Is Ulster Right?

by Anonymous

And a few years later-1886-the Official Report of the Cowper Commission stated it more fully:-

"The people are more afraid of boycotting, which depends for its success on the probability of outrage, than they are of the judgments of the Courts of Justice. The unwritten law in some districts is supreme. We deem it right to call attention to the terrible ordeal that a boycotted person has to undergo, which was by several witnesses graphically described during the progress of our enquiry. The existence of a boycotted person becomes a burden to him, as none in town or village are allowed, under a similar penalty to themselves, to supply him or his family with the necessaries of life. He is not allowed to dispose of the produce of his farm. Instances have been brought before us in which his attendance at divine service was prohibited, in which his cattle have been, some killed, some barbarously mutilated; in which all his servants and labourers were ordered and obliged to leave him; in which the most ordinary necessaries of life and even medical comforts, had to be procured from long distances; in which no one would attend the funeral, or dig a grave for, a member of a boycotted person's family; and in which his children have been forced to discontinue attendance at the National School of the district."

This was the ordinary form of Government as conducted by the Nationalists; and any attempt to interfere with it and to enforce the milder laws of England, is now denounced as "coercion."

In 1881 Gladstone carried another and a more far-reaching Land Act. To put it shortly, it may be said that all agricultural land (except that held by leaseholders, who were brought in under the Act of 1887) was handed over to the occupiers for ever (with free power of sale), subject only to the payment of rent-the rent not being that which the tenants had agreed to pay, but that which a Land Court decided to Be a "fair rent." This was to last for fifteen years, at the end of which time the tenant might again claim to have a fair rent fixed, and so ad infinitum. The Land Court in most cases cut down the rent by about 20 or 25 per cent.; and at the end of fifteen years did the same again. As tithes (which had been secularized but not abolished), mortgages and family charges remained unchanged, the result was that a large proportion of landlords were absolutely ruined; in very many cases those who appear as owners now have no beneficial interest in their estates.

In examining the Act calmly, one must observe in the first place that it was a wholesale confiscation of property. Not of course one that involved the cruelty of confiscations of previous ages, but a confiscation all the same. For if A. bought a farm in the Incumbered Estates Court, with a Parliamentary title, and let it to B. for twenty years at a rent of £100; and the Act gave B. the right of occupying it for ever subject to the payment of £50 a year, and selling it for any price he liked, that can only mean the transfer of property from A. to B. Secondly, the Act encouraged bad farming; for a tenant knew that if his land got into a slovenly state-with drains stopped up, fences broken down, and weeds growing everywhere-the result would be that the rent would be reduced by the Commissioners at the end of the fifteen years; as the Commissioners did not go into the question of whose the fault was, but merely took estimates as to what should be the rent of the land in its actual condition. That farms were in many instances intentionally allowed to go to decay with this object, has been proved; and this pressed hard on the labouring class, as less employment was given. Thirdly, although the remission of debt may bring prosperity for a time, it may be doubted whether it will permanently benefit the country; for it will be noticed that the attempt to fix prices arbitrarily applied only to the letting and hiring and not to other transactions. To give a typical instance of what has occurred in many cases: a tenant held land at a rent of £1. 15s. 0d. per acre; he took the landlord into Court, swore that the land could not bear such a rent, and had it reduced to £1. 5s. 0d.; thereupon he sold it for £20 an acre; and so the present occupier had to pay £1. 5s. 0d. to the nominal landlord, and the interest on the purchase-money (about £1 per acre) to a mortgagee; in fact, he has to pay a larger sum annually than any previous tenant did; and this payment is "rent" in the economic sense though it is paid not to a resident landlord but to a distant mortgagee. In other words, rent was increased, and absenteeism became general. Fourthly, it sowed the seeds for future trouble; for it was the temporary union of two antagonistic principles. On the one hand it was said that "the man who tills the land should own it," and therefore rent was an unjust tax (in fact it was seriously argued that men of English and Scotch descent who had hired farms in the nineteenth century had a moral right to keep them for ever rent free because tribal tenure had prevailed amongst the Celts who occupied the country many hundreds of years before); on the other it was said that the land belonged to the people of Ireland as a whole and not to any individuals. If that is so, what right has one man to a large farm when there are hundreds of others in a neighbouring town who have no land at all? The passing of the Land Acts of 1881 and 1887 made it inevitable that sooner or later a fresh agitation would be commenced by "landless men." And fifthly, when an excitable, uneducated people realize that lawlessness and outrages will be rewarded by an Act remitting debts and breaking contracts, they are not likely in future to limit their operations to land, but will apply the same maxims to other contracts. The demoralizing of character is a fact to be taken into consideration.

However, the Act was passed; and if Gladstone really imagined that it would satisfy the Nationalist party he must have been grievously disappointed. During 1881, 4,439 agrarian outrages were recorded. The Government declared the Land League to be illegal, and lodged some of the leaders in gaol. Thereupon Ford, carrying out the plan laid down by Lalor in 1848, issued his famous "No Rent" proclamation. It was not generally acted upon; but his party continued active, and in May 1882 Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke (the Chief and Under Secretary) were murdered in the Phoenix Park. This led to the passing of the Crimes Prevention Act, by which the detectives were enabled to secure evidence against the conspirators, many of whom (as is usual in Irish history) turned Queen's evidence. The Act was worked with firmness; and outrages, which had numbered 2,507 during the first half of 1882, fell to 836 in the latter half, to 834 in 1883, and to 774 in 1884.

In the autumn of 1885, Gladstone, expecting to return to power at the ensuing election, besought the electors to give him a majority independent of the Irish vote. In this he failed; and thereupon took place the "Great Surrender." He suddenly discovered that everything he had said and done up to that time had been wrong; that boycotting, under the name of "exclusive dealing," was perfectly justifiable; that the refusal to pay rent was just the same as a strike of workmen (ignoring the obvious facts that when workmen strike they cease both to give their labour and to receive pay, whereas the gist of the "No Rent" movement was that tenants, whilst ceasing to pay, should retain possession of the farms they have hired; and that a strike arises from a dispute between employers and employed-usually about rates of pay or length of hours; whereas Ford's edict that no rent was to be paid was issued not in consequence of anything that individual landlords had done, but because Gladstone had put the leaders of the Land League in gaol); that the men whom he had previously denounced as "marching through rapine to the dismemberment of the Empire" were heroes who deserved to be placed in charge of the government of the country; and introduced his first Home Rule Bill. Some of his followers went with him; others refused. His life-long ally, John Bright, said: "I cannot trust the peace and interests of Ireland, north and south, to the Irish Parliamentary party, to whom the Government now propose to make a general surrender. My six years' experience of them, of their language in the House of Commons and their deeds in Ireland, makes it impossible for me to consent to hand over to them the property and the rights of five millions of the Queen's subjects, our fellow-countrymen, in Ireland. At least two millions of them are as loyal as the population of your town, and I will be no party to a measure which will thrust them from the generosity and justice of the United and Imperial Parliament."

The Bill was rejected; at the general election which ensued the people of England declared against the measure; Gladstone resigned, and Lord Salisbury became Prime Minister.