For fifty years prior to what Mr. Gladstone was pleased to call his 'remedial legislation,' Kerry was unstained by agrarian crime; all things went on smoothly, and a number of railways were constructed with guaranteed capital, half of which was contributed by the landlords, although they received no benefit from the increased prices of farm produce caused by railway communication. The Board of Works returns show that the money borrowed by Kerry landlords under the different Land Improvement Acts amounted to almost half a million, and yet the deductions made under the Land Act were greater in Kerry than in other counties.
Here is an instance from my own experience.
I purchased from the Government in 1879 an estate, the rental of which was £517, 2s. 4d.; it was considered so cheaply let that the majority of the tenants offered twenty-seven years' purchase for their farms. I borrowed from the Government and expended on drainage £1120, 14s. 11d. Then the Commissioners under the Land Act reduced the rental to £495, 10s. 6d., and the Government which sold me the estate continued to compel me to pay interest on the amount borrowed, although by its own legislation I was deprived of any advantage resulting from the outlay.
The rental of Kerry in 1870 was considerably less than it had been forty years previously, and higher prices were paid for the fee-simple of land than were offered in any other part of Ireland. But Mr. Gladstone's 'remedial manoeuvres' changed the country and the people.
Demoralising bribes to the Irish nation frittered away the proceeds of the plunder of the Irish Church. A notable instance was a million under the Arrears Act, the principle of which was that no honest tenant who had paid his rent could derive any benefit from it, but that any drunkard or squanderer who had not paid his rent might have it paid for him by the Government on swearing that he was unable to pay.
Here is an instance that occurred on an estate under my management.
A tenant, whose yearly rent was £48, had one year's rent paid by Government and another year's rent given up by his landlord, on his swearing that the selling value of his farm was nil; ten weeks afterwards he served me with a notice, as required by the statute, that he had sold the interest of the farm for £670.
Again, there was a tenant who swore that he had expended £513, 14s. 6d. in permanent improvements, and that after this expenditure the fair letting value of the farm was only £17, though the original rent was £26, 4s.
How could I blame an ignorant peasantry for making false statements, when laws were framed by the leaders of public opinion in England which released the Irish tenants from every moral obligation, and made their assumed responsibilities and agreements a dead letter; while orators, living on the wages of patriotism, were allowed to preach sedition and plunder to an excitable people? The result was that the work of demoralisation made rapid progress, perjury became a joke, assassination was merely 'removal,' and men who had been brutally murdered were said to have met with an accident.
I have already shown how apt a prophet Mr. Gladstone was in his forecast in the House of Commons in 1870, and one more quotation adds testimony to his inspiration—though from what direction it came I will not linger to inquire:—