The Irish Question in its most essential aspect is a Farmers' Question. The difficulties which it presents have their deepest roots in an unsatisfactory system of land tenure, excessive sub-division of holdings, and antiquated methods of agricultural economy.
Mr. Gladstone endeavoured to deal with the system of land tenure in the two important Acts of 1870 and 1881; but the system of dual ownership which those Acts set up introduced, perhaps, as many evils as they removed. It became more and more evident that the only effectual remedy lay in the complete transference of the ownership of the land from the landlord to the occupying tenant. The successful application of this remedy with anything like fairness to both sides absolutely demanded the use of State credit on a large scale. The plan actually adopted in a succession of Land Acts passed by Unionist Governments, beginning with the Ashbourne Act of 1885, and ending with the Wyndham Act of 1903, is broadly speaking as follows:—The State purchases the interest of the landlord outright and vests the ownership in the occupying tenant subject to a fixed payment for a definite term of years. These annual payments are not in the nature of rent: they represent a low rate of interest on the purchase money, plus such contribution to a sinking fund as will repay the principal in the term of years for which the annual payments are to run. The practical effect of this arrangement is that the occupier becomes the owner of his holding, subject to a terminable annual payment to the State of a sum less in amount than the rent he has had to pay heretofore.
The successful working of the scheme obviously depends on the credit of the State, in other words, its power of borrowing at a low rate of interest. In this respect the Imperial Government has an immense advantage over any possible Home Rule Government: indeed, it is doubtful whether any Home Rule Government could have attempted this great reform without wholesale confiscation of the landlords' property. Here then in Land Purchase and the abolition of dual ownership, we have one of the twin pillars on which, on its constructive side, the Irish policy of the Unionist party rests. But to solve the problem of rural Ireland—which, as I have said, is the Irish problem—more is required than the conversion of the occupying tenant into a peasant proprietor. The sense of ownership may be counted on to do much; but it will not make it possible for a family to live in decent comfort on an insufficient holding; neither will it enable the small farmer to compete with those foreign rivals who have at their command improved methods of production, improved methods of marketing their produce, facilities for obtaining capital adequate to their needs, and all the many advantages which superior education and organised co-operation bring in their train.
Looking back to-day, the wide field that in these directions was open to the beneficent action of the State, and to the equally beneficent action of voluntary associations, seems evident and obvious. It was by no means so evident or obvious twenty years ago. At that time the traditional policy of laisser faire had still a powerful hold over men's minds, and to abandon it even in the case of rural Ireland was a veritable new departure in statesmanship. The idea of establishing a voluntary association to promote agricultural co-operation was even more remote; and, as will be seen in the sequel, it was to the insight and devoted persistence of a single individual that its successful realisation has been ultimately due.
So far as State action was concerned, a beginning was naturally made with the poorest parts of the country. Mr. Arthur Balfour led the way with two important measures. One of these was the construction of light railways in the most backward tracts on the western seaboard. These railways were constructed at the public expense, but worked by existing railway companies, and linked up with existing railway systems. The benefits conferred on those parts of the country through which they passed have been great and lasting.
Mr. Balfour's second contribution to Irish rural development was the creation of the Congested Districts Board in 1891. The "congested districts" embraced the most poverty-stricken areas in the western counties, and the business of the Board was to devise and apply, within those districts, schemes for the amelioration of the social and economic condition of the population comprised in them. For this purpose, the Board was invested with very wide powers of a paternal character, and an annual income of upwards of £40,000 was placed at their free disposal, a sum which has been largely increased by subsequent Acts.
The experiment was an absolutely novel one, but no one who is able to compare the improved condition of the congested districts to-day with the state of things that prevailed twenty years ago can doubt that it has been amply justified by results.
Every phase of the life of the Irish peasant along the whole of the western seaboard has been made brighter and more hopeful by the beneficent operations of the Board. Its activities have been manifold, including the purchase and improvement of estates prior to re-sale to the tenants; the re-arrangement and enlargement of holdings; the improvement of stock; the provision of pure seeds and high-class manures; practical demonstration of various kinds, all educational in character; drainage; the construction of roads; improvement in the sanitary conditions of the people's dwellings; assistance to provide proper accommodation for the livestock of the farm, which too frequently were housed with the people themselves; the development of sea fisheries; the encouragement of many kinds of home industries for women and girls; the quarrying of granite; the making of kelp; the promotion of co-operative credit; and many other schemes which had practical regard to the needs of the people, and have contributed in a variety of ways to raise the standard of comfort of the inhabitants of these impoverished areas.
It will be noticed that among the other activities of the Congested Districts Board, I have specially mentioned the work of promoting co-operative credit by means of village banks managed on the Raffeisen system. The actual work of organising these co-operative banking associations has not been carried out directly by the Board, but through the agency of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (generally known by the shorter title of the I.A.O.S.), to which the Board has for many years past paid a small subsidy—a subsidy which might well have been on a more generous scale, having regard to the immense advantages which co-operation is capable of conferring on the small farmer.
The I.A.O.S. is a voluntary association of a strictly non-political character. "Business, not politics," has been its principle of action; and partly, perhaps, for this very reason it may claim to have contributed more than any other single agency towards the prosperity of rural Ireland. To its work I now turn.