The Land-War in Ireland: A History for the Times

by James Godkin

2. There is the principle of compensation for unexhausted improvements at the rate of five or six per cent. on the outlay, provided the improvements have been made with the knowledge and consent of the landlord. A certain number of years is held to be sufficient to recoup the tenant for his outlay. If he is removed before that time he is entitled to the balance of his invested capital; just as if the relation were strictly commercial, and as if he had no further claim than his percentage. If the landlord makes the improvement—which he prefers doing, on the new system—he requires the tenant to pay at the rate of four to six per cent. in the form of rent—a clear gain to the landlord, who can borrow money on much lower terms, and can hardly invest his capital so profitably or so safely elsewhere.

3. Absenteeism is no disadvantage or loss to the country. This principle is in great favour with the agents. There is no theme on which they are so eloquent or so argumentative. In the absence of the landlord the agent is all-powerful. What the Irish lord deputy was to the Tudors and Stuarts, the Irish agent now is to the great absentee proprietor residing in London or Paris. He will undertake to demonstrate that the West-end of London would be just as prosperous if the Queen and her court resided constantly at Balmoral or Killarney; if the parliament met alternately in Edinburgh and Dublin, and if the government offices were all at Liverpool. With the blessing of absenteeism, houses in London would be built as fast, and would bring as high rents; trade would be as brisk, artizans of all sorts as well paid, life as happy, and the Londoners as well content. The Irish, however, have, in their ignorance of political economy, conceived the idea, that if the millions sterling sent annually out of the country to London were spent among those by whose labour the money is made, there would be more employment for all sorts of tradesmen, more business for the shopkeepers, more opportunities of advancement for the farmers' sons, more houses built, more trees planted, more land reclaimed, more factories established, more money stirring, more wealth, more life, more enjoyment, an immense increase of national prosperity. The agents say that this is all a delusion.

4. The next principle of the new agents is this—and to carry it out is the aim of all their improvements—that their mission is to produce the greatest amount of rent from the smallest number of tenants.

5. To reduce the population by emigration or other means until there is barely a sufficient number of labourers to attend the agricultural machines, and herd the cattle.

6. To discourage marriage in every possible way, and to diminish pauperism till there shall be no further use of the workhouses but to serve as lying-in hospitals for the thrifty spinsters, as they do in Cumberland and Westmoreland—where the arrangement seems the most natural thing in the world. It is certainly not an unnatural consequence of the practice of men and women sleeping in the same apartment.

Now let us see the working of this new system in Ireland; for it is at work more or less extensively in all the four provinces. The rules of the estate, when rigidly enforced, as they generally are by the improving agents, tend steadily, powerfully, to break down the small farmers. They are disappearing by thousands every year. Some take their chance across the Atlantic. Others fall into the condition of labourers, and may earn 2s. a day on the estate. This will last for awhile until the land is drained, manured, and turned into permanent pasture. Then their occupation is gone. There is nothing more for them to do. There is no place for them, no room, no support in their native land. The grass will grow without their labour, and the bullocks will fatten without their care.

We are constantly hearing of the immense rise in wages since the famine. Well, they are nominally higher, but in the old times the labourer could get more for 8d. or 10d. than he can now get for 1s. 6d. or 2s. Fuel is now three times as dear as it was, because the 'rules of the estate' will not allow the tenants to sell turf even on the verge of extensive bogs. Milk, which was formerly abundant and very cheap, is scarcely to be had at all now in the country towns and villages, because the land is devoted to feeding sheep and 'dry cattle.' Under the old system, the cottiers in the small towns and villages, as well as on the roads in the country, were enabled to keep pigs. The pig paid the rent, and made manure which was put out on the ground of some neighbouring farmer, hired as 'conacre.' The crop of potatoes thus obtained was a great help in the winter months, when employment was rarely to be had. This practice still prevails in Ulster. The farmer puts in the crop for the manure, the cottier paying the farmer's rent—5s. to 10s. a rood, or whatever it may be. With this help the family get over the winter, and feed the pig, without which help, they say, it would be impossible to exist, even with constant employment at a shilling a day. But on the estates of improving landlords in the other provinces, the rules forbid the tenant to give the use of any ground for conacre. He must not, on pain of eviction, take manure for such a purpose, though it would help to enrich his land for the ensuing year. The evicted cottiers and small farmers are forced to go to towns and villages, shut up in unwholesome rooms. When they have been thus so far got rid of, the most ingenious devices are resorted to in order to render it impossible for them to live. By the 'rules of the estate,' the supply of necessaries is cut off on every side. Without fuel, without milk, without potatoes, unless bought at a high rate for ready money, how are they to live? The strong members of the poor man's family emigrate or go to service; the weak ones and the young children pine away in a state of semi-starvation, preferring that to the best fare in the hated workhouse.

The people are fully sensible of the causes of these privations. They know that they have been forced into this condition by the landlords and their improving agents, induced in some cases by the temptation of a few pounds to surrender their little holdings. The lord lieutenant of the King's County has thus cleared an immense district, and has himself become a grazier and a cattle-dealer on a monster scale, attending the markets in person, and driving hard bargains with the farmers and jobbers. By such means the population of that county has been reduced one-third in the last twenty years. The moral aspect of this new system is worthy of consideration. It is thus presented by Archdeacon Redmond of Arklow, one of the most moderate and respected parish-priests in Ireland. When lately presenting an address to Lord Granard from his Wexford tenantry, he said:—

'I have always heard the house of Forbes eulogised for its advocacy of civil and religious liberty, and the name of Grogan Morgan has become a household word through this county as one of the best landlords in Ireland. He never broke down a rooftree during or since the terrible famine. Under his fostering care they have all tided over the calamitous time, and are happy and prosperous in their homes. He did not think his estate overcrowded, nor did he avail himself of the mysterious destruction of the fruits of the earth, to clear off beings made in God's image, and to drive them to the poorhouse, the fever-shed, or the emigrant ship, to whiten the bottom of the sea with their bones, or to face the moral and physical perils of the transatlantic cities. He did not read his bible, like Satan, backwards, nor did he turn out the Son of God in the person of His poor. Hence his name is in benediction, and his estates are more prosperous than the estates of those who forget God in their worldly wisdom, and would seem to have no belief in a judgment to come. What a happiness it is, my Lord and Lady Granard, for you to have such a heritage, and to know that you live in the hearts of your tenantry, who would spill the last drop of their blood to shield you and your dear children from hurt and harm!'