LEX LICINIA.
It would have been pleasant to conclude these pages without recording
too harsh a judgment against England, one of the two or three nations
for ever dear to the thinker; one of those who possess a brain of her
own, not merely a chain of nervous nodosities presiding over the organic
functions; one of those who lead the Human Race along the hard road
where it toilingly drags its miseries and delusions. It would have been
pleasant at least to find some kind of extenuating circumstances for
the attitude she maintains doggedly towards Ireland. But this is sheer
impossibility.
All that can be pleaded on behalf of England is that she is truly
unconscious of the wrong she has been doing for centuries, and that
she firmly believes herself to have acted within her rights. Nations,
still more than individuals, are the slaves of their temperament, of
their faults and their qualities. Shall we call the tiger a murderer,
or reproach vultures because they feed on human flesh? They obey their
instincts, and merely follow the dictates of nature. So it is with
nations. Considered no longer in the individuals that compose it, or in
the intellectual _élite_ that speaks in its name, but in the fifteen or
twenty generations that have woven the woof of its annals, a people is an
irresponsible and blind organism, fatefully obeying its impulses, be they
noble or base.
Try to talk with a Protestant landlord about the wrongs and grievances of
Ireland. He will tell you in all good faith that the Irish alone are to
blame. Ignorant, slothful, given to drink, sly and cunning, a nation of
liars,—weak, in a word, and vanquished beforehand,—this is the verdict he
pronounces on them from the height of his respectable rent-roll. If they
have failed in the struggle for life, it is because they came into it
badly armed and unprepared. So much the worse for them,—let them make way
for the stronger ones! Such is the theory.
There can be no doubt that it is put forward in all sincerity by a
majority of Englishmen. But this does not prove that it rests on any
sound foundation. It only proves once more that they are incapable of
understanding anything about the Irish temperament.[4] This reasoning
is merely the classic sophistry. They mistake the effect for the cause,
and are blind to the fact that those vices they so bitterly reproach
the Irish with, are the inevitable result of three centuries of bad
administration and England’s own work. Wherever it has been liberated
from the English yoke, has not, on the contrary, the Irish race displayed
abundant energy, activity, genius? Do not the Irish hold the first rank
in the United States, in Canada, in Southern America, in Australia,
wherever emigration has carried them. In England even are they not at
the head of all liberal professions, letters, the daily press, the bar,
science? Those who have seen and closely studied that nation, crushed
under its secular burden, ground under the heel of the conqueror, cannot
but feel surprised at the bare fact that it survives; and this fact
alone presupposes the most admirable gifts. One could even question
whether, deprived of the Irish Celt element, for leaven, for chiefs, for
counsellors, in letters, and in assemblies, the heavy Anglo-Saxon race
could ever have founded its flourishing colonies. These prosper, one may
say, in direct proportion to the number of Irish that come to them, even
as the mother island slowly decays in direct proportion to the number of
her children that are driven from her shores.
Why should such slanderous explanations be sought for a fact sufficiently
explained by history? The great misfortune of Ireland is not to be a
nation less richly gifted than its conqueror, but only to be too small a
nation, established in an open island. The Irish have been neither more
vicious, nor more fanatical, nor more slothful than the English; they
have been less numerous, less well armed; and John Bull, according to his
deplorable custom, has taken advantage of their weakness for bullying
them, for levying heavy toll on them, for bleeding them to death without
mercy. He has taken their land, their freedom, their industry, and still
wrests from them the product of their labour. And, to crown all, he dares
to call them to account for their misery as for a crime—this misery,
which is his own work, with all its wretched following of vices and
degradation.
Before such a sight as this involuntary indignation must be felt. One
wishes to say to the English—
“You pirates, begin first by giving back to Ireland all you have taken
from her, and you shall see then if she be guilty of this poverty you
consider as a crime! Let us reckon. Give her back her land, which
your nobles occupy. Give her back the bravest of her sons, that you
have driven to emigration. Give her back the habit of work which you
have destroyed in her. Give her back the wealth which you prevented
her accumulating, by forbidding her commerce and industry. Give her
back the millions which you still exact every year upon the produce of
her agricultural energy. Give her back the experience of freedom that
you have so long crushed in her. Give her back the faculty of coolly
reasoning about her beliefs, which persecution took from her. Give her
back the right of self-government according to her genius, her manners,
her will, that right which you declare sacred and imprescriptible for
every nation, that you grant to your most insignificant colonies, to the
meanest island of your Empire, and which you refuse to her, the biggest
of all. Give her back all this, and let us see then if Ireland be all you
say.”
“Alas! from that national inheritance of which you robbed her one can
only find now, recognise and therefore give back, the land and the money.
The land stands always there; and money is not wanting in your coffers.
A good impulse, then! All has to be paid for in this world—defeat and
failure like anything else. If one lose a game, one must know how to
pay for it gallantly. If one has, personally, or in the person of one’s
father, committed an unjust act, one must know how to atone for it.
Your railway companies give indemnities to the families of those they
have crushed to death. Yourselves, as a nation, have paid in the Alabama
affair, once convinced of being in the wrong. Here also, in Ireland,
the hour of Justice has come. Evidence is over. Your work rises in your
throat and sickens you. You cannot any longer doubt, and your writers
daily repeat it, that the cause of all Ireland’s sufferings is in your
spoliation, complicated by your administration. Well, the remedy is
clear. Ireland herself points it out to you, and your conscience whispers
it: you must give back her inheritance to Ireland, with the right of
administering it according to her own lights.”
* * * * *
England is fond of comparing herself to Rome, though it is Carthage
rather that she resembles. She can find in Roman history a precedent for
the solution that is obviously suited to Ireland. The _Lex Licinia_,
promulgated in the year 376 before the Christian era, limited to 500
arpents, that is to say, almost exactly 500 acres, the extent of land
that the patricians were entitled to possess in a conquered country.
This was the law that the Gracchi wanted to bring to life again, and for
which they paid the penalty of death. It has long been believed, and
Mably repeated it with Montesquieu, that the question was the dividing
of private property between all the citizens. Niebuhr and Savigny have
re-established historical truth, and shown that the question at issue
was merely the limitation of, or atonement for, usurpations that ruined
the State by ruining the rural populations. It is a Licinian Law that is
wanted in Ireland, and it is to be hoped that England will give it to her
before long.
The disease of Ireland may be defined: the feudal system or landlordism,
complicated by absenteeism and usury, having for its consequences extreme
penury of capital, rural pauperism, and the incapacity for struggling
against American competition.
The case of Ireland, more acute by reason of its special sphere, is only
a striking instance of a fact that the legislators of the old world must
necessarily take into account henceforth, the fact that the immense area
of land newly cleared in the two Americas, in Australia, and India,
are, four-fifths of them at least, the property of those that cultivate
them personally. They have no other burden to bear than taxes, and are
therefore in a condition of crushing superiority in the struggle with the
countries in which dual ownership obtains. With an equal fruitfulness
(and that of virgin soil is almost always greater), it is clear that
the soil which supports only those that cultivate it, instead of two or
three superposed classes of participants in its products, must always be
able to give those products at a lesser cost price, and therefore will
be able to throw them on the market at a lower rate. It is not merely
common sense, it is the immutable course of human progress that condemns
landlordism to disappear ere long from the face of the globe.
* * * * *
Reduced to its elementary terms, the Irish question stands thus: 12,000
landowners, of foreign origin, possessing almost the whole of the
island; 1940 of these proprietors detaining two-thirds of this soil; 744
holding the half of it. All these lands parcelled out into insufficient
holdings, and cultivated by 720,000 native farmers, for the most part
entirely devoid of capital. The agricultural product of the island,
divided between two schedules on the official rolls of the income tax:
the first one of £2,691,788 only, representing the income of the
720,000 Irish farmers and their families; the second, of £13,192,758,
representing the income of the 12,000 English landlords. The half at
least of this sum leaving the island every year, and being spent outside
it by the _absentee_ landlords. Not one farthing of this lordly income
coming back to the soil, either directly or indirectly, in the shape of
manure, buildings, or agricultural improvements; nor to industry, which
is nil. General pauperism, resulting from the feudal organization that
stops development of wealth in its germ, and more and more unfits the
country for a struggle with the more normally organized nations. Unpaid
rents, landlords and tenants eaten up by usurers, a permanent conflict of
interests shown at each term by three or four thousand evictions, without
mentioning the still more numerous cases in which eviction is not carried
out because it would prove useless. A universal bankruptcy; a chronic
state of social war; a growing contempt of the law; agrarian violence;
the suspension of public liberties; a gradual return of the soil and
its inhabitants to the savage condition; a constant augmentation in the
area of uncultivated land; a regular emigration of the adult and able
population; a quarter of the remaining inhabitants living at the expense
of the ratepayers, either on outdoor relief or in the workhouses;
financial grievances, added to historical and political grievances;
hunger sharpening the rancour of the vanquished race; its hatred of the
conqueror shown periodically by the return to the House of Commons of
85 members whose only mandate is to obstruct the regular working of the
British machinery. Such is the epitome of the results obtained in Ireland
by the English after an occupation of seven centuries. Never did history
register such a scandalous failure.
Vainly do Oxford and Cambridge, in order to explain or palliate it,
resort to all their scholastic sophistry. Vainly it is endeavoured
to discover its cause in some inherent vice of the Irish race, in
their ignorance, their religion, their laziness, and even a sort of
“melancholy” imparted to them, it is alleged, by the neighbourhood of the
ocean (_sic_).
Ireland is not the only country edged by the Atlantic: neither is it
the saddest. Her children are not in any marked degree more illiterate
now-a-days than those of England, and if they were so for a long
time—when they had to slip off to unlawful and clandestine “hedge
schools” if they wanted to learn their alphabet—we know too well who was
responsible for such an outrage on civilization. The Celts of Erin are
Roman Catholics, it is true, but after all there are on our planet a
certain number of nations who have not died yet of this religion. As for
their political capacity, they vindicate it every day by the wisdom and
firmness they display in sustaining the struggle against the oppressor.
One must bow to evidence and do justice to Ireland. And for this there
are not two formulas. There is only one, in two articles:
1.—Expropriation of the landlords with a fair indemnity, to the profit of
the Irish tenantry.
2.—The extension to Ireland of Home Rule, which is the invariable rule
of all British possessions, near or far, guaranteed of course by all the
precautions judged necessary for the security and unity of the United
Kingdom.
* * * * *
It is the glory of Mr. Gladstone to have understood and to have had the
moral courage to declare that there is no other solution. And as we
think of this, is it not a strong argument in favour of the superior
justice of agrarian revendications in Ireland, that it should have
imposed itself to the reason of that illustrious politician, the most
English assuredly of all the statesmen that have succeeded each other
in office since the time of William Pitt? Those common reasoners who
rebel against a necessary restitution, should think of this. Here is an
old man seventy-eight years of age, who, ever since he left Eton, had no
other care, no other occupation than the affairs of his country; the most
energetic, the most active and brilliant of leaders, the most experienced
in finance; of all the orators in the British Parliament the most lucid
and pungent; a refined scholar, an accomplished Hellenist, the possessor
of an hereditary fortune that frees him from domestic cares, the son
of a British merchant-prince, and the father of an Anglican clergyman,
himself Protestant to the core, and fond of officiating in the place of
his son in the church of Hawarden; a man whose predominant quality is
his earnestness, and whose supreme rule of conduct is a well-regulated
love of his country. This statesman, who has been ten times in office
since the year, already so far from us, when he entered it under the
leadership of Robert Peel, and who knows everything about the affairs
of his country at home and abroad, has made his life-study of the Irish
question. Twenty times in forty years has he attempted to grapple with
it, to unravel it, to solve it. All the remedial measures that have
been applied to the wounds of Ireland since 1860 had him for their
initiator. He was the first to realize the odious wrong of an established
Anglican Church in that Catholic country. To him is due the political
and intellectual enfranchisement of the Irish; it was he who gave them
national schools and who put them (by dint of what Titanic struggles!)
on the same electoral footing as the other British subjects. It was he
who promoted, defended, and succeeded in passing all the Land Bills meant
to soften the wretched fate of the Irish serf. Lastly, one must not
forget it, he never hesitated, when he thought it necessary, to claim
laws of repression against agrarian violence. Mr. Gladstone is assuredly
no anarchist. He is neither a madman nor is he in his dotage. Never was
his genius clearer, his word more eloquent. Add to this that this man,
enamoured of power like all those who have passed their life in it, knew
that he was courting a certain fall when he proposed his solution of the
Irish question, and could entertain no doubt of the schism that would
take place in his party on the subject....
And yet his conscience could oppose no resistance to the blinding light
of facts. He clearly saw that palliatives were insufficient, and that
there was an urgent need to take the evil at its root. As a conclusion to
half a century spent in studying the case, and to twenty local attempts
at healing it, after two or three thousand nights spent in the House
of Commons in discussing the question under all its aspects, he comes
forward to say: “_Justice to Ireland!_ we must give back to her what was
taken from her—her inheritance and her freedom!”
Can one suppose for a moment that Mr. Gladstone came to such a conclusion
without the most decisive and powerful motives? Can anyone feel himself
strong enough to hold opinions better founded than his on this matter? We
must congratulate his adversaries on their happy self-confidence; but we
cannot do so on their moral sense or on their modesty.
I.—MR. GLADSTONE’S SCHEME.
Mr. Gladstone’s scheme was framed in two organic Bills. By the first the
British Government undertook to expropriate the landlords, and to redeem
the Irish lands on a basis of twenty times the actual rent, to be paid
in English Consols, at par. These lands would then be sold to the Irish
tenants at a discount of 20 per cent., payable in forty-nine years by
instalments equal to about half the former rent. The second Bill provided
for the local government of Ireland, while it reserved for Great Britain
the general control of the revenue and the right of keeping military
forces in the island. Thanks to a coalition of a fraction of the Liberal
party with the Tories, this programme fell to the ground at the General
Election of 1886, and was set aside by Parliament.
It may be that the loss is not much to be regretted. Very likely Mr.
Gladstone’s scheme was, in his own thoughts, only meant as a trial, what
we call a _ballon d’essai_. Excellent in its twofold principle, his
solution had the very serious drawback of substituting, in the place
of the 12,000 present landlords of Ireland—a single one, the State.
It looked as if it solved all difficulties, and perhaps it would have
caused fresh complications. In fact, it amounted to requiring that the
unavoidable liquidation should be paid—by which people? By those who
could least afford it—the Irish tenants. Whence might the poor devils
have taken the money for their annuities? And even admitting that they
could have found it, can one refuse to see that their culture, so
wretched already, would have become still poorer? Has ever man chosen, to
buy an estate, the moment when he is a confirmed bankrupt?
But it would have been to them a nett gain of one-half on their actual
rent, it will be objected.
A nett gain of one-half _on nothing_, then, as they cannot afford to pay
any rent just now, unless they deduct it from their capital (supposing
that they have any), and there is no reason to suppose that things will
be better for the next fifty years.
Besides, if you admit that by paying for forty-nine years half the actual
rent as judicially fixed, the Irish tenants ought to have the ownership
of the land, why, in the name of all that is fair, refuse to see that
they have paid it more than ten times already, in the shape of excessive
rent?
“They were free not to pay it and go out, with their goods and chattels,”
says my old friend, the Economist. I answer: No. They were not, for a
thousand reasons, and had to obey the will of the vampires, as long as it
was strictly possible.
Either the tenants, having become proprietors in name but not in reality
(or, as it were, proprietors of a shadow of land mortgaged for half a
century), would have paid their annuity,—and in that case they were as
poor as before; or they would not have paid it, and then the Liberal
party would have heard a fine din!
In fact the Gladstone plan rested on an entirely chimerical hope: that of
settling the Irish question without its costing a penny to the British
Exchequer. To entertain such a hope is clearly to prove that one sees
indeed the evil, but without descrying its deeper cause.
This cause lies in the IMPOSSIBILITY to the modern tenants, in the face
of the competition of better organized countries, and generally under the
present conditions of the world’s agriculture, TO PAY ANY RENT WHATEVER.
The Irish tenant is a bankrupt, because he has paid, for too long a time
already, the rent that he could not afford. The land is impoverished for
the very same reason. Now, to sell it to a penniless buyer is absurd
enough; but to pretend to believe that the penniless buyer shall render
it prosperous and make it yield riches, is perhaps more absurd still.
Such illusions ought to be discarded. If England really wants to settle
the Irish question, as her honour and her true interest both command her
to do, she must manfully accept the idea of a pecuniary sacrifice and a
real restitution. It would be useless to cheat herself into acceptance of
half-measures. She had much better weigh the real cost of an imperious
duty, pay it, and square matters once for all.
Not only must she give, _gratuitously give away_ as a present, the land
to the Irish tenant, but she must provide him, at the lowest rate of
interest, with the capital necessary for putting that land in working
order.
This consummation might perhaps be attained at a lesser cost than would
at first sight appear possible,—let us name a figure,—at a cost of one
milliard francs, or £40,000,000. But this milliard should be forthcoming
in cash, presented by the British nation to the sister isle as a free
gift, a premium paid for peace, or rather a lump sum of conscience-money,
such as we see sometimes advertised in the columns of the _Times_.
II.—AN OUTSIDER’S SUGGESTION.
The ideal solution for the innumerable difficulties of the Irish question
would evidently be the _tabula rasa_,—the hypothesis that would transform
Ireland into a newly-discovered island of virgin soil, barren and
uninhabited, where England had just planted her flag, and out of which
she wished to get the fullest value in the shortest possible time.
What would her policy be in such a case? She would begin by surveying
the whole extent of her new acquisition, by parcelling it out in lots
carefully, then by calling in colonists and capital.
To the immigrants that came without any other wealth than their stalwart
arms, she would make gratuitous concessions of small lots of land,
accompanied by seeds, agricultural implements, and an exemption from
taxes during a limited period of time. To those who came with capital,
she would give more important plots of ground, either demanding a premium
of occupation more or less high, shortening the period of exemption for
taxes, or again elevating the rate of those taxes. Most likely, too,
she would favour the establishment of an Agricultural Bank that would
advance to the new colonists such moneys as they desired, according to
their wants, their chances of success, and the individual securities they
presented.
In reality it cannot be supposed that in Ireland the past, the vested
interests and the settled habits of centuries, can be erased. But at
least one can try to come near to this ideal; and besides, this island
presents, over the barren and uncultivated one, the advantage of having
a ready-made population; the country, its climate, its soil, are known;
there is a large proportion of able workmen, valuable house property,
no inconsiderable provision in agricultural implements, not to mention
several thousand head of horse, oxen, sheep, and pigs ready imported.
The advantages of this over a virgin island are, therefore, very clear;
they are visibly stronger than the drawbacks, and success is certain if
measures of the kind we allude to are vigorously carried out.
England, then, must begin by buying out, not only the properties of the
landlords, but also, and this is only justice, the interest that a large
number of farmers possess in those lands under the name of tenant-right.
The area of cultivated land in Ireland (exclusive of towns) is, in round
numbers, fifteen million acres. Before all, the basis of indemnity
granted to the landlords must be fixed.
Mr. Gladstone proposed the basis of twenty times the actual rent, as
judicially fixed. This seems an exorbitant price, for various reasons.
The first reason is that no leased land under the sun normally yields
to its owner, at present, anything like the interest supposed by such a
valuation. The second reason is that the landlords’ property in Ireland
has actually no real value whatever; it could not find a purchaser,
probably, at the price of three times the nominal rent, were it put up
for sale (let anyone who commands capital, and who looks for a secure
investment, consider whether he would ever dream of buying Irish land,
just now, at any price). The third reason is that the true responsibility
of the Irish disease rests with those very landlords who never did
their duty by the country. Granted that their faults (one would rather
say crimes) ought to be covered by the benefit of prescription, and
that a fair indemnity ought to be given them or their creditors if
they are dispossessed by measures of public sanitation, it would look
ridiculous,—indecent to go to the length of rewarding them for their
moral and economical failure by a disproportionate indemnity taken out of
the pocket of the British taxpayer.
When one hears, therefore, Mr. Gladstone speak of giving the landlords
twenty times the nominal rent of their land, one is reduced to admit
that his idea was to bribe them into acquiescence to his scheme by an
exorbitant premium. The Irish landlords did not understand their true
interest; they did not see that they should have thrown into the scale
the weight of their votes. Very likely they were wrong. They may say
good-bye to the Gladstone indemnity; they will never see it again. For
the longer they wait to settle this question, the more must farm-rent
dwindle away and indemnity shrink to nothingness.
It seems that, at present, in fixing it on the basis of twelve times the
judicial rent, the British nation would show great liberality. It would
be equivalent to saying that Irish land, as an investment, is worth
one-third the capital in English Consols that bears the same interest,
which is certainly paying it an unexpected compliment.
As for the tenant-right of the farmer, which it is equally indispensable
to redeem if all is to be cleared and there are to be no more conflicts
of interests, let us admit that it is worth, on the whole, three or
four times the judicial rent. Very likely again this is excessive. But
this matters little practically, as will be shown further on. We find
thus, for the aggregate interest vested in the Irish soil and subject to
indemnity, a common rate of sixteen times the judicial rent.
The average of this judicial rent is ten shillings per acre. For fifteen
millions of cultivated acres to be redeemed, this would therefore give a
total sum of 120 millions sterling to be paid. Thanks to this indemnity
of expropriation, the English nation would become absolutely free to
dispose of these lands as she pleased.
But where are those 120 million pounds to be found? and they must be
found over and above the capital necessary for the working of these
lands, since we admitted in principle that it would be necessary to find
it in most cases. This is the way:
As a first outlay, we have admitted that the British Exchequer would put
down £40,000,000 sterling in the shape of Consols at par. That capital
represents an interest of about one million sterling and a quarter, or
an annual tax of about ninepence per head. This certainly would not be
a high price to pay for such a precious advantage as the suppression of
the Irish plague. There is no decade in which a great nation does not pay
more for some unlucky and useless venture—the Afghanistan campaign, as a
case in point.
To these 40 millions sterling, sacrificed by the wealthiest of European
nations to its internal peace, shall be added the resources proper to
Ireland. These are no despicable ones. Ireland, taxed much lower than
Great Britain, nevertheless contributes no less than eight millions
sterling, in round numbers, to the general revenue of the United Kingdom.
Of these £8,000,000 about £4,286,519 go to the keeping of the army
of occupation and the administration of finances; in other words, to
the services meant to remain “imperial” in the hypothesis of Home
Rule. About £3,744,462 are paid for the services that would, in this
hypothesis, come into the province of the Irish Parliament, viz., public
works, law courts, tax-gathering, local administration, registrations,
land-surveying, lunatic asylums, schools, prisons, and the like. It seems
that a new and poor country, as we suppose Ireland to turn out, ought
not to pay for such services as liberally as does wealthy England, and
that a reduction of a third on these heads, or £1,250,000, is perfectly
feasible. That is about the income for £40,000,000 in English Consols.
Here, then, we have sufficient provision for a second milliard in the
shape of _interest_.
The interest for the third milliard would easily be raised in the shape
of additional taxes, if Irish agriculture were freed from any other
charges. That would only increase the annual taxation by about a sixth
part, and would not even then put it on a level with the incidence
of English taxation. Ireland, on her side, might well do this slight
sacrifice to the cause of social and political peace.
There, then, we have the £120,000,000 wanted (in the shape of a special
loan, emitted and guaranteed by England), which are found—a third by each
of the high contracting parties; a third by a reduction of 33 per cent.
on all services that would have become purely Irish.
How ought this magnificent lump of money to be used to make it bear
all it can? By lodging the whole in the coffers of a special _Bank of
Liquidation_, that would be entrusted with all the operation. This bank,
strong in her guaranteed capital of £120,000,000, invested, if necessary,
with the power of emitting special paper-money, begins by paying all the
lands on the basis fixed upon by law. This implies only, at the most, an
outlay of £90,000,000. These lands the bank divides into three classes.
_Class A._—The fee simple of the first class, composed of the holdings
under £10 a year, is simply transferred to their actual holders (as would
be done in an infant colony in order to attract inhabitants), subject to
the single proviso that these lands shall be cultivated after a given
system, and according to certain rules, and taken back by the public
domain, if this condition be not observed.
Let us remark, in passing, that this free gift will, in the majority of
cases, be only the legalization of a _de facto_ gratuitous occupation,
most of these small tenants having, for the last three or four years,
stopped paying any rent to the landlords.
Where, in that case, will be their advantage? it might be asked. They
will be no richer for having become landowners in point of law, as they
are now in fact.
This is a material error, as shown by the example of our peasant
proprietors in France. One of the chief reasons that prevent the small
Irish tenant endeavouring to get all he can out of his land is precisely
the rooted wish in his mind not to work for the benefit of the landlord.
From the day that he shall be certain of keeping the entire fruit of
his labour to himself, he will emulate the French Celt; he will submit
himself to the hardest privations and the most unremitting toil; he will
abundantly manure his land, ceaselessly tend it, turn it again and again;
he will make it yield all it can. Anyhow, if he does not, he will have
only himself to blame for it.
_Class B._—The second class of land, composed of holdings from 15 to 20
acres and over, is sold to its actual holders for the price of their
tenant right, if they be willing to accept this privilege. In the
contrary case, the tenant right is paid down to them at the rate fixed
upon by experts, and the fee simple is put up for sale by auction. The
ultimate proprietors of these domains of average extent receive, by the
hands of the local agents for the _Bank of Liquidation_, every facility
to form themselves into unions for the collective culture of their land.
They remain, however, free to cultivate it themselves and in their own
fashion.
_Class C._—The third portion of the soil, formed by the choicest land,
shall be put aside in each district to form a great domain where
experiments shall be tried and examples given in agriculture—a domain
managed by official agronomists, and cultivated by associations of
agricultural labourers, salaried partly in kind on the product of the
land, partly by participation in the nett profits. Not only shall there
be introduced on those great domains, together with the finest breeds of
cattle, the most perfect and scientific modes of culture, but, besides,
public demonstrations and lectures shall be made, agricultural pupils
shall be formed, and seeds of first quality shall be given at cost
price. These model-farms alone remain the property of the State, and are
inalienable.
Thus would be constituted at once, together with a class of peasant
proprietors, the middle and great cultures which are equally wanting in
Ireland.
Special laws abolish entail in the island, submit to expropriation (for
25 years at least) any owner non-resident on his property, and forbid,
under pain of heavy fines, to hold or give on lease any parcel of land
under 12 acres.
Other laws, imitated from the _Homestead Exemption_ of the United States,
protect the peasant against debt. The _Liquidation Bank_, after having
set the new system in motion, secures its working by advancing at the
lowest rate of interest the capital wanted by the small and middling
landowners, which must before long kill usury and drive it from the
country. This bank is, in every sense, the organ and focus of a fiduciary
circulation that is amply sufficient, on this broad basis, for all the
financial wants of agricultural industry.
Thus, the whole revenue of the land remaining in the country, circulating
freely, and incessantly undergoing its normal transformations, health
returns by degrees to the social body. There is no longer any question
of “unemployed” labourers; on the contrary, it is rather hands that are
wanted on all those flourishing estates which have day-work to offer, not
only to the owners of small holdings, but even to the unemployed of Great
Britain.
And so England begins rapidly, though indirectly, to recover her advance,
owing to the quick increase in the returns of the Income Tax; in perhaps
four or five years, that increase covers the interest of her £40,000,000.
It comes to say that her real outlay turns out to be only a tenth or
a twelfth part of that advance. Emigration suddenly receives a check.
Nay, a new, liberated, prosperous Ireland sees her children flock back
to her shores from abroad, enriched and reconciled, bringing home their
capital with their experience. For the Irishman ever keeps in his heart
unimpaired the love of his mother country, and will return to her as soon
as he can.
Let us carry our hypothesis further.
At the same time when she gave up the responsibilities of the
local government of Ireland, England has transmitted them to the
representatives of the Irish nation.
Are those representatives to form immediately a single Parliament sitting
at Dublin, or are they for the present to be divided into four provincial
assemblies for Leinster, Munster, Connaught, and Ulster? This question
is of small importance, at least at the beginning. Let the first step
be taken; an united Ireland will only be a matter of time. The best
way in such cases is to follow the expressed wish of the populations;
and supposing that Ulster, or at least a part of Ulster, vote for the
continuation of the present _régime_, why should not those territories be
excepted from the new arrangements, and either be left _in statu quo_ or
joined politically to Scotland, of which they are a geological as well
as an ethnical dependency? But I cannot help thinking that if the above
system was submitted to the Antrim tenants themselves, they would not be
backward to see its advantages.
On the whole question the last word should remain to the voter. If a
majority of the electors of Scottish Ireland spoke in favour of Home
Rule, what could be objected to them? That they will eventually be
oppressed by the Catholics? No great fear of that, I should think; and
besides, efficient measures could be taken, guarantees found against
that danger; but no such caution will be really wanted. The influence of
the Catholic clergy in Ireland has for its principal basis the political
state of the country. The day when difficulties are cleared up, national
education will soon have put an end to the reign of clericalism in
Ireland as elsewhere.
One cannot help feeling firmly convinced that Mr. Gladstone’s formula,
“Home Rule and Abolition of Landlordism,” taken in its most general
meaning, and applied with a spirit both prudent and liberal, will suffice
to heal in a few years the disease of Ireland. Public wealth will rise by
degrees, feelings of hatred will die away, the rapidity of the cure will
take the world by surprise. Has not already the adoption of the Irish
programme by a large number of Englishmen belonging to the Liberal party
been sufficient to bring about a partial reconciliation between the two
countries? We have seen Irish orators come and preach the Liberal gospel
in England, and reciprocally, English orators go and bring the word
of peace to Ireland. That alone is an augury of success, a symptom of
healing and pacification.
* * * * *
Will it be objected that this is a Utopian picture, an unpractical
scheme, or simply one of difficult execution? As for me, the more I look
into the matter, the more settled grows my belief that three things only
are requisite for substituting so much good for so much evil, viz.,
money, steadiness of purpose and conscience. Nobody will say that the
English have ever shown a lack of steadiness in the pursuit of success;
money they have in abundance; will they be wanting in conscience? This is
scarcely to be feared. Conscientiousness of a more or less enlightened
kind is a characteristic of the Englishman, and it is his highest praise.
Men are constantly to be met in England who rule their conduct on the
principles of an inward law. It is true that, by a natural consequence,
many are good only in name, and their display of conscience is only a
sham; but as our great moralist has said, “Hypocrisy is a homage which
vice renders to virtue,” and wherever vice is obliged to wear a mask,
virtue is bound to conquer.
A great transformation, the instruments of which are the press, the
steam-engine, and the telegraph, has been slowly developing throughout
the world during the last few years: a new and powerful influence has
been born that might be named “obligatory justice through publicity.”
Tennyson has spoken of “the fierce light that beats upon a throne;”
thrones now-a-days scarcely exist except in name; the will of the people
has taken their place. But let Governments call themselves republics or
monarchies, they are equally submitted to that pitiless ray of light
which is the ever-wakeful eye of the press, the uncompromising publicity
which ignores either rank or station. How many examples of it have we
not seen at home! To quote a recent one, take that wretched Schnæbelé
affair. Only fifteen years ago there would have been found in it reasons
ten times sufficient to bring about a war for those who wanted it. Not
so in our days. In less than twenty-four hours the press had brought to
light the most minute details of the affair, exposed the naked truth to
the eyes of the world, photographed the place where the incident had
occurred, submitted, in short, to the great public judge all the evidence
of the case. One had to tender apologies under pain of being called the
aggressor, and the whole affair evaporated into smoke.
Such results are perhaps the clearest gain that modern progress has given
us. If our age has a superiority over the preceding ages, it is assuredly
to have succeeded in making injustice more difficult to practise. More
and more henceforward will great national crimes become impossible. Mr.
Gladstone’s chief merit will be to have understood it before anybody
in England, and to have been emphatically the man of his time. In spite
of friends and adversaries he has dared to utter the truth, and say:
“We must give back to Ireland what we have taken from her. The good of
England imperiously demands that sacrifice, for we are entering an age
when the honour of a great nation should not even be suspected.”
He is actually the only statesman in Europe who follows a policy of
principle; the only one seeking the triumph of his opinions by the
sole help of reason. All the others, from the most famous to the most
obscure or passing politician, are only jobbers. Disraeli had too much
of the mountebank about him to have been able to secure the respect
of posterity. Gortschakoff was only a courtier of the old school;
Cavour a clever lawyer; Thiers a dwarf, in a moral and political, as
in a physical, sense. Bismarck profits by a state of affairs which
he did little or nothing to create, and at the most is the belated
representative in our times of fossil feudalism. Gladstone alone is a
truly modern statesman, and therefore is destined to be set by history
above all his contemporaries, if only he succeeds in carrying out
his great enterprise; for the more we go the more nations shall be
restricted to politics of principle, both because all other systems are
exploded, and because the diffusion of learning will be for the future an
almost insuperable obstacle to petty or brutal diplomatic conspiracies.
Great Britain, it is earnestly to be hoped, will consent to follow
her great leader in the way he has shown to her. She is offered the
most splendid opportunity of doing what no nation has achieved as
yet,—atoning, of her own free will, for centuries of injustice, and
trying one of the noblest social experiments that can ever be attempted.
It would be the beginning of a new era in the history of human societies,
and pure glory for those who initiated it. Not only could such results
be attained at little cost, but the most obvious, the most pressing
interest of England invites her to the enterprise. Let her make haste.
After having affirmed for half a century the sovereignty of peoples, and
their right to govern themselves according to their will, she cannot give
herself the lie at home. After having protested against Bomba and the
Bulgarian atrocities, she cannot in her own dominions remain beneath “the
unspeakable Turk.” After having assumed before the world the attitude of
a systematic foe to slave-trade and all kinds of oppression or cruelty,
after having carried it even to maudlin sensitiveness, as in the case
of pigeon-shooting, “birds’ corpses on women’s hats,” and the like, she
cannot decently carry on the slow destruction of a sister race through
starvation. She cannot and she will not do it, for it would be branding
herself for ever as Queen of Humbug, Empress of Sham.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Absenteeism, in its present form, seems to date only from Grattan’s
Parliament, but in some shape or another it may be said to date from the
British invasion of Ireland, and to result from the very nature of an
insular kingdom transferred wholesale to the nobility of a neighbouring
state.
[2] A later instance. On August 30th, 1887, two men armed with guns and
wearing masks entered the house of Mr. R. Blennerhasset, at Kells, near
Cahirciveen; they went upstairs to Mrs. Blennerhasset’s room and demanded
money, which they got to the amount of about £2.
[3] My guide was quite right. In a statistical table of trials between
July, 1885, and July, 1886, for the County Kerry, I find the following
items: _maiming cattle_, 9; _injury to person_, 7; _murders_, 3; _firing
at persons_, 8; _firing into houses_, 15; _threatening letters_, 125;
_intimidation_, 36; _malicious injury_, 22; _arson_, 19; _assaults_, 22.
The above figures, it should be observed, only relate to outrages brought
home to their authors; there can be no doubt that a much larger number of
agrarian outrages remain unpunished.
[4] See Appendix, p. 331.
APPENDIX.
_EXTRACTS FROM SOME LETTERS ADDRESSED WITHIN THE LAST TWO YEARS TO AN
IRISH LANDLORD BY HIS TENANTS._
The _Times_ has published, on October 10, 1887, an exceedingly
interesting batch of letters selected from some three hundred addressed
within the last two years to an Irish landowner by his tenants. As the
editor of those letters wrote most appropriately, there is perhaps no
means whereby truer insight can be obtained into the ways and habits of
the Irish peasantry than by studying the letters written by the people
themselves. Typically enough, however, the same editor only saw in those
letters how “unbusiness-like and illogical is the Irish tenant,” and
“the various reasons that an Irishman gives for not paying his rent. One
is unable to pay because his uncle is confined to bed, and his daughter
suffering from a sore eye; another because a relative has died; a third
because his brother-in-law has brought an action against him for money
lent, and he has had to pay; one because his family is small, and another
because it is large; another—and this is the most common excuse—because
he has been unable to sell his stock; another because his wife has a sore
hand; another because of the death of a cow; another because the weather
is severe and there is a sheriff’s bailiff obstructing him from making up
the rent; another because it was God’s will to take all the means he had;
another because of the agitation.”
Reasons which, it may be seen, appear to the English eye entirely
ridiculous and unbusiness-like.
What strikes a Frenchman most, on the other hand, in the letters, is
their touching simplicity, the appalling instability of a budget that
the least domestic mishap is enough to upset, and the fruitless attempt
of the poor man to penetrate into the real cause of the burden under
which he is panting; in the comments, the utter incapacity of the
British landlord to understand his Irish tenantry even when he is a good
landlord, which is obviously (perhaps too obviously) the case here.
The letters are thus characteristic in more than one sense. Whatever the
angle under which they are read, they undoubtedly remain first-class
documentary evidence.
_8th Jany., 1887._
To * * * *, Esq.
SIR,—I received a letter yesterday from Mr. G⸺ who demanded the
payment of £31 0_s._ 6_d._, rent due up to 29 Sept. 1886. I was
in with Mr. G⸺ this day & he told me that he had no further
instructions than what was contained in his note. Now my Uncle
has been confined through illness to his bed since last June,
& my daughter has been under medical treatment since last
September for a sore eye which proceeded from a bad tooth, & I
even had to pay the Dentist ten shillings for extracting it, as
the Doctor could not do so. I trust you will kindly take into
consideration my position and stay proceedings, & I will send
you £18 next Saturday & the remainder about the 13th February,
the day after fair of K⸺.
Your obedt. Servant
* * * *
* * * * *
The following is also from the same man:—
SIR,—I would have sent you the remainder of the rent on the day
mentioned but the old man died & I had extra expenses but if
you would kindly wait until about the 25th of March I will be
able to let you have it.
Your obedient servant
* * * *
* * * * *
_9th March, 1887._
SIR,—I have yours of the 4th inst. & am very sorry to say
I have met a reverse & cant pay up to my word. I took a
Brother-in-law to live with me—he was a tenant of your
property who lost the power of his limbs & obliged to get into
Hospital, his daughter my niece who I reared went to America
she died there after saving a good deal of money her father
after much trouble got £200 of it & after being 17 years in the
Hospital he had to leave it having means to live & he requested
to come to live with me which I allowed, & being maintained as
one of my family for 12 months up to Wedy. last he now sued me
for £50 which he lent me while here. He is at other lodgings
& subject to evil advice but he fell out with me while here &
since has been most ungrateful. I done my best to get this law
put back but failed & had to pay the money I had made to pay
my rent. I am much grieved being obliged to ask to the middle
of next month to pay it. I wont have any fairs sooner to sell
my stores but I will surly have it about the 20th April if not
sooner. You may be sure only what happened me I would have paid
up to my promise.
Your obt servt
* * * *
* * * * *
_10th March._
MR. ⸺. After all I built & what I ow in shops & from the loss
of sheep I am not abell to pay but if you forgive me this half
year’s rent you will save me from destruction, and if so I
will keep it a profound sacred. I promis I will never again
ask anything of you & will be punctual in future, my family
is small & my health not good to go travell. I brought a dale
of money in to this farm 5 years ago and it is all gon now. I
apeal to your kind genariss hart to do this for me & may the
almitey god give your self & your children the Kingdom of hevan.
I remain most respectfully
* * * *
* * * * *
_January 9th._
DEAR SIR,—In reply to youre noat I am verrey sorrey that I can
do nothing at the presant it is out of my power I have nothing
to sell unlss I sell what I have to ate my self and seven
littel children. I had but one calf to sell to pay you and it
was the will of provedence to take him, he died. I have but one
cow & I had hur in the fair of N⸺ and all I could get for her
was four pounds, so if you presede with the law as yore lawyer
sayes he will I must sell hur to pay you
Your humbel tennant
* * * *
* * * * *
_August 31._
SIR, — I promised the rent after the fair of K⸺ in June. I had
three calves in it & covld not sell. I took three months grass
for them to see could I do better. I intend to have them in D⸺
on the 12th & if I sell them I will send the rent after that. I
would have wrote only expecting to have the rent before this.
My wife took a sore hand & is in hospital this two months & is
in it still so its poor times with me.
Your tennant
* * * *
* * * * *
_11th March._
SIR,—In reply to your letter dated 5th inst. I beg to ask your
honour the favour of a few days grace. I hope to be able to
meet your demands by the time you call to collect your rents in
April. In the meantime I might have an opportunity of setting
the fields in Con acre.
Being a lone widow with two helpless children one of them of
weak intellect I hope your honour will kindly consider my case.
I am Sir your Honour’s most obedient & humble servant
* * * *
* * * * *
_January 19._
SIR,—I received your letter, it is not in my power to make
money for you now as I had to borrow some of your last rent
which is not all paid yeat on account of the death of my fine
cow that died. I will use my best endavours against May.
Your ob. servt
* * * *
* * * * *
_September 26._
DEAR SIR,—I make apail to you at the present time that I am
endeavring at this time to make up the rent. Now I would have
it sooner but the weather for the harvest was savere, sore I
could not help it Der Sir, there is a man who is a Sheirf’s
baliff is going to injure me & to obstruct me in making up
the rent for you which I would hope soon to have value for.
Dear Sir I apail to you that you will not allow but Dis allow
injuring a poor tenant who is endeavring to make up the rent.
I would say one thing that I believe he is at least without
maners. I apail to you that you will not allow to obstruct
making out rent as quck as posible. one thing I wonder much
that you would permit him or such as him any place. I will
refrain on that presnt. I will ask this request off Mr. ⸺ as
soon as I can get the rent will he be kind enough to take it
from me. I will ask the favour of you to give return as it may
plaise you. Excuse my hand riting.
Yours truly
* * * *
* * * * *
_August 2nd._
MR. ⸺. I received Mr. G⸺’s letter on the 31st of July. I am
sorry I am not able to pay at preasant. I am willing to pay my
rent but it was God’s will to take all the mains I had intended
to meet you. I hope you will be so kind to give time untell
October, as it is so hard to make money
Your obt. servent
PAT. F⸺.
* * * * *
_Wensdy 19th._
* * * * Esq. SIR,—I received your letter & will send you the
rent as soon as I can. There was no price for cattle in the
fairs that is past, in fact the could not be sold atol. I
expect to make the rent in the fair of K⸺. I could always pay
my rent but this cursed agetation has destroyed our country but
I hope the worst of it is over
I remain Your Obedient Servant
* * * *
* * * * *
The following letters also relate to the payment of rent:—
_October 10._
SIR,—I did not receive your letter ontill this Day. It has
given me a great surprise I hope your Honour will not put me to
cost I have a little best to sell, and after the fair in C⸺, a
thursday I will send it to yo and I hop yo will not put me to
cost. I hop your honour will feel for me
truly
* * * *
* * * * *
_October 4th._
MR. ⸺. SIR,—I was again disappointed in the fair at N⸺ in
selling my cattle and I must ask time of you till I get sale
for if possible I will sell them in the fair of C⸺ do not once
imagine that I am not enclined to pay but I never was offered
a price for my cattle. I was speaking to some of the tenants
and the would wish to see you in N⸺ the rent day as the want to
know what you want for your land
Yours respectfully,
* * * *
* * * * *
SIR,—I was very sory to see your hon goeing back without the
rient.
I was willing to pay that day but I could not. I send you my
half-year’s rent £13 10, so I hope your hon will luck after
turf for me there is no ous in asking it of Mr. F⸺ There is to
banks idle on the tients part on F⸺ and Mrs. N⸺ has 30 banks
set this year so I count it very unfare if we doent get one The
old men was geoing to kill us when we did not pay your hon the
day you ware in N⸺ We ware all sory we did not settle that day
I remane your obdient servant
* * * *
rember the tturf.
The following is in the same handwriting as the last, but signed by
another tenant:—
DEAR SIR,—You spoke of referring to Mr. F⸺ for turf, we did not
like to intrupeed (query, interrupt) yur hon at that time. Well
sir there is too banks of your own on the tients part an Mrs.
N⸺ is giveing turf to men on the five different estates Every
one that wonted turf got it but two tients no one els wonts it
besids, so I hope your hon will luck to us. I am willing to pay
my way if I get a chance. N⸺ D⸺ has turf this 40 years No one
wants it but P⸺ F⸺ & M⸺ T⸺. We would pay your hon ondly for the
rest
Believe me Your obedient servent
M⸺ T⸺.
do what your hon can about the turf
* * * * *
_November 23rd 86._
HONOURED SIR,—I got both your letters & replidd to the first
& directed it to D⸺ in which I asked for a little time to pay
the rent I had some young cattle in the fair of K⸺ and did not
sell them. It will greatly oblige me if your Honour will give
me time untill the Christmas fair of F⸺ as I have some pigs to
sell that will meet this rent & that would leave me the cattle
to meet the May rent as the young cattle I have is not fit to
sell at preasant.
I feel sorry to have to trespass on your Honour, but the times
are bad and it is hard to make money, but I hope we will soon
have better times under the present Government, and that all
those mob laws will soon be at an end.
I remain your humble servant,
* * * *
* * * * *
It shows a curious state of things when a would-be tenant thinks it
necessary to assure the landlord that he knows the farm belongs to him:—
_April 12, 1887._
To Mr. * * * *
SIR,—Just a few lines to let your honour know that my father
is very delicate for the past tow months and not expected to
recover. I would like to let your honour know that it was mee
that minded your Property for the last ten years. I know that
this place always belongs to you and that the emprovements cost
no one But your self a shilling. I would like to know how mutch
my father is in your dept.
I remain your honors faiteful servant,
JAMES T⸺.
* * * * *
The following contain offers of cattle in lieu of rent, a form of payment
which Irish tenants are always anxious to adopt if they can, for though
they declare there will be no difference about the price, they always
expect the landlord to give them considerably more than the market value:—
_January 18._
DEAR SIR,—I am not able to answer you with money at present. I
have the heifer that I told you of and if you wish I will send
her to T⸺ for you, and I expect your honor and I wont differ.
Your obedient servent,
PATRICK F⸺Y.
* * * * *
_Jany 5th._
SIR,—I have 5 nice bullocks to sell if you would buy them. I
have no other way of paying the rent.
F⸺ D⸺.
* * * * *
_October 14th._
DEAR SIR and pleas your honour,—I hope in you that you wont
buy all the cattle you want in S⸺ town. Patrick D⸺ has a lot
greasing with the father-in-law at C⸺; he intends to meet your
honour with them. Pleas, Sir, leave room for three Bullocks, I
have them greasing with you above the road all the summer.
Your faithful servant,
MICHL. T⸺.
I am setten some of my children and it has left me bare in
monney.
* * * * *
_Novr 12th._
DEAR SIR,—I will give three two-year-old Bullicks good owns for
next May rent. I will leave the vallue to your honour when you
come down before Christamas. I was offered £15 pounds for the
three last June; £5 each from Mr. ⸺ the Miller of C⸺. I never
took them out since. I have no father for them. Your honour has
plenty of straw to give them, the will make good Bullocks on
it. Your honour must get them les than vallue
Your truly faithfull servent,
* * * *
THE END.
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.