By Lord Ashbourne's Act the Irish tenant can buy his farm at (an average of) seventeen years' purchase. He borrows the purchase money from the Government, paying it back on easy terms, so that in forty-nine years he becomes the absolute owner of the property—paying meantime in interest and gradual diminution of the principal, less than the present rent. The landlord has about £68 for every £100 he used to have in rent. This Act is quietly revolutionizing Ireland, redeeming it from agrarian anarchy, and saving the farmer from himself and his friends. Thousands and thousands of acres are being constantly sold in all parts of the country, and good prices are freely given for farms whereof the turbulent and discontented tenants professed themselves unable to pay the most moderate rents. Large holdings and small alike are bought as gladly as they are sold. Those who buy know the capabilities of the land when worked with a will; those who sell prefer a reduced certainty to the greater nominal value, which might vanish altogether under the fiat of the Campaigners and the visits of Captain Moonlight.
The Irish loyal papers, which no English Home Ruler ever sees—facts being so inimical to sentiment—these Irish papers are full of details respecting these sales. On one estate thirty-seven farmers buy their holdings at prices varying from £18 to £520, the average being £80. On another, six farms bring £5,603, one fetching £2,250. In the west, small farmers are buying where they can. In Sligo the MacDermott, Q.C., has sold farms to forty-two of his tenants for £3,096, the prices varying from £32 to £70 and £130; and the O'Connor Don has sold farms in the same county to fifteen tenants for £1,934. The number of acres purchased under this Act for the three years ending August, 1888, are a trifle over 293,556.
The Government valuation is £171,774,000. The net rent is £190,181 12s. 9d. The purchase-money is £3,350,933. The average number of years' purchase is 17.6.
Perhaps the most important of all these sales are those on the Egmont estate in the very heart of one of the gravely-disturbed districts. The rent-roll of this estate was £16,000 a year; and it was estimated that successive landlords had laid out about £250,000 in improvements—which was just the sum expected to be realized by the sales. All this land has passed into the hands of farmers who, from agitators and No Renters have now become proprietors on their own account, with a direct interest in maintaining law and order, and in opposing violence and disorder all round. Other important sales have been effected. A hundred and fifty tenants on the Drapers' estate in county Derry have bought their farms from the London Company at a total of £57,980. These, with others (197 in all), reached a sum total of purchase-money of £63,305, as set forth in the Dublin Gazette, of November 5th, 1889.
Lord Spencer, whose political volte face is one of the wonders of the hour, does not hesitate to say that this Act has not been a success. Can he give counter figures to those quoted above? And Mr. Michael Davitt does not approve of the sales in general and of those on the Egmont estates in especial, "He hates the Ashbourne Act worse than he hates the idea of an endowed Roman Catholic University, which is saying a great deal. He hates it because it renders impossible his visionary scheme of land nationalization, but more because it wrests from his hands the weapons of Separatist rebellion. And what he openly says, all the more cautious members of his party think. Every purchaser under the Ashbourne Act is a soldier lost to the cause of sedition. More than one of the ringleaders have indeed said this formerly, but of late they have grown more reticent. The Parnellite, it has been said, is essentially an Opportunist. Mr. Davitt is hardly a Parnellite, but the real Parnellite items have discovered that their seats in Parliament and their future hopes would be endangered, if they openly fell foul of the Act under which so many Irish tenants are becoming freeholders. They do not bless the Act, but they leave it alone."
There is another misstatement that had better be frankly met. The objectors to the Land Courts say that the applicants are so many and the process is so slow, it is almost useless and worse than heartbreaking to apply for relief. One thing, however, must be remembered—during the interim of application and hearing, a tenant cannot be disturbed in his holding, and if he refuses to pay his rent the landlord cannot evict him. The following correspondence is instructive:—
"Braintree, Nov. 14.
"Sir,—Will you be good enough to inform me whether the statement I give below is correct? It was made by an Irish lecturer (going about with magic-lantern views) for the purpose of showing how unjustly the Irish tenants are treated. The lecturer was Mr. J. O'Brady, and he was delivering the lecture at Braintree on Saturday, November 9:—'There are now 90,000 cases awaiting the decision of the Land Courts to fix a "fair rent" on their holdings, and as only 15,000 cases can be heard in one year, do you wonder at the tenants refusing to pay their present rent?'
"Your faithful servant,
"G. THORPE BARTRAM."