Paddy at Home ("Chez Paddy")

by baron de E. Mandat-Grancey

The operation would certainly be most advantageous to them. But, I ask myself, what would the farmer gain when he was obliged to pay the tax-gatherer probably more than he now pays the agent? If one could foresee, in the near future, a great increase in the produce of the earth, one could understand their desire to become landowners, because they would benefit by this increase, whilst with the present arrangement it would be promptly followed by a rise in the rents. But, on the contrary, everything indicates that the depreciation in the price of land is far from having reached its lowest point.

They have therefore, in my opinion, everything to gain by remaining tenant farmers. Now, is it true that they have as much reason to complain of their landlords as they pretend? On that subject, too, I think there is a good deal to be said. Let us proceed as we have done before, and first examine the question from a theoretical point of view.

When we examine these things closely, we find that tenant farming has existed from the most distant times. It was the first application of the fertile principle of the division of labour. Some worked, whilst others fought to protect them. Formerly, the landowners were called lords, or seigneurs, and the farmers vassals; but, in reality, it was always an association between capital and labour with a view to the cultivation of the land. Only the difference of customs at that date caused the mutual obligations imposed upon each party to be much more numerous than they are now. For instance, the lord not only provided the land and the buildings, he was also forced to promise to provide as far as possible the security, without which the vassal’s enjoyment of them would only be illusory. On the other hand, the vassal, besides his dues, also promised his personal service. A farmer therefore gained some advantage by taking lands in a seigneurie where they were dearly let, but where he hoped to dwell in more security than elsewhere. But, as compensation, the lord of the manor must often have consented to great diminutions in favour of a tenant who seemed likely to render, when required, good service as a soldier.

With the exception of a few trifling differences, the same arrangements were made all over Europe, in Ireland as elsewhere. When an Irish lord started for the crusades, or simply to make war upon one of his neighbours, he selected those of his vassals whom he wished to accompany him. If one of them refused, I fancy that no time was lost before “evicting,” if not before hanging him; and, according to the ideas of the period, he only received what he merited, since he had failed in one of the obligations imposed upon him by his lease. Customs have changed. Certain obligations, necessitated by the social state which then existed, have now ceased to be requisite. A landlord no longer guarantees his tenants personal safety. The police are charged with the duty. And in the same way a young Irish captain, whose regiment was ordered, three or four years ago, to go and fight Arabi Pasha, never thought of asking his tenants to reinforce his company if the effective total were incomplete. He contented himself with sending a recruiting sergeant to seek for the men he required in the neighbouring taverns, and he would most probably have even given him a smart reprimand had he enlisted one of his tenants’ sons. The farmers then owe absolutely nothing to their landlords except the obligations which are freely discussed between them when the lease is signed, and very clearly stated in its clauses. They are so perfectly aware of their independence that they treat as tyrants those landlords who, at election times, claim to nominate a candidate whose opinions do not please them.

Would they like to return to the old customs? Evidently not. They wish that to be an impossibility. Then, if landlords and tenants no longer have, and never can have again, in strict law, any connection between them except that which, in all business, links the buyer and seller, what do these recriminations against the landlords, that now form the foundation of Irish literature, mean? The sole duty of a buyer is to be honest about the quality of the merchandise he offers for sale. Can a Kerry farmer pretend that where he leases seventy-five acres of peaty meadow, he expects to reap a harvest of pineapples? The truth is, that he knows the land quite as well as the landlord, perhaps even better. If he pays too much for it he can only blame himself and the competition of the other farmers. But it is absurd to reproach the landlord because prices are exaggerated.

If one considers the question from a strictly legal point of view, one cannot then even discuss the Irish tenants’ complaints, for they have no foundation.

But the relations of men with each other cannot be only based upon strictly legal rights. There is a sentiment of a higher order, which some call charity and others humanity, and which must also be taken into account. Therefore, a really honourable man would never take advantage of the circumstances that had placed another at his mercy in order to force him to accept a ruinous bargain. Have the majority of Irish landlords profited by the competition to raise their rents unreasonably, as they are so often reproached with doing?

It is naturally impossible to answer this question in a general way. When we reflect on the enormous and regular increase in the price of meat which has characterised the last fifteen or twenty years, and which, until a quite recent date, was apparently unlimited, we must maintain, like the Irish landlords still do, that the rents have not been excessively high. It must be remembered that Irish leases are much longer than our own. They usually include three lives; that is to say, that the landlord renounces the right to raise the rent until the death of the would-be tenant’s grandson. It was therefore quite natural that, remembering the rise in prices, by which he had not profited, the landlord should exact a rent which might in some cases be exaggerated, in consideration of current prices, but which would have seemed reasonable had the rise continued. The misfortune is that prices have fallen, and therefore a reduction of rent is absolutely necessary.

But it is quite certain that until these last few years the farmers were doing well. The proof is, that when for some reason or other they wished to retire, they always managed to sell their leases, and sometimes to sell them very dearly. And even now they find buyers. I was given numerous instances of this fact. Mr. Henry George, the Socialist of whom I have already spoken, himself acknowledged, that “Irish land is generally let below the price that the landlords could obtain if it were put up to auction and they consented to let it to the highest bidder without regard to persons.” He even quoted an article in the Nineteenth Century, in which a well-known Irish economist, Miss O’Brien, states that the sub-tenants generally pay the leaseholders twice the amount for the land that the latter give to the landlords. This fact established, we must still acknowledge that certain landlords, particularly those who seek to sell, have sometimes profited, at a moment when the majority of the leases were drawing to a close, by suddenly raising the rents in a formidable manner. This transaction has been carried out by speculators or by creditors on mortgage, who have taken possession. It has rarely been done by hereditary landowners. However, there is one well-known man who is accused of having, with the aid of one of his brothers, doubled in one year all the rents on an estate which he had just inherited, and of having immediately sold it to an English manufacturer for a price based on the new rental. This man is Mr. Parnell, the chief of the Land League. Knowing the usual inaccuracy of accusations inspired by political passions, I was much inclined to doubt the truth of this one. However, the incident has been vouched for by so many of Mr. Parnell’s neighbours, so many details respecting it have been quoted to me, that it appears difficult to believe that there is not some foundation for it.