AN ACCOUNT OF THE IRISH LAND CODE
By Hugh J. McCann, B.L.
The Irish landlord, poor as his circumstances were before the famine, was in many instances reduced to sorer straits after the terrible scourge had passed away. The good landlord, anxious to do his duty by his tenants, helped them as far as his mortgages and other financial burdens would allow. The tyrannical one, regardless of the sufferings of his victims, sought to extract impossible rents from an unfortunate tenantry who had scarcely the means of subsistence. The Encumbered Estates Act, it was thought, would relieve the tension. It empowered a court specially constituted for the purpose to order the sale of estates encumbered with debt, on the petition of any person sufficiently interested as owner or creditor.
Landlordism, it was thought, would, by this act, be relieved of much that made it tyrannical, even when it meant well. But the act was a failure. It was worse. It was the means of wrecking many a fortune, and driving many a proprietor to ruin. Men who, in hard times, were doing well for their tenants and their country under difficult circumstances were driven from the land.
The act came into operation towards the end of 1849. A wild rush was made by creditors to the court. Prices fell with amazing rapidity, and landed property became a drug in the market. Valuable properties failed to realize sufficient to meet the mortgages, and their owners were inevitably ruined.
A new class of landlord now appeared on the scene in the person of the speculator, who bought up the bankrupt properties as they presented themselves. The new proprietors had nothing in common with their tenantry. They knew little of their needs and requirements and cared less. They had but one interest and that was a commercial one. To make their properties realize a good dividend on their outlay was their one concern, and up went the rents accordingly. Such was the fate of the unfortunate tenants who were allowed to continue as tenants of the new proprietor. This was bad enough, but those that were given notice to quit were even more cruelly wronged. Compensation for wrongful disturbance was not recognized in Ireland in 1850, and tenant property amounting to three millions sterling was sold to pay the landlord’s creditors.
Nothing could demonstrate more clearly how utterly rotten was the whole land system in Ireland at the time. Landlord and tenant alike were in a miserable plight. Rents fell heavily in arrear, and evictions were the order of the day. The landlord played the bold game, struck hard, and without mercy. The tenant sought protection in combination and conspiracy. Such was the condition of Ireland when thoughtful men sought by legislation to cure the crying evils of the time. Many remedies were proposed between 1850 and 1860, but none of them reached the stage of legislative enactment. In the latter year, however, Cardwell made an attempt to place the law of landlord and tenant on a better footing.
In spite of a good deal of opposition, government succeeded in placing two important measures on the Statute Book, viz.: the Landed Property (Ireland) Improvement Act, 1860, and the Landlord and Tenant Law Amendment Act (Ireland) of the same year. By the former limited owners were enabled, subject to judicial sanction, to charge the inheritance with the cost of specified improvements, and to bind their successors for stated periods. Agricultural leases for a period of twenty-one years or less could be given by the limited owners without judicial intervention, but every improvement lease required the sanction of the chairman of the county in which the lands were situated.
To tenants the right of compensation was granted for certain specified improvements made by them, provided that before entering on the improvements they made them the subject of an agreement with the landlord, or had given notice of his intention to improve, and the landlord had not notified his objection within a period of three months from receipt of the notice. The principle of retrospective compensation was not, as yet, admitted.
The second act consolidated the existing law of landlord and tenant, and made some important changes in procedure.