined castles of the De Burg family, monuments of four
or five centuries of uninterrupted fighting with the O'Neills, the
O'Donnells, the O'Flahertys, the O'Connors, and other powerful clans in
the early history of Ireland. The battle of Knockdoe, fought in the
fourteenth century between an undisciplined horde of native clansmen
under the Earl of Clanricarde, was provoked by an insult he offered to
his wife. She was the daughter of Gerald Fitzgerald the Great, Earl of
Kildare, and her affectionate father in vengeance attacked his
son-in-law with a disciplined force loaned him by his neighbors, the
lords of the Pale of Dublin. It is said that eight thousand dead bodies
were left upon the field. Those were strenuous days, and the earls of
Clanricarde have been reckoned among the fiercest fighters from the time
they came over from England in the fourteenth century. Sometimes they
have been on one side and sometimes on the other, but like most genuine
Irishmen, they have usually been "agin the government," whatever, policy
it represented. There have been several earnest patriots in the line. An
old Irish ballad begins with the line, "Glory guards Clanricarde's
grave!" but the present earl is not the one referred to.
The late earl was very popular with his tenants, and so liberal and
lenient was he, according to the gossip, that they got into bad habits,
and when the present earl came into the property in 1874 he pulled them
up very sharply and demanded a prompt and full payment of all their
obligations. Being unaccustomed to such stern measures, they were
resentful, and a quarrel began which has lasted until now, and
Clanricarde, convinced that he has right and justice on his side, has
used the mailed hand. There have been more trouble and disturbance upon
his estates than upon any other in Ireland. Every one of his tenants has
been evicted, and sometimes a succession of them, and their farms have
been let to what are called "planters,"--a term used in Ireland to
describe families imported from a distance and planted upon land which
no person in the neighborhood will rent because the previous tenant has
been evicted from it. Every man on the Clanricarde estates is a
"planter." After the passage of the act of 1907 the estates
commissioners requested him to sell his entire holding under the act of
1903, but he not only rejected the proposition, but has declined even to
discuss the subject, and has maintained that uncompromising attitude
from the beginning, an embittered, relentless, vindictive old man.
[Illustration: PORTUMNA CASTLE, COUNTY GALWAY; THE SEAT OF THE EARL OF
CLANRICARDE]
When the commission undertook to apply the compulsory clause of the
Evicted Tenants Act and published the notice in the _Dublin Gazette_,
the earl filed a protest. Mr. Justice Wiley of the Lower Court sustained
the commission, but the Court of Appeals, composed of twelve judges,
unanimously reversed the decision and decided that the estates
commission has no power to forcibly dispossess any _bona fide_ "planter"
from land already under lease.
This decision technically justified the position that the earl has
taken, and it applies to the estates of Mrs. Lewis also, so that the
commissioners cannot go any farther in their work of restoring the
evicted tenants upon those two properties. As soon as the decision was
rendered a bill was introduced in parliament confiscating the entire
Clanricarde estates. It is not expected to pass, but was intended to
advertise the situation and create public opinion. The government,
however, took the matter promptly in hand, and the Earl of Crewe
introduced a bill authorizing the estates commissioners to take by
force, after the usual legal proceedings, any occupied land they may
think necessary and proper for the restoration of evicted tenants,
provided they can obtain the consent of the occupant. This act was
passed, and notice was immediately given in the _Dublin Gazette_ that
the estates commissioners intend, under the Evicted Tenants Act, to
acquire compulsorily upwards of eighteen hundred acres of land on the
estate of Lord Clanricarde in County Galway. This means that the owner
of the property is to have nothing to say about the matter, but a _bona
fide_ tenant, who in good faith is occupying a farm from which his
predecessor has been evicted, cannot be ejected without his consent. We
are familiar with the methods of "persuasion" that have been used for
years by the United Irish League and other patriotic organizations, and
it is entirely probable that they will prove sufficient in all cases
that will arise under this new provision. Therefore, as soon as the
proposed act is passed, the tenants upon the Clanricarde estates will be
looking for trouble.
The Earl of Clanricarde cannot expect to live a great while longer. He
is already an infirm old man and his heir, Lord Sligo of Westport, a
nephew, is almost as old as he. Lord Sligo is one of the largest land
holders in Ireland. He owns 114,000 acres in the north, which is mostly
grazing land, and his tenants are miserably poor, living in squalid
hovels scattered over the estate. He does nothing for them, and exacts
the last halfpenny of his rent. His heir, who will soon come into both
the Clanricarde and Sligo estates, is his son, Lord Henry Ulick Browne,
of whom very little is known. He is fifty-eight years of age and lives
at Westport Castle, Westport, Ireland. As he has had the management of
much of his father's property for many years, it is generally believed
that he is responsible for the harsh policy that has been followed
toward the tenants, and that they can expect no better treatment when he
becomes their lawful lord.
The British Parliament has published a return (No. Cd. 4093) covering
all the proceedings under the Act of April, 1907, to restore evicted
tenants in Ireland; giving particulars in each case in which an evicted
tenant, or a person nominated by the estates commissioners to be a
personal representative of the deceased evicted tenant, has with the
assistance of the commission been reinstated, either by the landlord or
by the estates commissioners, or provided with a new parcel of land
under the Land Purchase Act.
It is a quarto pamphlet of forty-seven pages, and gives in fine type the
names of all the farmers in Ireland who have been evicted since 1876,
with the dates of the evictions, the area they formerly occupied, the
rent they formerly paid, the arrears of rent due at the time of the
eviction, the value of the property, the name of the landlord, the name
of the estate, the name of the town and the county, the date of
restoration, the price paid by the estates commissioners for each tract,
the valuation of the buildings and other improvements on the property,
and the compensation given to outgoing tenants who surrender their
holdings under the law, to those who were formerly evicted from them.
This report shows that forty tenants have been restored to the
Blacker-Douglass estates in Armagh, thirty-two have been restored on the
Charlemont estates in the same county; forty-four of those evicted from
1887 to 1889 by Lord Massareene in County Meath have been restored, and
thirty-nine on the estate of the Marquess of Lansdowne in Queen's
County. On the estates of Sir G. Brooke, in Waterford, seventy-eight
families, evicted in 1887 and 1888, have been restored; twenty-six on
the estate of A.L. Tottenham, Leitrim; thirty-four on the Vandaleur
estates in Leitrim; thirty on the estates of C.W. Warden in County
Kerry; thirty-three on the estates of the Earl of Listowel, and similar
numbers elsewhere.
So far as is known, every family in Ireland that has been evicted from a
farm during the last fifty years for non-payment of rent, or for
political reasons, has been restored wherever they are living, and, if
the head of the family at the time of the eviction is dead, his heirs
have been placed in possession of the place. And all this has been done
by the government at the expense of the taxpayers as a vindication of
the policy of the Irish Land League, the United Irish League, and other
organizations which have conducted the land wars.