'On our journey to my father's house, I had occasion to vote at a contested election in one of the counties through which we passed. Here a scene of noise, riot, confusion, and drunkenness was exhibited, not superior indeed in depravity and folly, but of a character or manner so different from what my friend had even seen in his own country, that he fell into a profound melancholy.'
It was to remedy this wretched state of things in Ireland that
Edgeworth resolved in 1782 to devote his energies.
It is curious to read his account of the relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland at this date. He soon learned that firmness was required in his dealings with his tenants as well as kindness. 'He omitted a variety of old feudal remains of fines and penalties; but there was one clause, which he continued in every lease with a penalty attached to it, called an alienation fine—a fine of so much an acre upon the tenant's reletting any part of the devised land.'
He wisely resolved to receive his rents himself, and to avoid the intervention of any agent or driver ('a person who drives and impounds cattle for rent or arrears'). 'In every case where the tenant had improved the land, or even where he had been industrious, though unsuccessful, his claim to preference over every new proposer, his tenanfs right, as it is called, was admitted. But the mere plea of "I have lived under your Honour, or your Honour's father or grandfather" or "I have been on your Honour's estate so many years" he disregarded. Farms, originally sufficient for the comfortable maintenance of a man, his wife, and family, had in many cases been subdivided from generation to generation, the father giving a bit of the land to each son to settle him. It was an absolute impossibility that the land should ever be improved if let in these miserable lots. Nor was it necessary that each son should hold land, or advantageous that each should live on his "little potato garden" without further exertion of mind or body.
'There was a continual struggle between landlord and tenant upon the question of long and short leases. . . . The offer of immediate high rent, or of fines to be paid down directly, tempted the landlord's extravagance, or supplied his present necessities, at the expense of his future interests. . . . Many have let for ninety-nine years; and others, according to a form common in 'Ireland, for three lives, renewable for ever, paying a small fine on the insertion of a new life at the failure of each. These leases, in course of years, have been found extremely disadvantageous to the landlord, the property having risen so much in value that the original rent was absurdly disproportioned.
'The longest term my father ever gave,' says his daughter Maria, 'was thirty-one years, with one or sometimes two lives. He usually gave one life, reserving to himself the option of adding another —the son, perhaps, of the tenant—if he saw that the tenant deserved it by his conduct. This sort of power to encourage and reward in the hands of a landlord is advantageous in Ireland. It acts as a motive for exertion; it keeps up the connection and dependence which there ought to be between the different ranks, without creating any servile habits, or leaving the improving tenant insecure as to the fair reward of his industry.
'Edgeworth's plan was to take not that which, abstractedly viewed, is the best possible course, but that which is the best the circumstances will altogether allow.
'When the oppressive duty-work in Ireland was no longer claimed, and no longer inserted in Irish leases, there arose a difficulty to gentlemen in getting labourers at certain times of the year, when all are anxious to work for themselves; for instance, at the seasons for cutting turf, setting potatoes, and getting home the harvest.
'To provide against this difficulty, landlords adopted a system of taking duty-work, in fact, in a new form. They had cottiers (cottagers), day-labourers established in cottages, on their estate, usually near their own residence. Many of these cabins were the poorest habitations that can be imagined; and these were given rent free, that is, the rent was to be worked out on whatever days, or on whatever occasions, it was called for. The grazing for the cow, the patch of land for flax, and the ridge or ridges of potato land were also to be paid for in days' labour in the same manner. The uncertainty of this tenure at will, that is, at the pleasure of the landlord, with the rent in labour and time, variable also at his pleasure or convenience, became rather more injurious to the tenant than the former fixed mode of sacrificing so many days' duty-work, even at the most hazardous seasons of the year.
'My father wished to have entirely avoided this cottager system; but he was obliged to adopt a middle course. To his labourers he gave comfortable cottages at a low rent, to be held at will from year to year; but he paid them wages exactly the same as what they could obtain elsewhere. Thus they were partly free and partly bound. They worked as free labourers; but they were obliged to work, that they might pay their rent. And their houses being better, and other advantages greater, than they could obtain elsewhere, they had a motive for industry and punctuality; thus their services and their attachment were properly secured. . . . My father's indulgence as to the time he allowed his tenantry for the payment of their rent was unusually great. He left always a year's rent in their hands: this was half a year more time than almost any other gentleman in our part of the country allowed. . . . He was always very exact in requiring that the rents should not, in their payments, pass beyond the half-yearly days—the 25th of March and 29th of September. In this point they knew his strictness so well that they seldom ventured to go into arrear, and never did so with impunity. . . . They would have cheated, loved, and despised a more easy landlord, and his property would have gone to ruin, without either permanently bettering their interests or their morals. He, therefore, took especial care that they should be convinced of his strictness in punishing as well as of his desire to reward.