“Signed at the Mansion House, Dublin, this third day of January, 1903.
| “Dunraven (Chairman) | John Redmond | |
| “Mayo | Wm. O’Brien | |
| “W. H. Hutcheson Poe | T. W. Russell | |
| “Nugent T. Everard | T. C. Harrington” |
It soon transpired that the idea of a conference between landlords’ and tenants’ representatives was the government plan for laying the foundation of the bill that they contemplated introducing as a government measure later on. The tenants’ representatives, who, in the then position of the land question, with prices falling and the third revision term looming in the distance, had all the trumps in their hands, were hopelessly outmanœuvred by the landlord section.
The question to be discussed was largely a financial one, but still the tenants had not a man of financial ability at the board. It is true the members of the conference were nominated, and not selected by their respective sides, though afterwards, for reasons easily understood, the nominations were ratified by the parties concerned. But nominated by whom? By a Captain Shawe Taylor, a personage popular with all parties, but in this matter undoubtedly the agent of the government. The conference sat five times, and all through the proceedings the nationalist representatives were rubbing their hands with glee, for they thought the millennium had come.
The landlord party, on the other hand, were in nightly communication with the Castle. Treasury experts were drafted over to Dublin, and no stone was left unturned to secure for the landlords a measure which would satisfy the most exacting. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. On the 3d of January, 1903, the land conference issued its report. Clear-headed politicians saw at once that the tenants had played the game and lost. Every advantage or benefit that the landlord sought or claimed was secured to him by this treaty, as it was afterwards styled, in terms that could not be gainsaid. The tenants’ clauses in the report were mostly pious expressions of opinion, which were afterwards, when the Land Bill came to be drafted, brushed aside, or quietly ignored. But all was not yet lost.
The Freeman’s Journal, under the able guidance of Mr. Thomas Sexton, in a series of powerful articles, reviewed the whole position. It boldly but temperately pointed out the defects in the conference report. It refused to shout with the crowd. It could not see that much was gained. It clearly saw that a great deal had been lost. The bill, a large and complicated measure of eighty-nine clauses, was shortly afterwards introduced. It was a great measure and aimed at the final settlement of the land question. And, indeed, such an end, devoutly to be wished, would certainly have been attained had the amendments pressed on the government during the passage of the bill by the organ of the tenants been accepted and embodied in the act.
Clause after clause was closely examined, and the defects exposed by Mr. Sexton in a series of articles, inspired if not actually written by him in the Freeman. He had done much service for Ireland in the past, but I doubt if his great abilities had ever been better applied than to the work of examination, elucidation, and amendment of the Land Bill of 1903.
His criticisms culminated in the publication of a schedule of amendments which he claimed were necessary to the final settlement of the question.
It is worth while now putting them on record, for they have a true historical value. It is now seen in the working of the act, that the acceptance of some of the amendments contained in the schedule materially improved the bill, while the omission of the others explains the necessity for still further legislation on the subject.
The following is a summary of the amendments referred to:—